The most common way to size life insurance is a rule of thumb, ten times income, and it is popular precisely because it is easy, not because it is right. The right amount is not a multiple of what you earn. It is the size of the financial hole your absence would leave.
Income replacement is only one piece. A better way to size coverage starts from the obligations that would outlive you: the mortgage and other debts that would fall on your family, the years of income they would need to replace, the cost of educating children, and final expenses. Add those up, subtract the assets and existing coverage already available to meet them, and the gap is roughly what you would need insurance to fill. That number rarely matches a tidy multiple of salary, because your obligations are not a tidy multiple of your salary.
Once you know the size of the need, its shape tells you the type. Most families have a need that is large but temporary, biggest while children are young and debts are high, shrinking as both resolve, which is what term insurance is built for. Permanent insurance serves different purposes, estate liquidity, a lifelong dependent, business continuity, and costs far more for a reason. Buying permanent coverage for a temporary need, or term for a permanent one, is a more expensive mistake than getting the dollar amount slightly wrong.
Whatever number you land on is a snapshot. A new child, a new mortgage, a business, or a divorce changes the hole your absence would leave, and coverage set once and forgotten drifts out of line with the life it was meant to protect. We size coverage from your actual obligations and revisit it as they change, coordinated with your broader financial plan rather than sold in isolation. This is general information, not personalized advice.
Insure the hole you would leave, not a multiple of your paycheck.