Disability Income Insurance

Why do I need Disability Insurance? It seems so expensive!

When a disability leaves you unable to work for an extended length of time, you lose the ability to earn an income- the one thing you’ve always relied on to provide for yourself and your loved ones. Meanwhile, your living expenses continue-in fact, they’re likely to increase for a number of reasons. You could need help around the house or have higher medical expenses, for example. That’s where disability income insurance (DI) comes in. it’s designed to help you maintain your standard of living when you cannot work. If you don’t have much in the way of assets for a financial cushion, you need enough to cover costs and supplement your income until you can go back to work.

Disability income insurance is needed by just about everyone who earns a living. Surprisingly, single people often need it more than married couples because they don’t have a spouse’s income to fall back on if they are injured or become too sick to work. On the other hand, most married people have a hard time imagining what it would be like to live on one salary when they barely get by on two. And unfortunately, disability strikes more often than you think.

When you’re healthy and working, it’s hard to imagine being disabled by illness of injury. But it can happen. In fact:

• One in 3 working Americans will become disabled for 90 days before age 65.*

• The average disability absence is 2 and half years.*
• More than 80% of working Americans don’t have disability income insurance or aren’t covered adequately.**

*   Commissioner’s individual Disability Table A

** National Underwriter Magazine, May 2001