Other than your family, the single most important thing you have is your income. Without your income, nearly everything you have could be jeopardized, including your home, vehicles and other assets. You might even have trouble putting food on the table for you and your family, cover medical bills and generally have trouble meeting your financial obligations if you don’t have disability insurance protection. Fortunately, disability benefits from insurance cover the costs of going through your everyday life while you are recuperating from a short-term or even a long-term disability that prevents you from working and greatly reduces your income.
Many Types of Disabilities
Disabilities come in many types and could strike at any moment. Whether it’s an auto accident, a serious illness, a work-related injury, a head injury or some other unfortunate event, nearly anyone could become disabled at any time. Without disability benefits, your financial well-being as well as your health might be in danger. That means your family’s financial well-being also could be endangered without the right types of protection. Even your retirement benefits might become jeopardized by cashing them out early and incurring tax penalties in order to cover your bills. Thankfully, affordable alternatives exist in the form of disability insurance and other types of protection.
Short Term Disability Insurance
When you are out of commission for a relatively short period, such as a few months to as much as two years, a short-term disability insurance policy helps protect your finances. Such policies offer disability benefits over the short term so you can continue healing and getting better until you are ready to return to work. Instead of falling behind on your mortgage, car payments and other financial obligations, you can use short-term disability benefits to make ends meet until you are medically capable of returning to work. Suffering injuries in a car accident, for example, might cause you to miss work for several months. If you have a short-term disability insurance plan in place, you can use the benefits to keep your finances in order, protect your credit rating and, most of all, protect your family.
Long-Term Disability Insurance
Some disabilities last much more than a couple years and might even become permanent. When you aren’t capable of working for several years and your short-term disability benefits expire, a long-term disability insurance policy helps a great deal. Studies show most people suffer at least some form of short-term disability during their lives. Unfortunately, the older you get, the more likely you are to need hospitalization and possibly long-term care. If that happens, a long-term disability insurance policy protects you, your retirement income and your family home against possible economic fallout. Long-term disabilities generally require a greater level of medical treatment and cost. If you have the right kind of protection, those costs can be covered beyond what health insurance plans can provide.
Supplemental Insurance
Disability benefits have their limitations, such as annual and total coverage limits. They also are subject to state and federal income taxes, which means you could exhaust them before you have met all of your financial obligations for a given year. In such instances, supplemental insurance can help greatly. Supplemental insurance plans cover the costs other insurance plans won’t, and they generally are very affordable. Because you already have an underlying level of insurance protection covering most costs, insurance companies greatly reduce the rates of supplemental insurance policies. That makes them one of the best deals when you are looking to protect your finances and assets.
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