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When we were first married my husband owned a life insurance policy.  We were struggling college students and barely made enough to buy food for ourselves, in fact, many times we didn't have the money to buy food for ourselves, but we paid our life insurance.  We had a little food storage, also purchased by my husband before we were married, and we lived on that food storage many times, especially when the insurance was due.  It was an economic hardship for us to pay that insurance.  Together our incomes amounted to below $10,000 a year, but we paid our premium always, and always on time.
Over the years we purchased other policies for him and even some for me.  He always believed in being over insured.  Those were his words "over insured".  If you were to ask me now, I don't believe that you can ever be "over insured".
In 2007, he turned 50 years old.  Early in 2008, he came to me one morning and told me that they had increased the premiums so much that he was going to cancel his life insurance.  I was not happy about this decision.  Both of us went off to work that day.  As I was at work a police officer came into my classroom to tell me that my husband had been in an automobile accident on the way to work.  His words were, "It doesn't look good."  That was an understatement.  His life hung in the balance for many months.  It was a miserable time for our family, but one of the first things I did when I finally got home was to pay his life insurance.  When he regained consciousness, I told him, "Remember that life insurance that you were going to cancel?  I paid it."  I haven't paid a life insurance premium for him since.  You see, when a person is disabled, at least in the case of his policies, you don't have to pay a premium.  That is part of the policy, at least it was in our case.
Paying insurance premiums is part of being a grown up.  You go without things to pay your insurance premiums.  You go without vacations, dinners out, and in our case, even food to pay for your life insurance policy.  Always get insurance, and always pay it on time.  Period.