Remember reading Aesop’s Fables in school?
Aesop wrote popular short stories that always had a moral to them.
One of his stories was about the goose that laid golden eggs!
A man and his wife were blessed to have a goose that laid one golden egg each day – unfortunately, they felt they weren’t getting eggs fast enough and so they decided to access the gold themselves.
Upon cutting the goose open, however, they didn’t find any gold, just normal goose-guts!
The moral of the story dealth with their greed and contentment.
I’d like to look at the story from a different angle. Moral aside, what if the man and his wife purchased some insurance on the goose!
Now hang with me here a second - can you really buy goose insurance?
No, but relate this to your own life - do you have a goose that lays a golden egg?
The answer is YES! Yes, you do.
That goose is you!!
Your ability (the goose) to earn an income (the golden eggs) each and every day is an extremely important factor in reaching your financial goals!
No one enjoys talking about insurance, but it’s an important piece to the financial plan so insurance is something that should be reviewed!
So let’s take a look at disability insurance that will protect the goose!
Disability Insurance Protects Against the What Ifs
What is Disability Insurance? Well, basically these policies provide income replacement for those who are unable to work.
Generally you will get paid a certain percentage of your take-home pay if you are unable to perform functions of your current occupation.
If you get sick or hurt for a period of time, disability insurance will kick in and pay you a salary!
Depending on whether your employer picks up the tab or not on a group policy will determine if the benefits are taxable.
If a disability insurance policy is paid by you then benefits are tax free when received!
Most group policies are inadequate, but they are better than nothing.
Who Needs Disability Insurance?
To put it simply, anyone who has earned income needs some form of disability insurance!
Consider this – it’s estimated there are approximately 6 million car accidents per year in the U.S., with 3 million of them resulting in serious injury and around 2 million of them permanent!
Think it can’t happen to you? Think again.
Most accidents don’t result in death. In fact, only about 42,000 of these 6 million accidents are fatal.
I don’t mean to downplay the fatalities here, but the point is this -
You are more likely to be involved in an accident and get seriously injured than you are getting into a fatal accident!
Put it another way – you are more likely to need disability insurance than you are accidental death insurance.
How Much Does Disability Insurance Cost?
Depending on the type of policy and the benefits, most individual disability insurance policies are relatively inexpensive.
If you have disability insurance through your employer, they might pay for most of it and you might be on the hook for a very small portion if you wanted to increase the benefit!
Let’s say you are covered by a group policy at work that will pay you 60% of your income should something happen and you want to get an individual disability policy to cover the remaining 40%.
Your premiums would generally run anywhere from 1% – 3% of your annual income – relatively inexpensive if you want to insure the goose!
If Aesop sold insurance his moral of the story might be:
It’s better to take a tiny portion of the golden egg to insure the golden-egg layer!
Have you purchased an individual disability insurance policy?
Do you have a group policy through work?
This post was originally written for ChristianPF.com, you can find it here.
5 Bible Verses About Finances That Will Change Your Life
5 Ways to Get Fit on a Budget
IRA Withdrawal Rules – When Can You Withdraw Your IRA?
Well Paying Careers: 30 Jobs That Pay $30 Per Hour
10 Money-Saving Tips to Help You Stash $10,000!
Should You Give Money to a Homeless Person?
7 Most Important Habits That Rich People Use to Build Wealth
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Disability is probably the most underrated insurance. We scramble around worrying about auto, health, home and even business insurance, pretending that disability isn’t a sufficient threat to warrant concern.
Do you think this is because so many people are covered at work, that “covered at work” becomes a cliche catch-all for “I don’t have to do anything about it”?
Kevin, you’re exactly right. However, what many don’t realize is that most of those policies at work are very restrictive. If you read the language of many of those policies you’d be surprised.
I hope people pay attention to this! I never thought at age 54 I would be looking at disability but it happened to me. A seemingly harmless fall has turned into surgery and possibly permanent issues. Luckily my employer provided STD and LTD or I would be in big trouble. Keep preaching brother, a fall in my yard is all it took.
Donna, I’m sorry to hear about your fall, but I’m glad you had some coverage at least. Personally, I think disability is one of the most overlooked types of insurance out there yet one of the most needed. You just never know when you’ll need it, but you’ll be glad you had it if you did need it.
{ 1 trackback }