Lifestyle Risk Visualiser

What does your family keep, and what do they lose?

Step 1 of 2

Enter 0 if you have neither.

The balance you could actually spend, not what you put away each month. The runway figure divides this by the monthly shortfall.

How the lifestyle risk visualiser works

This tool answers one question: what does a New Zealand household actually keep, month by month, when something goes wrong? You enter your income, mortgage or rent, lifestyle costs and the savings balance you could draw on, then pick one of four events, death, illness, critical illness or an accident, and the tool shows the household's monthly position twice, once with the cover you hold and once with none at all.

What the four scenarios model

Each scenario changes what arrives in the household bank account while the costs stay where they are. Death removes the earner's income permanently and spreads any life cover over ten years. Illness removes the income with no ACC entitlement, because ACC covers injury rather than sickness. Critical illness spreads a trauma lump sum over a twelve-month recovery. An accident is the only scenario in which ACC pays, and it is calculated with ACC's real liable-earnings cap and weekly maximum.

• Every lump sum has exactly one drawdown horizon, stated on the results page. A death benefit is spread over ten years and a trauma benefit over twelve months, with no interest and no inflation.
• Until August 2026 the death scenario ran three different divisors at once, the lump sum over ten years, the same lump sum over five years, and a deduction of twenty-five years of mortgage payments, while declaring the mortgage cleared on a fourth, unrelated rule. None of it was explained on the page, and the results were internally inconsistent.
• The illness scenario shows income dropping to zero without cover, which is the honest position for a New Zealander who is sick rather than injured.
• The accident scenario adds any income protection benefit on top of the ACC payment.

How to read the monthly position

The monthly position is simply money in minus money out for that scenario, so a figure of minus $2,400 means the household burns $2,400 of savings every month it continues. The savings note converts your savings balance into months at that burn rate, which is the number most people find more useful than the sum insured: it says how long you have before decisions stop being yours.

Why comparing with and without cover matters

Insurance decisions are usually framed as a premium, which makes them look like a cost rather than a trade. Showing the same household twice reframes it as a difference: on one side the mortgage is cleared or the income continues, on the other the household is drawing down savings from month one. The gap between the two columns is what the premium is actually buying, and it is far easier to judge than an abstract sum insured.

The assumptions behind the numbers

This is a comparison tool rather than a quoting engine, and it applies a small number of fixed rules that are worth knowing before you rely on the output.

• ACC is modelled in the accident scenario only, and it now reads the same shared rate file as the ACC gap calculator on this site: 80% of liable earnings, capped both at the annual liable-earnings limit and at a weekly maximum. Before August 2026 this page applied a flat 80% with no cap, so at a $200,000 income it disagreed with the ACC gap calculator by roughly $3,100 of monthly household income.
• The illness scenario applies no ACC entitlement at all, which reflects that ACC covers injury rather than sickness.
• A death benefit is modelled as spread evenly over ten years, and a trauma benefit over a twelve-month recovery. Both horizons are modelling choices held in the tool, not New Zealand data.
• Without trauma cover, the critical illness scenario assumes you keep working at half capacity. That 50% figure is a planning assumption and nothing more.
• Income protection is used exactly as you enter it, as a monthly benefit. The tool does not check that figure against the share of income insurers typically allow.
• Savings runway is your savings balance divided by the monthly shortfall, with no interest, no drawdown of other assets and no KiwiSaver hardship withdrawal. Where nothing is draining, the tool says so instead of dividing by zero, it used to render the word Infinity.
• Income figures are shown before tax, and ACC weekly compensation is itself taxable.
• No inflation, employer sick leave, Work and Income support or New Zealand Superannuation is modelled.

Common questions

What happens to my mortgage if I cannot work in New Zealand?

The mortgage payment does not pause. If the cause is an accident, ACC weekly compensation replaces a portion of earnings; if the cause is illness, ACC pays nothing and the full repayment falls on savings, a partner's income or the bank's hardship process. This tool shows the monthly position in both cases so you can see which one your household could survive.

How long would my savings actually last?

Divide the savings balance you could actually draw on by the monthly shortfall the tool reports for your chosen scenario. A household with $30,000 saved and a monthly shortfall of $2,500 in household costs has twelve months, and that is the good case, the same household with a $5,000 shortfall has six. The runway figure is usually more persuasive than the sum insured, because it is a deadline rather than an abstraction.

Does ACC pay if I get sick rather than injured?

No. ACC is an injury scheme, so illness produces no weekly compensation. That single rule is why the illness column in this tool is so much harsher than the accident column, and it is the reason income protection and trauma cover exist in the New Zealand market at all.

How much life cover clears a mortgage?

At minimum, the outstanding loan balance. This tool takes a different angle: it spreads the life cover you hold over ten years and asks whether the resulting monthly figure covers the mortgage, and then whether it covers the mortgage plus everything else. A household with $60,000 of annual costs and a $400,000 mortgage needs to think in terms of both numbers, not just the bank's, and cover sized only to the loan leaves nothing to live on afterwards.

Related calculators

• Income protection calculator

  , goes deeper on the illness and accident scenarios using current ACC and tax rates.

• Trauma insurance calculator

  , sizes the lump sum behind the critical illness scenario.

• Risk probability calculator

  , estimates how likely each of these events is before you retire.

Review your cover with a licensed adviser · free, no obligation.

Explore related pages: Life Insurance, Income Protection, Health Insurance, Trauma Insurance, Referral.