Financial planning has a vocabulary problem: the words that decide how much life insurance you buy, or how long your savings would last, are rarely explained where you meet them. These are the thirteen terms Elenvo leans on most, each defined in one sentence. They are the same definitions the app shows in its tooltips — when a term is underlined inside a gap analysis or a coverage plan, this is the text behind it — so the page and the product cannot say two different things.
A shorthand for sizing life insurance: a multiple of your annual income (commonly 10–12×) used as a starting estimate of the lump sum your household would need to replace lost paychecks.
Why it matters: The fastest way to get a number on the table. It ignores everything specific to you — the mortgage balance, whether a partner earns, how many years of childcare are left — so treat it as a sanity check on a figure you reached another way, not as the answer.
A method for sizing life insurance: Debt + Income (years to replace) + Mortgage + Education costs. Adds up real obligations rather than relying on an income multiplier alone.
Why it matters: More work than a multiplier, and usually a different number, because it prices your actual obligations instead of your salary. Reach for it when the multiplier answer feels arbitrary: a paid-off house and no dependents needs far less coverage, a new mortgage and two toddlers often needs more.
A liability policy that sits on top of your auto and home insurance, covering claims that exceed those underlying limits. Typically recommended once net worth crosses a threshold.
Why it matters: The cheapest coverage most households never think about, precisely because it only matters in the rare case where a claim runs past your auto or home limits. What it protects is not the car — it is everything you own that a judgment could reach.
How many months your liquid assets could cover essential expenses if income stopped — a measure of how long you could weather an income disruption.
Why it matters: The most useful number in a cash-flow review, because it converts a balance into time. Three months of runway and nine months of runway describe two completely different levels of exposure to the same job market.
Non-discretionary monthly costs like housing, utilities, food, transport, insurance, and minimum debt payments — the floor a disability or emergency fund needs to cover.
Why it matters: Getting this figure right is what makes runway and disability coverage mean anything. Size them off total spending and you over-insure; size them off rent alone and you under-insure. The floor is what you would still owe in a month where you cut everything you could.
A common rule of thumb (around $500k) above which an umbrella liability policy starts to pay off — your exposure to lawsuits typically scales with what you own.
Why it matters: A threshold is a prompt to review, not a rule. What actually drives liability exposure is what a claim can reach — assets outside protected retirement accounts, plus future earnings — so two households at identical net worth can carry very different risk.
A suggested monthly cap on total insurance spending — typically 3–8% of monthly income, narrowed when essential expenses already consume most of it.
Why it matters: A ceiling stops a plan from writing cheques the budget cannot cash. Coverage you cancel in month four protects nobody, so a smaller plan you keep beats a perfect plan you abandon.
The carrier’s process of evaluating your health, age, and risk profile to decide whether to offer coverage and at what price. Easier when you’re younger and healthier.
Why it matters: Underwriting is why a quote stays an estimate until a carrier has actually reviewed you. Age and health history move the price more than almost anything else in the application, which is what makes timing part of the decision rather than an afterthought.
Buying coverage while you can still pass underwriting cheaply — health windows close as you age, so a policy you can get today may not be available later.
Why it matters: This is the argument for buying coverage before you are certain you need it. Price is only half of it; the other half is eligibility, and a diagnosis between today and the day you apply can put a policy out of reach at any price.
The difference between the coverage you need and what you already have. A negative or zero gap means existing coverage is enough.
Why it matters: A gap is a size, not a verdict. Closing it entirely this year is not always the right call — but knowing the number tells you what a raise, a paid-off loan, or a cheaper policy should be aimed at first.
Extended help with daily living — bathing, dressing, meals, medical supervision — typically needed later in life. Not covered by standard health insurance or Medicare.
Why it matters: The cost most retirement plans forget, because it arrives late and standard health insurance and Medicare do not cover it. That leaves three honest options: insure it, earmark assets for it, or accept the risk deliberately rather than by default.
Insurance that replaces a portion of your income if an illness or injury keeps you from working.
Why it matters: The coverage most often left to whatever an employer happens to provide. Check what the group policy actually replaces, whether it pays when you cannot do your own occupation or only any occupation, and whether the benefit is taxable, before deciding you are covered.
A life policy that pays out only if you die during a fixed term (often 10–30 years). Cheap, simple, and the most common way to protect dependents.
Why it matters: Cheap because it expires: you are buying pure protection with no savings component attached. That makes it a good fit for obligations with an end date — the years until a mortgage is paid off, or until the youngest child finishes school — and a poor fit for needs that never end.
None of this is theory the app keeps to itself. The insurance gap analysis sizes life coverage with both the income-multiplier shortcut and the DIME framework, then reports the difference as a gap; the coverage plan checks that figure against an affordability ceiling before recommending anything; the cash-flow view turns your essential expenses into months of runway.
Those results feed the Financial Health Score, which weighs six dimensions — retirement, emergency fund, debt, cash flow, insurance, and tax — into a single number out of 100. The methodology page shows the weights and the arithmetic in full.