Term Life Insurance
Term life insurance covers you for a set period — often 10, 20, or 30 years — and pays a death benefit only if you die during that term. It's the cheapest way to protect your family, because it's pure insurance with no savings component attached.
Term matches the shape of the actual risk: the years when children are dependent and a mortgage is large are exactly the years your income is irreplaceable, and both conditions end. It is inexpensive because most policies never pay out, which frees money to invest separately — the “buy term and invest the difference” approach, whose merit is that the difference is genuinely large. Level term keeps the premium fixed for the whole period, and premiums are set by your age and health at application, so buying earlier locks a lower price permanently. One deadline matters: most policies allow conversion to permanent cover without new medical underwriting, but only before a date in the contract that is easy to miss.