Human Life Value Calculator

Human Life Value (HLV) estimates the present value of future income a person contributes to their household. It's the classical method for sizing life insurance. Take annual income minus self-maintenance (what you'd spend on yourself if alone), project forward to retirement with growth, discount back to present value.

60k annual income, 30 years to retirement, 3% income growth, 5% discount rate, 30% self-maintenance. Contributed income: 42k/year today, growing 3%/year. Present value over 30 years: approximately 789k. That's the amount of life cover theoretically needed to replace your contribution to your household.

HLV gives a theoretical ceiling; practical insurance needs are usually less. Factors that reduce need: partner income, investments, grown children, paid-off mortgage. Factors that increase need: young children, single-earner household, large mortgage. Most people with 2-3 dependents end up needing 60-80% of HLV; single people with no dependents often need nothing.

A worked example

Try the defaults: annual income of 60,000, years to retirement of 30 years, income growth of 3%, discount rate of 5%. The tool returns 920,611.02. You can adjust any input and the result updates as you type — no submit button, no reload. That's the real power here: seeing how sensitive the output is to one or two assumptions.

What moves the number most

The result responds to Annual Income, Years to Retirement, Income Growth %, Discount Rate %, and Self Maintenance %. Not every input has equal weight. Adjusting one input at a time toward extreme values shows which ones move the result most.

The formula behind this

HLV = sum of (contributed income × (1+growth)^year / (1+discount)^year). Contributed income = income × (1 - self maintenance %). Everything the calculator does is shown in the formula box below, so you can check the math against your own spreadsheet if you want.

Using this as a check-in

Re-run this every three months. A single reading tells you where you stand; four readings tell you whether things are improving. The trend matters more than any individual snapshot.

What this doesn't capture

The score is a composite of the inputs you provide. Life context — job security, family obligations, health, housing — doesn't appear in the math but shapes the real picture. Use the number as a prompt, not a verdict.