Final Expenses - In other words, how much your family would need to spend to tie up any loose ends or pay any debts related to your death. Typically, this would be the greater of $15,000 or 4% of your estate. This should include uncovered medical costs, funeral expenses, and final estate settlement costs. (Note: If your estate is over $1,500,000, your final expenses may be much higher due to federal and state estate or inheritance taxes.)

Outstanding Debts (Other Than Your Mortgage) - Add up the total amount of debts that you have and put that number here. For example, if you had $3,000 in debt on one credit card and $20,000 of debt on your car loan, the total amount would be $23,000.

Outstanding Mortgage - How much in payments do you have left across all of your mortgages? Whether or not your survivors would use life insurance proceeds to pay off theses mortgage right away, creating a fund to cover mortgage payments makes sense, and is factored into your quote here.

How Many Children Require College Funding? - This one should be easy. The total here is the sum of all of your children (or grandchildren) who you will need to pay to put through college.

Total annual income? This question is asking what the total amount your family needs, before taxes, to maintain their current standard of living. This is typically 60%-75% of your annual total income. Families with higher incomes typically fall into the lower end of that range.

How many years should income be provided? This question is referring to the above question, and is relative to the amount of time after you pass in which you would want your family to be "taken care of." This is a difficult number to come up with, certainly, but necessary for us to create an estimate.

What is your current savings and investments (not including retirement funds)? This is the total sum of your savings and investments. But separate from the money you have set aside for your retirement. This may include bank accounts, money market accounts, mutual funds, CDs, bonds, stocks and other assets.

What are your current retirement savings? Includes 401(k), Keoghs, pension and profit sharing plans.

What is the value of the life insurance in force on your life? Includes individual policies, group term coverage available through work, and any other life insurance on your life payable to your family or for the benefit of your family. Do not include accidental death insurance or “double indemnity” insurance.

What is your spouse’s annual income? If you do not have a spouse, simply enter zero here.

How many years does your spouse expect to work? This is starting from today. So if you are forty years old, and your spouse is hoping to retire at 65, then that number would be 25.

Your spouse’s marginal tax rate? Marginal tax rate: This is the rate of tax you are paying on your highest dollars of income. For instance, in 2013 a married taxpayer earning $50,000 has a Marginal Tax Rate of 15%. That’s because earned income between $72,500 and $146,400 gets taxed at 25%. The lowest Marginal Tax Rate is 10% and applies to couples who earn less than $17,850. The highest Marginal Tax Rate is 39.6% for dollars earned in excess of $450,000.

Estimated inflation rate. This is your best guess as to what you think your inflation rate will be.

After-tax net investment yield. This is your best guess as to what you think your net investment yield will be after taxes.