This comes up every year.
The Servicemember’s Group Life Insurance (SGLI) is the military member standard term life policy.
The key thing about it - no combat exclusion or hazardous duty exceptions. It pays out no matter what the service member is doing or where they are doing it. Civilian life insurance policies usually do not cover military pilots, special operations, EOD, in combat zones or other military situations. SGLI also pays out in the case of suicide and misconduct. Sadly, these are facts of life in a demanding life. The goal is the service member leaves a healthy sum to those he or she leaves behind, who will no longer benefit from his monthly pay and potentially retirement pay. It is very inexpensive for what it covers.
Recommend taking a smaller amount and then upping it stepwise later, and he can consider doing the max when spouse, kids, mortgage and college educations are in the mix.
I will never forget one of our USNA sponsor sons, the oldest kid in his family, who had a mom working 2 minimum wage jobs and a disabled dad, say to me he planned to help his family out of every paycheck he earned, and if something happened to him during summer training at USNA or any other accident, he wanted to leave something for his siblings. He took $75K as a mid and a week after graduation, upped his election to the max. He was going ground Marine and knew combat duty was in his near-term future. Happily, he got through 2 combat tours and is a successful financial services executive now.
