Job Change Life Insurance Calculator (2026): Port, Convert, or Buy New?

The image above matches the Job Change Life Insurance Calculator below: new-hire paperwork, a laptop enrollment screen, and the decision about how much group life to take versus buying your own portable policy.

Your employer’s group life insurance is the cheapest coverage you will ever own — and it disappears 31 days after your last day of work. When you change jobs, you get exactly one short window to decide what happens to that coverage, and the four available paths cost wildly different amounts over the next 20 years. This calculator prices all four side by side using your age, salary, group coverage multiple, and health status, so you can see which path actually protects your family at the lowest lifetime cost.

Most people default to “I’ll just take the new job’s coverage” and never look at the numbers. That works until the new employer offers one times salary, or the new job has a 90-day waiting period, or the person who was counting on a $250,000 group policy is now covered for $70,000 with no medical exam ever performed. The calculator below shows the coverage cliff, the portability premium escalation, and the exact monthly cost of locking in your own coverage while you still qualify.

What Actually Happens to Your Group Life Insurance When You Leave

Employer-provided group term life insurance is a one-year renewable contract between your employer and the carrier. You are covered only while you are an active employee, and standard plan documents end that coverage at midnight on the last day of the month following your termination — the “31-day rule” that benefit administrators reference. There is no grace period beyond that for you to decide; once the window closes, the coverage is gone and there is no way to buy it back.

What most people miss is that the amount of coverage you lose is often much larger than what the new employer will hand you. Group plans commonly provide one times salary, and a significant share of employers still provide a flat benefit such as $50,000 regardless of pay. A worker earning $120,000 with a two-times-salary group policy is carrying $240,000 of protection that ends on a specific calendar date. The replacement employer might offer one times salary with a 90-day eligibility waiting period, which means a genuine coverage gap of three months or more.

The practical consequence: for however long the gap lasts, your family would be relying on nothing but your savings account. That is the reason financial planners treat a job change as a mandatory coverage-review event, alongside marriage, a new baby, and buying a house.

Portability, Conversion, or a Policy of Your Own?

When group coverage ends, employees are legally entitled to be told about two guaranteed options: portability and conversion. Both accept you without a medical exam or health questions, which is their entire value. Both are also more expensive than a policy you buy yourself while you are healthy, because the insurer is taking on an applicant it cannot screen.

Portability keeps the group certificate alive as an individual policy at the insurer’s ported rates. You keep the same face amount, you pay the premium yourself, and — critically — the premium re-prices every year at your attained age, so it climbs steeply into your fifties and sixties.

Conversion exchanges the group coverage for a permanent individual policy from the same carrier. No exam, no health questions, but you are buying an expensive product: permanent coverage costs roughly six to eight times a comparable term policy at the same face amount. The trade-off is that the premium is level for life and the policy builds cash value.

Buying your own term policy is the cheapest path by a wide margin for anyone who can pass underwriting — which means applying before the last day of work, while your health and income are still verifiable, or immediately after the switch. A 20-year level term policy locks the price for two decades and has nothing to do with your employer.

Feature	Port group coverage	Convert to permanent	Buy new individual term
Medical exam required	No	No	Yes (typically)
Health questions	None	None	Full underwriting
Can you be declined?	No	No	Yes
Premium pattern	Re-prices yearly at attained age	Level for life	Level for the term
Typical cost at same face	Modest early, steep after 55	Highest of the three	Lowest of the three
Coverage duration	Until you stop paying	Lifetime	10, 20 or 30 years
Builds cash value	No	Yes	No
Deadline to elect	Usually 31 days	Usually 31 days	None

What the Four Paths Cost in 2026

The table below runs the same pricing model the calculator uses: a male non-tobacco applicant at Preferred rates, $250,000 of coverage, and a 20-year planning horizon. The portability column is the first-year premium at that age — remember it re-prices upward every year, which is why the calculator accumulates the escalation across your full horizon instead of showing a single monthly figure.

Age	Port group coverage	Convert to permanent	New 20-year term	Guaranteed issue (capped)
30	$50.00	$358.33	$52.50	$425.00 for $50K
35	$50.00	$412.50	$60.00	$425.00 for $50K
40	$87.50	$481.25	$80.00	$425.00 for $50K
45	$87.50	$572.92	$115.00	$425.00 for $50K
50	$175.00	$691.67	$167.50	$425.00 for $50K
55	$175.00	$854.17	$252.50	$425.00 for $50K

The pattern is consistent and it is the single most useful takeaway on this page: between ages 30 and 38, ported group coverage looks competitive with a policy you buy yourself. From age 40 onward the two diverge permanently, and by 55 portability is no longer a bargain at all. Anyone who ports coverage in their thirties and keeps paying without reviewing it ends up at 65 paying several hundred dollars a month for the same face amount a healthy 65-year-old could never buy anyway.

How Much Coverage Do You Actually Lose?

Group coverage is almost always expressed as a multiple of salary, so the dollar figure moves the moment your pay changes. Use this table to translate your own multiple into a face amount before you run the calculator above.

Annual salary	1x salary	1.5x salary	2x salary	3x salary
$50,000	$50,000	$75,000	$100,000	$150,000
$70,000	$70,000	$105,000	$140,000	$210,000
$100,000	$100,000	$150,000	$200,000	$300,000
$150,000	$150,000	$225,000	$300,000	$450,000

The 31-Day Window: What to Do Before Your Last Day

1. Get your group certificate and plan booklet now. Confirm the exact face amount, the termination date, and whether the plan offers portability, conversion, or both. Not every group plan is portable.
2. Apply for your own term policy 30 to 60 days before your last day. Underwriting takes two to six weeks. Applying while you are still employed makes income verification simple and avoids any question about your new job’s stability.
3. Ask the new employer for the benefit summary in writing. Find out the coverage multiple, whether coverage starts on day one or after 30 or 90 days, and whether a physical is required.
4. Decide before the deadline, not after. Conversion and portability elections are typically due within 31 days of the end of coverage. Late elections are usually refused, and there is no appeal.
5. Consider a ladder instead of a single policy. If the total need is large but shrinking — a mortgage that ends in 12 years, children who finish school in 8 — a 10-year layer plus a 20-year layer is cheaper than one 20-year policy for the full amount.
6. Update your beneficiary designations. Group life beneficiaries do not carry over to a new policy. A stale designation on the old certificate has no effect once it terminates.

Video: Why Group Life Insurance Is Never Enough

This short explainer walks through the structural reason employer coverage cannot be your family’s plan: it is owned by the employer, priced annually, and it ends the moment the job ends.

Key Takeaways

• Group life insurance ends on a fixed calendar date after you leave — usually the last day of the month after termination, with a 31-day election window for portability or conversion.
• Portability and conversion both skip medical underwriting. That guarantee is worth a lot if your health has changed, and worth almost nothing if it has not.
• Portability premiums re-price every year at your attained age, so they climb steeply after 55. A policy you buy yourself locks a level price for the entire term.
• Conversion is the only path that provides lifetime coverage and cash value, and it costs roughly six to eight times a comparable term policy at the same face amount.
• The cheapest path for a healthy applicant is always an individually owned term policy — apply before your last day of work, not after.
• Guaranteed issue coverage is the safety net when new underwriting is impossible, but it caps at relatively small face amounts and usually pays a graded benefit in the first two years.
• Never let the 31-day window close without a decision. There is no late-enrollment exception.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my group life insurance end the day I quit?

Coverage typically continues through the last day of the month in which you terminate employment, and then for an additional 31 days during which you may elect portability or conversion. The exact dates are set by your plan document, not by the carrier’s preference, so read the certificate before you give notice.

Is portability better than conversion?

Neither is universally better. Portability is cheaper in the early years and keeps the same face amount, but the premium rises every year and the coverage never builds cash value. Conversion costs more from day one but the premium is level for life, the policy builds cash value, and the death benefit cannot be terminated by a future premium increase. If you plan to keep the coverage for 20 years or more, conversion is usually the more predictable choice; if you need a bridge for a decade, portability often costs less.

Can I be declined for conversion or portability?

No. Both are guaranteed-issue rights that come with the group plan. There are no health questions, no medical exam, and no possibility of a decline. The only requirements are that you were actively insured under the group plan and that you elect within the deadline. This is precisely why these options matter most to people whose health has changed since they were hired.

Should I wait and buy coverage through my new employer instead?

Relying on the new employer’s plan leaves three exposures: an eligibility waiting period of up to 90 days when you have no coverage at all, a benefit formula you do not control, and a benefit that ends the next time you change jobs. Employer coverage is a useful supplement. It is not a substitute for a policy you own, because you do not own it.

How much does it cost to replace $250,000 of group coverage?

For a healthy 40-year-old male non-smoker at Preferred rates, a 20-year level term policy for $250,000 runs about $80 per month in the pricing model above, against roughly $87.50 per month to port the group coverage — and the ported rate climbs every year while the term rate is locked. At age 55 the same comparison is $252.50 per month for term versus a ported rate that starts at $175 and keeps rising. The gap widens with every year you wait.

What if I have a medical condition that makes me uninsurable?

Then the 31-day window is your most valuable insurance opportunity in years. Conversion locks in permanent coverage at the full face amount with no exam — something you could not buy in the open market at any price. If the face amount you need is small, guaranteed issue coverage (typically capped at $25,000 to $50,000 with a two-year graded benefit) is a simpler fallback. Talk to a broker about which carrier’s conversion product performs best before you let the deadline pass.

Do I need life insurance from both my old and new employer?

No — group coverage from two employers is almost always duplicative and the second plan usually reduces or coordinates its benefit. What you want is one individually owned policy sized to your actual need, optionally supplemented by whatever group coverage your current employer provides. If your total need shrinks after the job change, ladder the term policies rather than stacking group certificates.

Related Resources

• Life Insurance When Changing Jobs: What Happens to Your Coverage (2026) — the full guide to portability, conversion and the 31-day election window.
• Group Life Insurance Guide 2026: What You Need to Know — how employer plans are structured and what they do not cover.
• What Happens When Term Life Insurance Expires in 2026? — the same coverage-cliff problem from the other direction.
• Term Life Conversion Calculator (2026) — price converting an existing policy to permanent coverage.
• No-Exam vs Fully Underwritten Life Insurance Cost Calculator — what skipping the exam actually costs.
• AM Best Insurance Ratings — confirm a carrier’s financial strength before you port or convert.
• NAIC Consumer Insurance Resources — state insurance department contacts and complaint channels.
• IRS Publication 525 — how employer-provided group life coverage above $50,000 is taxed.

Changing jobs is the moment your coverage is most fragile and your health is most verifiable. Run the numbers above, then lock in your own policy before the 31-day window closes.

For employees who want to see the tax figure on a specific benefit, our job-change life insurance calculator breaks it down in seconds. It pairs naturally with what happens to workplace coverage when you change jobs.

If the worry is a layoff rather than a diagnosis, the layoff survival and coverage gap calculator projects your cash runway month by month and sizes the policy your unemployment-month budget can keep alive.