Life insurance is kind of like the Rodney Dangerfield of financial planning. As one of most people’s least favorite financial topics, it gets no respect. Yet, it’s something that almost everyone needs and not having it when you need it can be devastating to your family’s well being. Here are some of the most common and dangerous myths about this often misunderstood product:

1) Your employer-provided life insurance is all you need.

Your employer may provide you with life insurance equal to 1-2 times your annual salary and you may even be able to purchase up to 4-6 times your salary. But there are several problems with that. First, your “salary” doesn’t typically include commissions, bonuses, and second incomes. Second, to replace your income for dependents, you generally need at least 5-8 times your income and some experts even recommend 10-12 times.

Even if you do have enough insurance through your job, you may lose it when you leave. You may be able to convert your optional insurance to an individual policy or purchase one on your own but either way, it may be much more expensive than purchasing a policy today, especially if your health deteriorates.

Finally, you may actually be able to get a better deal on your own, especially if you’re young and/or in above average health. Even if your employer’s policy is initially cheaper, the cost may go up each year and you may not be able to take it with you when you leave, You can purchase an individual policy that locks in your rate for a period of time or allows you to build cash value if you want to keep the policy your whole life. Only include your employer’s coverage in covering your needs if you can take it with you at affordable rates. Otherwise, consider it a  bonus.

2) Only the breadwinner needs life insurance.

“Imagine if something were to happen to the stay-at-home spouse in your family. The breadwinner may need to hire someone to clean and take care of the kids and that can cost a lot of money. Unless your family would have that extra income to spare, you may need life insurance on both spouses,” advises Marvin Feldman, President and CEO of life insurance non-profit organization, Life Happens. Insurance on the stay-at-home spouse also gives the working parent the opportunity to take time off work and help the family adjust to their loss.

3) Life insurance is really expensive.

A recent study conducted by Life Happens and LIMRA, found that 25% of Americans said they need more life insurance but only 10% planned to purchase it within the next year. The main reason given was cost, with 63% saying that it’s too expensive. However, 80% of them overestimated the cost. 25% thought that a $250k 20-year level term policy for a healthy 30-yr old would cost $1k a year or more when it actually would cost about $150.

4) My health disqualifies me from life insurance.

There are a lot of companies that cover a range of health conditions and some even specialize in high-risk cases. You can also purchase a policy that is not medically underwritten at all. Just be aware that they tend to be more expensive and have lower coverage limits.

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Should you buy inflation protection for long-term care insurance? Absolutely. In fact, if you don’t think you can afford that extra coverage, you should probably rethink whether you should buy the insurance at all.

The issue of inflation protection was just one of the subjects that I, along with financial adviser Michael Kitces and insurance industry spokesman Jesse Slome, discussed on a Wall Street Journal webcast on Monday. The Journal’s Anne Tergesen wrote a nice article this week that also touched on the inflation issue.

There is a reasonable debate about how much additional coverage you should buy, but there is no doubt that nearly everyone should buy some. Here are just some reasons why:

Typically, buyers of long-term care insurance are in their 50s or early 60s. But you probably won’t need substantial help with daily living until you are in your 80s. That means the cost of long-term services and supports—whether you receive care at home, in a nursing home, or in some other setting–will rise year after year for thirty years before you ever collect benefits.

As a result, what looks like a pretty good benefit today will be worth far less when you eventually make a claim.

How much less? Say you buy a three year policy that promises to pay $150-a-day (a bit more generous than a typical policy). Today, according to the latest survey of long-term care costs by ltc insurer Genworth, a private room in a nursing home averages $240-a-day, or nearly $88,000-a-year. Your $150-a-day policy would cover 58 percent of the cost and you’ll pick up the additional $90 out of savings or retirement income.

That might be manageable. But if inflation averages 3 percent a year (the long-term average for the overall economy), in 30 years the purchasing power of that $150 will shrink to less than $62. Or to put it another way, that $240 daily cost of a nursing home bed would increase to $582. However you prefer to think about it, your insurance would cover only about one-quarter of your daily costs instead of nearly 60 percent.

It is true that inflation will also increase the size of your nest egg (in nominal dollars), but will you have the resources to pick up the difference?

Of course, there is no way to predict increases in long-term care costs over the next 30 years. The Genworth study and others like it provide some useful information but also can be misleading.

Here’s one problem: Genworth reports that the median cost for that private nursing home room increased by an annual average of 4.19 percent over the past five years. But that was a period when we were slowly climbing out of the worst recession since the 1920s and many measures of inflation, including labor costs, remained stagnant. Thus, I’d be very careful about using the last five years to predict the next 30.

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You probably need life insurance. Lots of people do.

If you have small children, a mortgage, a spouse who’s dependent on your income—or any person who would be inconvenienced financially if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, you probably should have life insurance.

Experts generally recommend buying 10 to 20 times your annual income in term life insurance, which is the most affordable variety. You make $50,000? Great. You should probably have at least $500,000 in life insurance.

Luckily, it’s not prohibitively expensive. A 40-year-old healthy nonsmoking male may be able to buy a 20-year level term $500,000 policy for as low as $350 per year, AccuQuote.com estimates. (“Level term” simply means the annual premium will stay the same for the term of the policy—in this case, 20 years.)

But there are a variety of things that could make your life insurance policy pricier, from health conditions to hobbies to lifestyle choices. Here are some of the top offenders:

1. Tobacco use. If that same healthy 40-year-old male admitted to being a smoker, his annual premium could jump to at least $1,535, according to numbers fromAccuquote.com. Stop smoking, meanwhile, and it will take one year before you can get a nonsmoker discount, but you won’t get a top-tier price until you’ve been cigarette-free for at least three years. “They want to be really sure you’re off it,” says AccuQuote founder and C.E.O. Byron Udell. That said, if you need life insurance now, go ahead and pay the higher premium—and when you’ve stopped smoking, call your insurer and see if you can lock in the lower price.

2. Your weight. Being overweight increases your odds of dying, so the more overweight you are, the more expensive your life insurance will be. Depending on the carrier, as little as 10 to 15 pounds may be enough to knock you out of the top pricing tier, Udell says.

3. Your driving record. A couple of recent tickets aren’t going to seriously raise your annual premiums, but if you have more than two moving violations in the last three years, you likely won’t be able to get the best life insurance rates. “Insurers know that each time you get a speeding ticket, you were probably speeding about 250 times before you got caught,” Udell says. “If you’re routinely violating traffic laws, there’s a much greater likelihood you’re going to die in a traffic accident.”

4. Cardiovascular disease. This includes high blood pressure and other heart issues, which can lead to early death. “Sometimes they’ll write a life insurance policy with an exclusion for heart conditions,” says LearnVest Planning Services Certified Financial Planner™ Katie Brewer. “So they’ll give you insurance, but exclude you if you die of a heart condition.” If you have high blood pressure, but it’s controlled by medication, you should have no major problems. That means you can’t show up to your insurance exam with a blood pressure of 145 over 95, Udell says. “That’s not controlled. It’s the high blood pressure itself, not the medication, that concerns them.”

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In recent months, major insurers have adopted “gender distinct” rates for new coverage. Translation: If you’re a woman, you’ll now pay more than a man for the same coverage.

Rates for single women rose 20 to 40% last year, while rates for single men fell 15%, says Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI) in Westlake Village, Calif. For couples, who pay blended rates, premiums rose 3%.

Here’s an example: If you’re a 55-year-old woman in good health, you’ll pay an average of $1,225 a year for a new policy providing $164,000 in benefits, without any built-in inflation protection. A man of the same age and health with the same coverage would pay $300-a-year less, according to the AALTCI 2014 Long-Term Care Insurance Price Index.

The difference in premiums is even greater if you buy a policy whose benefits grow with inflation, which many experts recommend. A 55-year-old healthy man would pay $1,765 a year for that same policy with 3% inflation protection, but a woman might pay over $2,300 annually.

Why are women now paying more than men for long-term care policies? Longevity.

Women typically live five to seven years longer than men, which means they’d need benefits for more years. “So, it makes sense that they would pay more than a man,” says Slome. “Prices for insurance are based on risk, which is why men pay more than women for life insurance and bad drivers pay more than good drivers for car insurance,” he says.

A Fight to Overturn New Pricing

But women are pushing back.

Last month, The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) filed complaints with the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office for Civil Rights against leading long-term care insurer Genworth Financial and three others — John Hancock, Transamerica and Mutual of Omaha. The group maintains that gender-based premiums violate a provision of the Affordable Care Act that bans sex discrimination in health care.

“Women already have a hard enough time making ends meet, earning only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men,” says NWLC Vice-President and General Counsel Emily Martin. “With lower wages to begin with, women simply can’t afford to pay 20 to 40% more than men for the same long-term care insurance.”

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You probably need life insurance. Lots of people do.

If you have small children, a mortgage, a spouse who’s dependent on your income—or any person who would be inconvenienced financially if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, you probably should have life insurance.

Experts generally recommend buying 10 to 20 times your annual income in term life insurance, which is the most affordable variety. You make $50,000? Great. You should probably have at least $500,000 in life insurance.

Luckily, it’s not prohibitively expensive. A 40-year-old healthy nonsmoking male may be able to buy a 20-year level term $500,000 policy for as low as $350 per year, AccuQuote.com estimates. (“Level term” simply means the annual premium will stay the same for the term of the policy—in this case, 20 years.)

But there are a variety of things that could make your life insurance policy pricier, from health conditions to hobbies to lifestyle choices. Here are some of the top offenders:

1. Tobacco use. If that same healthy 40-year-old male admitted to being a smoker, his annual premium could jump to at least $1,535, according to numbers fromAccuquote.com. Stop smoking, meanwhile, and it will take one year before you can get a nonsmoker discount, but you won’t get a top-tier price until you’ve been cigarette-free for at least three years. “They want to be really sure you’re off it,” says AccuQuote founder and C.E.O. Byron Udell. That said, if you need life insurance now, go ahead and pay the higher premium—and when you’ve stopped smoking, call your insurer and see if you can lock in the lower price.

2. Your weight. Being overweight increases your odds of dying, so the more overweight you are, the more expensive your life insurance will be. Depending on the carrier, as little as 10 to 15 pounds may be enough to knock you out of the top pricing tier, Udell says.

3. Your driving record. A couple of recent tickets aren’t going to seriously raise your annual premiums, but if you have more than two moving violations in the last three years, you likely won’t be able to get the best life insurance rates. “Insurers know that each time you get a speeding ticket, you were probably speeding about 250 times before you got caught,” Udell says. “If you’re routinely violating traffic laws, there’s a much greater likelihood you’re going to die in a traffic accident.”

4. Cardiovascular disease. This includes high blood pressure and other heart issues, which can lead to early death. “Sometimes they’ll write a life insurance policy with an exclusion for heart conditions,” says LearnVest Planning Services Certified Financial Planner™ Katie Brewer. “So they’ll give you insurance, but exclude you if you die of a heart condition.” If you have high blood pressure, but it’s controlled by medication, you should have no major problems. That means you can’t show up to your insurance exam with a blood pressure of 145 over 95, Udell says. “That’s not controlled. It’s the high blood pressure itself, not the medication, that concerns them.”

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