Term Life Insurance for Entrepreneurs: Why Business Owners Need a Different Coverage Strategy

Among self-employed Americans who carry life insurance, a significant portion hold personal policies designed with a W-2 employee in mind: fixed income, employer benefits, no business debt. That mismatch has real financial consequences. Term life insurance for business owners requires a different framework, one that accounts for outstanding SBA loans, buy-sell agreement obligations, key-person dependencies, and an income stream that can swing dramatically from quarter to quarter. Standard personal coverage, bought without adjusting for these variables, routinely leaves seven-figure gaps in both family protection and business continuity planning.

The scale of the problem is larger than most people expect. LIMRA data from 2025 shows individual life insurance new annualized premium hit $17.5 billion, a record high, yet coverage amounts have not kept pace with rising business valuations or entrepreneurial debt. The LIMRA 2025 Insurance Barometer Study found that 72% of U.S. adults overestimate the cost of life insurance, which means many entrepreneurs are avoiding the coverage conversation entirely based on a false premise. Entrepreneurs also lack the employer-subsidized group life benefits that salaried workers take for granted, leaving them simultaneously more exposed and less protected than average.

This guide works through every dimension of the coverage problem: why standard policies fall short for entrepreneurs, how to size coverage that reflects real business liabilities, where term life fits into buy-sell and key-person arrangements, what the tax rules actually say about business-owned policies, and how to sequence coverage as a business matures. By the end, you’ll have a clear, actionable framework for building a term life strategy that protects both your family and your company.

Why Entrepreneurs Face Distinct Life Insurance Challenges

The financial profile of a business owner is genuinely different from that of a salaried employee, and life insurance needs to reflect that difference. A W-2 employee who dies leaves behind a predictable income gap: their family needs coverage equal to roughly 10 to 12 times annual salary. An entrepreneur who dies can leave behind personal income loss, outstanding business debt, disrupted client relationships, and a business that may be impossible to sell or transfer without proper documentation. Those are four separate financial exposures, not one.

Irregular Income and Coverage Gaps

Irregular income creates two problems simultaneously. The first is calculation: “annual income” means something very different in year one of a business versus year seven, making it genuinely hard to pin down a coverage figure. The second is documentation. Lenders and insurers underwrite based on what’s on paper, and an owner who reinvests aggressively and draws a modest salary looks underqualified for the coverage they actually need. An owner whose business generates $800,000 in revenue but shows $90,000 in W-2 income could be dramatically underinsured if coverage is pegged to that W-2 figure alone.

Business debt compounds this further. According to the NAIC, small business owners should consider both group term life insurance and key-person life insurance to protect against the loss of critical team members or founders whose death could negatively impact operations and finances. That guidance matters because personal guarantees on business loans, standard requirements for SBA loans, mean that if the owner dies, the debt follows the estate. A $500,000 SBA loan guaranteed personally is a $500,000 liability that needs its own coverage, separate from whatever the owner’s family would need for living expenses.

The Dual Burden of Personal and Business Protection

Entrepreneurs are carrying two distinct coverage obligations at once. The personal one is familiar: replace the income the household depends on, cover the mortgage, childcare, education, daily expenses. The commercial obligation is less obvious but just as real, ensuring the business can survive the owner’s death through debt repayment, a partner buyout, or a leadership transition funded by insurance proceeds rather than forced asset sales.

Most employees only face the first obligation. That’s why standard insurance calculators, built for salaried workers, routinely undercount what an entrepreneur actually needs by 40% to 60% when business liabilities are left out entirely. This isn’t a rounding error. It’s the difference between a family that keeps the house and one forced to liquidate business assets at distress prices to satisfy creditors. Building a sound term life strategy starts with treating these two obligations separately, not collapsing them into a single blended number and hoping it’s enough.

How Standard Term Policies Miss Business Realities

A standard personal term policy isn’t a bad product. It does exactly what it promises: replaces income for dependents if the insured dies during the term. The problem is that income replacement is only one of several financial consequences triggered by a business owner’s death. A $1 million 20-year term policy purchased at age 35 to cover a mortgage and family living expenses does nothing to fund a partner buyout, retire a business loan, or compensate the company for the loss of the owner’s client relationships and institutional knowledge.

Why Personal-Only Coverage Leaves Buy-Sell Agreements Unfunded

A buy-sell agreement is a legally binding contract between business partners specifying that if one partner dies, the survivors can purchase the deceased partner’s share. The agreement only works if the purchase money is available immediately. Life insurance is the standard funding mechanism, but it must be structured as a separate policy, owned by the business or by the individual partners, with the buyout price as the face amount. A personal policy owned by the deceased partner and payable to their spouse doesn’t fund the buyout. It funds the family’s living expenses, which is an entirely different purpose.

This gap surfaces painfully in practice. When a partner dies without a funded buy-sell arrangement, the surviving partner may find themselves in business with the deceased’s spouse or heirs, people with no operational role but a fully legal ownership stake. The only way to avoid that outcome is deliberate policy structuring, not simply having “some” life insurance somewhere.

Fixed Face Amounts and Fluctuating Business Valuations

Standard term policies lock in a face amount at issuance. For businesses whose valuations shift substantially over time, that creates a real mismatch. A company worth $1.5 million when a policy is issued may be worth $4 million five years later after a successful product launch or expansion. If the buy-sell funding policy was set at $1.5 million and never reviewed, a buyout triggered in year five means the surviving partner pays $1.5 million for a $4 million stake. They get a significant windfall; the deceased’s family gets far less than fair value.

Buy-sell agreements and their underlying policies should be revalued every three years at minimum, or immediately after any revenue event that shifts valuation by 25% or more. That means scheduling an actual review with both a business attorney and an insurance advisor, not setting the policy once and filing it away. The same review discipline applies across other coverage types; the guide on insurance policies most families never actually review outlines a practical audit framework that transfers well to business coverage.

Strategic Uses of Term Life Tailored to Business Ownership

Key-person coverage is one of the most straightforward applications of term life for entrepreneurs, and one of the most underused. The concept is simple: the business owns a term policy on the life of an owner or employee whose death would cause measurable financial harm to the company. The business pays the premiums and is the beneficiary. When the key person dies, the proceeds give the company the capital and runway to recruit a replacement, hold onto clients, and avoid a liquidity crisis that can otherwise spiral quickly.

For most early-stage businesses, term is the right vehicle for this. A 10- or 15-year policy covers exactly the window when the business is most dependent on one person’s relationships and expertise. Premiums are low enough that they won’t strain operating budgets, and the coverage can be sized to the actual revenue at risk rather than a generic multiple.

Determining Coverage Amounts That Reflect Entrepreneurial Risks

Calculating the right coverage amount for a business owner requires working through three distinct buckets, not one. The first is personal income replacement: the present value of the income the owner’s household would lose, typically calculated as 10 to 12 times annual draw or salary. The second is business debt obligations: the full outstanding balance on any personally guaranteed loans, including SBA loans, commercial lines of credit, and business mortgages. The third is business continuity costs: the amount needed to fund a buy-sell buyout, retain key clients, or hire replacement leadership.

Worked Example: Sizing Coverage From Scratch

Consider a business owner who draws $150,000 per year in salary, carries a $400,000 personally guaranteed SBA loan, and holds a 50% stake in a company currently valued at $2 million. Personal income replacement at 10x equals $1.5 million. The SBA loan requires $400,000 in coverage. The buy-sell obligation, their 50% stake, requires $1 million. Total coverage need: $2.9 million, spread across a personal policy ($1.5 million, payable to the family) and a business-purpose policy ($1.4 million, structured to cover the loan and the buyout).

At standard market rates in mid-2026, a healthy 40-year-old male might pay roughly $80 to $120 per month for a $1.5 million 20-year personal term policy, and $50 to $80 per month for a $1.4 million 15-year key-person or buy-sell policy. Total annual cost: approximately $1,560 to $2,400, which represents less than 1.5% of the personal salary being protected. That arithmetic matters, because when 72% of adults overestimate costs, running the actual numbers often reveals coverage is far more accessible than assumed.

Adjusting for Self-Employment Tax and Missing Benefits

Self-employed owners pay both the employee and employer portions of Social Security and Medicare taxes, 15.3% on net self-employment income up to the wage base, compared to 7.65% for an employee. That higher tax burden reduces net take-home pay relative to gross income, which means coverage needs to be pegged to gross earnings, not net. An owner drawing $150,000 gross may net $115,000 to $120,000 after self-employment tax and health insurance premiums. The family’s actual lifestyle costs are based on that net figure, but the coverage calculation should work backward from gross to ensure income taxes owed on any death benefit aren’t an afterthought.

Missing employer benefits also inflate the real coverage need. A salaried employee with a $100,000 salary often has employer-subsidized health insurance, disability income insurance, and sometimes a small employer-paid life benefit. A self-employed owner has none of those. Their family depends entirely on the death benefit to replace not just income but also the cost of benefits they’d need to purchase independently. Adding $10,000 to $15,000 annually for health insurance and disability coverage replacement to the income replacement calculation isn’t overcautious, it’s accurate.

Term vs. Permanent: When Affordable Term Fits Long-Term Business Plans

Permanent life insurance, whole life, universal life, or variable universal life, is marketed aggressively to business owners, often because the commissions are higher and the products are complex enough that buyers defer to the advisor’s recommendation. That’s worth naming directly. Permanent coverage serves legitimate purposes, particularly for estate planning, irrevocable life insurance trusts, or funding buy-sell agreements that need to remain in force regardless of when a partner dies. But for most early-stage and growth-phase entrepreneurs, term life is the more defensible choice, primarily because it preserves cash flow for reinvestment into the business.

Using Term During High-Growth, High-Debt Years

The argument for term during the first 10 to 15 years of a business is straightforward: cash flow is constrained, debt is highest, and the coverage need is most acute. A 20-year term policy purchased at business formation covers the period when the owner’s death would be most catastrophic, before the business has diversified its client base, built management depth, or retired its startup debt. After year 15 or 20, the business is either more resilient and needs less coverage, or it has generated enough retained earnings to explore permanent coverage for estate planning purposes.

A convertible term policy with a conversion rider bridges the two phases without requiring a new medical exam. Most major carriers allow the owner to convert some or all of the term face amount to a permanent policy within a specified window, typically before age 65 or 70. The conversion is done at the insured’s original health class, so a 35-year-old rated “preferred” at issue can convert at 50 without fresh underwriting, even if their health has changed. For entrepreneurs whose health trajectory is uncertain due to stress, travel, and irregular schedules, that option is worth more than it costs.

Multi-Policy Strategies That Evolve With Business Maturity

A layered, or “laddered,” approach is particularly effective for business owners. Three separate term policies of different durations, say, 10-year, 15-year, and 20-year, allow coverage to step down naturally as business debt is retired and the company becomes less dependent on any single person. A 10-year policy might cover a specific SBA loan with a 10-year maturity. A 15-year policy might cover the buy-sell obligation during the partnership’s growth phase. A 20-year policy covers personal income replacement through retirement age. As each loan matures or business milestone is reached, the corresponding policy lapses without additional cost, and total premium spending declines over time rather than remaining fixed.

Tax, Legal, and Ownership Nuances for Business-Owned Policies

The tax treatment of business-owned life insurance is one of the most consistently misunderstood areas in small-business financial planning. The rules are specific, and getting them wrong can convert an expected advantage into a real liability.

Group Term Deductibility Rules

Businesses can deduct premiums paid for group term life insurance provided to employees, but only up to the cost of $50,000 of coverage per employee. Coverage above that threshold is treated as imputed income to the employee and reported on their W-2. The deduction applies to employees, not to owners who are also the sole beneficiary of the policy. If the business is the beneficiary, as is typical for key-person coverage, premiums are generally not deductible: the business is paying for its own benefit, and the IRS draws that line firmly. It’s worth confirming current rules with a tax advisor, since specifics can shift with regulatory updates.

Ownership Structure and Estate Tax Exposure

Who owns the policy determines whether the death benefit lands in the insured’s taxable estate. A policy owned by the insured, even one where a business or surviving partner is named as beneficiary, can be pulled into the estate for federal estate tax purposes under IRC Section 2042. To keep the proceeds out, ownership must rest with someone other than the insured: typically the business entity, a surviving partner, or an irrevocable life insurance trust. This matters most for estates likely to exceed the federal exemption threshold, which was $13.61 million per individual in 2024 and remains subject to legislative change. An attorney familiar with business succession should review the ownership and beneficiary structure before any policy is issued.

For sole proprietors, the structure is simpler but no less consequential. A personal term policy owned by the sole proprietor and payable to the spouse sidesteps the estate inclusion issue, but the family then bears responsibility for handling business debt out of those proceeds. That requires clear documentation in a will or succession plan specifying how the money should be allocated. Without it, a surviving spouse may not realize that a portion of the death benefit was meant to retire the SBA loan before anything else is touched.

Seasonal Revenue, Startup Equity, and Policy Laddering

Two coverage challenges that rarely appear in standard life insurance articles deserve explicit attention for entrepreneurs: seasonal or project-based revenue patterns, and the interaction of life insurance with startup equity agreements.

Handling Seasonal Revenue in Coverage Design

Owners of highly seasonal businesses, construction contractors, tourism operators, agricultural businesses, tax preparers, face a specific problem when sizing buy-sell and key-person coverage. Their business valuation based on trailing 12-month revenue looks very different depending on when in the year the valuation is calculated. A business that generates 70% of its revenue in Q3 may show a dramatically lower value in February than in October. Buy-sell funding formulas should explicitly specify the valuation methodology (typically a multiple of three-year average EBITDA rather than a single-year snapshot) to avoid disputes triggered by timing alone.

Laddered term policies work especially well for seasonal businesses because individual layers can be sized to worst-case revenue years, with the understanding that the business’s actual value in a good year exceeds the coverage. That creates a floor, not a ceiling, and for estate purposes, a conservative floor is the right assumption.

Startup Equity Dilution and Investor Requirements

Some investor agreements and venture term sheets now include requirements that a founder maintain specific life insurance coverage as a condition of the investment. These requirements typically mandate that the business (or investors, through a pledge agreement) be named as beneficiary of a key-person policy on the founder. The intent is to give investors an exit mechanism or business continuity assurance if the founder dies before a liquidity event. Founders who sign these agreements without understanding the policy ownership implications can inadvertently create coverage structures that benefit investors at the expense of their own families. Any investor-required policy should be reviewed separately from personal coverage to ensure the two don’t conflict in ways that leave the family underprotected.

Integrating Term Life With Self-Employed Retirement Plans

This section is shorter by design, not because the topic is minor, but because the core principle is simpler than it appears.

Entrepreneurs who fund a Solo 401(k) or SEP-IRA are building tax-deferred wealth that reduces the income replacement burden on a life insurance policy over time. If the Solo 401(k) accumulates $800,000 by the time the owner is 55, the life insurance coverage need for the surviving spouse is $800,000 lower than it was at business formation, because that retirement asset passes to beneficiaries outside the death benefit. Reviewing and reducing term coverage amounts as retirement assets accumulate is a legitimate strategy, not an oversight. The laddering approach described above facilitates this naturally: shorter-term layers expire as debt declines and retirement savings grow, while the longest-duration layer covers the residual gap. Coordinating this with a fee-only financial planner who understands both insurance and retirement planning will prevent the two strategies from working at cross-purposes.

Avoiding Common Implementation Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

The most expensive life insurance mistakes entrepreneurs make aren’t about choosing the wrong carrier or misunderstanding a rider. They’re structural errors that leave the right coverage in the wrong place, policies that can’t accomplish their intended purpose because ownership, beneficiary designation, or coverage amount was set incorrectly at issue.

Combining Personal and Business Needs Into One Policy

Naming a spouse as beneficiary on a policy intended to cover business debts is one of the most common structural errors. The instinct is understandable: the surviving spouse “will figure it out” and use the money to pay the SBA loan. But in practice, estates under financial stress, creditors, and grieving family members aren’t a reliable combination for rational financial decision-making. Separate policies with separate beneficiary designations remove ambiguity and ensure business creditors are addressed without competing with the family’s living expenses for the same pool of money.

Ignoring Insurability Windows as the Business Scales

Founders often defer additional coverage during early years when cash flow is tight, intending to buy more once the company is profitable. That strategy carries a hidden risk: the owner’s health may have changed by the time they apply. Stress-related conditions, weight gain, elevated blood pressure, and other health markers that correlate with entrepreneurial intensity can change an owner’s risk classification from “preferred plus” to “standard” or worse, significantly increasing premium costs or triggering a decline. Buying coverage during early-stage health, even if it requires adjusting other budget items, preserves insurability while locking in lower rates.

The same logic applies to entrepreneurs whose work arrangements blur the line between professional and personal risk. If your business involves frequent travel, physical demands, or high-stress operations, life insurance underwriters assess occupational risk as part of rating. Understanding how your business type affects underwriting is a step most owners skip entirely. The analysis in term life insurance considerations for remote workers offers a useful parallel perspective on how non-traditional work arrangements affect coverage and pricing.

Failing to Update Coverage After Major Business Events

Three events should trigger an immediate coverage review: a new business loan, a change in partnership structure, and a revenue milestone that changes business valuation by 25% or more. Most entrepreneurs do neither a regular review nor an event-triggered one, they hold the same policy bought at business formation regardless of how much the company’s value has grown. A business that was worth $500,000 when the buy-sell policy was issued and is now worth $3 million has a $2.5 million funding gap in its buyout mechanism. That gap is invisible until someone dies and the surviving partner discovers the policy proceeds are grossly insufficient.

Choosing the Right Policy Structure for Your Stage

Business stage matters more than almost any other variable in determining the right coverage structure. An owner in year one of a bootstrapped service business has different coverage priorities than a 10-year-old company with 15 employees, two partners, and $5 million in annual revenue. The table below maps common business stages to coverage priorities.

One honest limitation worth naming: term life works best when the coverage need is time-bounded. If a business owner expects to remain actively involved in the company until their late 60s or 70s with no defined exit, a permanent policy may make more financial sense than perpetually renewing term. The answer depends on the exit timeline, estate size, and whether the business will be sold, transferred, or wound down, all questions that require professional succession planning, not just an insurance analysis in isolation.

Owners who are also landlords or property investors face an additional layer of asset protection complexity. The strategies outlined in building a coherent insurance strategy for landlords with multiple rental properties touch on the parallel challenge of protecting income-producing assets that exist outside of a primary business structure.

Your Action Plan

1. Separate your coverage needs into personal and business buckets

   Before contacting an insurer, list every financial obligation your death would trigger: household living expenses, mortgage, personally guaranteed business loans, and any buy-sell or key-person obligations. Assign a dollar amount to each category. This prevents the single most common structural mistake, which is mixing personal and business coverage needs into one policy that can only serve one purpose at payout.

2. Get a current business valuation on paper

   Buy-sell funding and key-person coverage amounts should be grounded in a documented valuation, not an estimate. For most small businesses, a multiple of average three-year EBITDA is an acceptable standard. Have your accountant or a valuation professional document this figure, and schedule a repeat valuation every three years or after any major revenue event. Without a documented valuation, buy-sell funding amounts are guesses, and guesses fail at the worst possible moment.

3. Structure ownership and beneficiary designations deliberately

   Before issuing any policy, determine who owns it, who pays the premiums, and who receives the benefit. For personal income replacement policies, the owner-insured and family beneficiary structure is straightforward. For business-purpose policies, the business entity or surviving partner may need to own the policy to avoid estate inclusion. Have an attorney review these designations, this is a 30-minute conversation that prevents estate tax problems and beneficiary disputes worth multiples more than the attorney’s fee.

4. Consider a laddered term strategy to match coverage to time-bound obligations

   Rather than one large policy with a fixed term, consider three separate policies of different durations tied to different obligations. Match your shortest-term policy to your highest-priority time-bound debt (such as an SBA loan maturity), a mid-term policy to buy-sell needs, and the longest-term policy to personal income replacement. As each layer expires, your total premium cost decreases naturally, and you’re not paying for coverage you no longer need.

5. Check for conversion riders on any policy you purchase

   A conversion rider allows you to convert some or all of a term policy to a permanent policy without a new medical exam, within a specified window. For entrepreneurs whose health trajectory is uncertain, this option preserves future flexibility. Not all term policies offer conversion riders, and the quality of the conversion options varies by carrier. Ask specifically about which permanent products you can convert to and whether the conversion privilege extends to the full face amount or only a portion.

6. Coordinate life insurance reviews with your annual business planning cycle

   Build a policy review into your calendar the same way you schedule tax preparation and lease renewals. Review coverage amounts whenever revenue changes by 25% or more, when a new partner joins or exits, or when a significant new loan is taken on. At minimum, review all policies every three years with both your insurance advisor and your business attorney. Outdated coverage amounts are the most common and most costly implementation failure in small-business life insurance planning.

7. Account for retirement savings as a coverage offset over time

   As your Solo 401(k) or SEP-IRA balances grow, they reduce the income replacement burden your life insurance must carry. A retirement account with $500,000 that passes directly to your spouse as beneficiary is $500,000 less that your term policy needs to provide. Build a schedule that tracks both your insurance face amounts and your retirement account balances, and adjust the former downward as the latter grows. This coordinated approach reduces total insurance cost over time while keeping overall financial protection intact. Entrepreneurs who want a broader context for health and financial benefit planning as a self-employed person can also explore resources like what health insurance premium tax credits cover and who qualifies, since self-employed owners are among the most common beneficiaries of marketplace subsidies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a business deduct the premiums on a key-person life insurance policy?

Generally, no. When the business owns a key-person policy and is also the beneficiary, the IRS treats the premiums as a non-deductible business expense. The trade-off is that the death benefit is typically received income-tax-free by the business. Deductibility applies to group term life insurance provided to employees, up to $50,000 of coverage per employee, but key-person policies structured for the business’s own benefit fall outside that deduction.

How much key-person coverage should a business carry on its founder?

A common starting point is five to ten times the founder’s annual compensation, adjusted for whatever revenue or contracts depend directly on that person. A more precise method is to estimate what the founder’s absence would actually cost: executive search fees, onboarding time for a replacement, client attrition during the transition, and any revenue decline while the new hire finds their footing. For a founder who drives 60% of revenue through direct client relationships, that figure can easily reach $1 million to $3 million even in a mid-sized firm.

Should the business or the individual partner own a buy-sell-funding policy?

Both structures are used, and each carries distinct legal and tax implications. In a cross-purchase agreement, each partner owns a policy on the other’s life and receives the proceeds directly, then uses them to buy the deceased partner’s shares. In an entity purchase or stock redemption agreement, the business owns policies on all partners and uses the proceeds to buy back shares from the deceased partner’s estate. Cross-purchase arrangements often produce better tax outcomes for surviving partners through a more favorable cost basis, but they get administratively unwieldy once there are more than two or three partners. An attorney familiar with business succession should specify which structure fits your agreement before any policies are issued.

What happens to a business-owned term policy if the business is sold?

If the business is sold and the policy transfers to the new owner, the transfer-for-value rule may apply, making part of the death benefit taxable to that new owner. To avoid this, the selling owner can surrender the policy, have it assigned back to the insured personally, or structure the transaction to qualify for one of the specific exceptions to the rule, such as a transfer to the insured themselves. This detail gets missed routinely during M&A due diligence on small businesses. Raise it with your attorney well before any sale closes, not during it.

How does life insurance interact with an SBA loan personally guaranteed by the owner?

When an SBA borrower dies, the personal guarantee typically survives death and becomes a claim against the estate. The SBA’s own guidance indicates that collateral and personal guarantees remain enforceable as part of the loan agreement. Life insurance proceeds earmarked for the loan payoff, either through a formal collateral assignment to the lender or through a beneficiary designation that routes funds to the estate with clear documented intent, can prevent the family from inheriting the debt alongside the business. Some lenders require a collateral assignment as a loan condition outright, formally naming the lender as primary beneficiary up to the outstanding balance.

Is term life still appropriate for a business owner in their 50s who is already well-established?

It depends on whether the coverage need is still time-bounded. A 52-year-old owner planning to sell in ten years has a straightforward case for a 10-year term policy, it covers the window before the exit, then lapses once the sale provides liquidity. If there’s no defined exit plan and the owner expects to hold the business indefinitely, a permanent policy may offer more structural certainty. There’s no universal answer. The right choice turns on the exit timeline, the size of the estate, and whether the coverage is primarily about family income replacement or business continuity. Both scenarios deserve real analysis before defaulting to either option.

Do I need a separate personal term policy if my business already has a key-person policy on me?

Yes, and this distinction matters more than people expect. A key-person policy owned by the business pays the business, not your family. Its job is to help the company survive your death, not to replace the income your household runs on. Your family’s mortgage, childcare, and living expenses aren’t covered by it. A separate personal term policy with your spouse or family as beneficiary ensures both purposes are actually served. Combining them into a single policy almost always leaves one obligation underfunded. For entrepreneurs navigating broader personal coverage gaps, the considerations that apply to self-employed people managing coverage between income periods offer a useful framework for thinking about personal risk as a non-traditional earner.