Life insurance was a no-brainer when the kids were growing up. That was the money that would put food on the table or pay for college or a wedding if the worst happened.

Now the kids are grown and gone. Month and money are as nearly in balance as they've been for years. Retirement is on the horizon if you aren't already there. And, with luck, your retirement portfolio is recovering from the beating it took during the 2008 market meltdown.

What you do about life insurance, if anything, now gets trickier. You have more questions to consider. The good news is that many of the questions aren't difficult if you think about them ahead of time.

It's tempting just to let your coverage run out when you retire. If you've been covered by a group plan at work, dropping coverage saves you the potential hassle of finding your own policy that may cost more. If you have been paying for a personal policy for a long time, dropping coverage to save money now that your potential needs are lower may seem a good way to stretch retirement income.

Maybe and maybe not, says Steven Weisbart, a senior economist at the Insurance Information Institute, a non-lobbying information service of the nation's insurance industry.

It certainly is a reasonable choice if your nest egg is OK, the kids' college costs are behind you, and paying off the mortgage is in sight. Yet in some circumstances, even new retirees in good shape might want to consider continuing their coverage or buying new coverage, Weisbart says.

You might want extra money to help provide for aging parents or adult children with disabilities if you die before they do. You may want extra protection for a widow or widower whose pension or Social Security benefits drop when you die. Or you may simply want to provide a one- to two-year safety net of ready cash that survivors can use to avoid being pressured into unfortunate decisions while sorting out your estate. More than a half-dozen other situations in which you might want extra life insurance are outlined at the Institute's Web site, www.iii.org.

But you can probably tell whether you need coverage just by spending a little time with pencil, paper, and a second cup of coffee. The basic questions are fairly simple:

• Will someone experience a financial loss if you die? If the answer is no, you don't need insurance.
• Do you want insurance anyway? Even if loved ones aren't facing financial catastrophe when you die, you may feel more comfortable providing an extra cushion or providing for a favorite charity.
• How much insurance should you buy? Basically, you need enough to protect your loved ones from a financial blow. The precise amount will vary.
• What kind of insurance should you look for? It depends on whether the loss you want to avoid is more apt to increase or decrease over time. Anticipated losses are likely not to change, or even to decrease, for most of us; we're looking for a few extra dollars to last the remainder of a loved one's life or to meet a specific need. Simple, straight-forward term insurance, where you pay a certain number of dollars to get a specific amount of coverage, likely will be sufficient to accomplish that. If the losses might grow over time, such as when you leave business assets to a loved one, you may need to look into permanent insurance that builds cash value in addition to providing coverage.

In any case, when you reach this point in your planning process, you'll need to put down the coffee and talk details with an insurance professional. When you do that, insurance regulators recommend following a few basic principles to help reach the decisions you most likely will be happiest with:

Get all insurance proposals in writing. These plans are highly detailed and it is difficult for anyone to remember all the key elements.

Get full disclosures, in writing, about the good and bad consequences of replacing your current insurance or annuity with what is being proposed to you.

Don't be pressured. If the deal your professional proposes is a good one, it will still seem so after you've looked more closely and thought about it for a few days.

Don't sign anything you don't understand. Ask a neutral, knowledgeable friend or trusted adviser to help you understand anything that confuses you, or ask someone to go along when you meet the insurance professional.

Know with whom you are dealing. Check with your state insurance commissioner at www.ksinsurance.org or call 800-432-2484 in Kansas to learn more about the agent or company making the proposal. Ask friends and acquaintances who have dealt with this person what they think.

To learn more online

The Kansas Insurance Department, www.ksinsurance.org, provides free consumer guidance and information about agents and companies licensed to do business in Kansas.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners in Kansas City, www.naic.org, also provides consumer education materials and maintains registries of agents and companies across the United States.

The Insurance Information Institute in New York, www.iii.org, offers an "Ask the Expert" service to help with specific questions in addition to consumer education materials on a range of insurance matters.