Four Types of Insurance Everyone Needs
Ask ten people in Charlotte which insurance policies they actually need and you will get ten different answers. Most will name auto, because the state requires it. Most will name health, because their employer brings it up every fall. After that the list gets thin.
There is a reasonable case that four types of coverage belong on almost every household's list: auto, health, life, and long-term disability. The first two are familiar. The second two are the ones people skip, and they are the ones that tend to cause the most damage when they are missing.
Here is what each one does, what it costs in North Carolina right now, and how to tell whether what you have is doing the job.
Auto Insurance
North Carolina changed its rules in a way that affects every driver in the state, and a lot of people still have not noticed.
For policies issued or renewed on or after July 1, 2025, the minimum liability limits went to 50/100/50. That is $50,000 for bodily injury to one person, $100,000 for bodily injury in one accident, and $50,000 for property damage. The old minimums were 30/60/25, and they had been in place since 1999.
Three other changes came with it. Every policy now has to include uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage at limits matching your liability. The old rule that reduced your underinsured payout by whatever the at-fault driver's insurer paid is gone, so those limits now stack instead of cancelling out. And the surcharge period for newly licensed drivers stretched from three years to eight for anyone licensed after July 1, 2025.
The state estimated the minimum-coverage premium would rise roughly $47 a year on average. For the protection gained, that is not a bad trade.
What to check. Pull your declarations page and find the liability line. If it still reads 30/60/25, your policy has not renewed since the change and it will step up automatically when it does. If it reads 50/100/50, you are at the state minimum, which is legal but not the same as adequate. One serious wreck with two or three injured people exhausts $100,000 quickly, and anything above that comes out of your savings.
If you own a home in Charlotte, minimum limits are almost certainly too low. That is the conversation worth having with your agent, not whether you are legal.
Health Insurance
Health coverage is the one most people have and the one most people understand least, mostly because the important numbers are not the premium.
KFF's 2025 employer survey put the average annual premium for family coverage at $26,993, with workers contributing $6,850 of that. Single coverage averaged $9,325, with the worker paying $1,440. Family premiums rose six percent that year, the third consecutive year of increases at that pace.
The deductible matters more than the premium for most households, and it is where employees of smaller companies get hit hardest. Workers at firms under 200 employees faced an average single deductible of $2,631, compared with $1,670 at larger firms. More than half of workers at those smaller firms had a deductible of at least $2,000.
That is the number to know. If your plan carries a $3,000 deductible and you do not have $3,000 available, you have insurance but you do not have access to care, and those are different things.
What to check. Find your deductible and your out-of-pocket maximum, then ask whether you could actually cover both in a bad year. If you are on a high-deductible plan, a health savings account is worth setting up, because it turns that gap into something you fund on purpose rather than something you absorb in an emergency.
If you own a small business in Charlotte and you are weighing whether to offer coverage at all, that is a separate conversation and one worth having before open enrollment rather than during it.
Life Insurance
Roughly half of American adults own life insurance, and more than 100 million say they need coverage or more of it than they have.
The reason usually given is cost, and the reason is usually wrong. Research from LIMRA and Life Happens found that about three-quarters of adults overestimate what a term policy costs. Among healthy adults under 30, the overestimate runs seven to twelve times the real price. When people under 30 were asked to price a basic twenty-year term policy, only four percent got it right, and roughly half admitted they were guessing.
Meanwhile, about one in four adults say their household would feel the financial impact of losing its primary earner within a single month.
How much. A common rule of thumb is ten times income, which is a starting point rather than an answer. The more useful exercise is to add up what would actually still need paying: the mortgage balance, any car loans and credit balances, childcare, and whatever college looks like for your kids. Then subtract what already exists in savings and any group coverage through work.
One thing about group coverage. The policy through your employer usually covers one or two times salary, and it usually ends when the job does. It is a good supplement and a poor foundation.
Term or whole. Term covers a set number of years and costs less. Whole life stays in force as long as premiums are paid and builds cash value. Most families protecting a mortgage and raising children are better served by term. There are situations where whole life is the right tool, and they usually involve estate planning or a business. Worth talking through rather than deciding from an article.
Long-Term Disability Coverage
This is the one almost nobody buys, and the odds are not on your side.
The Social Security Administration puts the chance that a 20-year-old worker becomes disabled before full retirement age at about one in four. At least 51 million working adults in this country have no disability coverage beyond basic Social Security. And the Federal Reserve has found that close to four in ten adults could not handle an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing.
Put those together. A one-in-four chance of losing your income for an extended stretch, no coverage for it, and no cushion underneath.
Health insurance pays the medical bills. It does not pay the mortgage. Disability coverage is what replaces the paycheck, and most long-term claims come from illness rather than accident, which is the opposite of what most people picture.
What to check. Start with what your employer offers, because group disability is the cheapest way in. If there is a plan, find out whether it is short-term, long-term, or both, what percentage of income it replaces, and how long you would wait before benefits started.
Two details matter more than the rest. Most policies replace somewhere between half and two-thirds of income rather than all of it. And there is almost always an elimination period, often ninety days, that you have to cover yourself before anything pays out.
If your employer offers nothing, an individual policy is worth pricing. Benefits from a policy you paid for yourself are generally tax-free, which means the replacement percentage goes further than it looks.
Where To Start
You do not have to solve all four at once. If you are working through this list, the order that usually makes sense is:
Pull your auto declarations page and see whether you are sitting at state minimums
Find your health plan's deductible and out-of-pocket maximum
Check what life insurance you have through work and what it would actually cover
Find out whether you have long-term disability coverage at all
That last one catches most people. It is worth ten minutes with your HR paperwork.
What is right for you depends on your age, your family, your mortgage, and what your employer already provides. Two households on the same street can need very different things.
If you would like someone to look at all four with you, call us at 704-954-9000. We are an independent agency, which means we compare across carriers rather than selling one company's products. We work with families throughout Charlotte and the surrounding area, including Gastonia, Huntersville, Mooresville, Rock Hill, and Waxhaw, and we are licensed in both North Carolina and South Carolina.
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