Your income is your biggest asset. This is the coverage that protects it when illness or injury stops your paycheck.
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Disability insurance
The coverage everyone skips, and the two words that decide everything.
The paycheck-protection playbook.
Your income is the asset
Over a career, your paycheck dwarfs your house, your car, everything. We insure all of those — and routinely leave the engine that pays for them uncovered.
It replaces a portion of your paycheck
Typically 60–70% of income if illness or injury stops you from working. And it's usually illness — most long-term claims come from conditions like cancer, back problems, and heart disease, not dramatic accidents.
Short-term bridges, long-term carries
Short-term disability covers weeks to about six months. Long-term disability starts after a waiting ('elimination') period — commonly 90 days — and can pay all the way to age 65.
The definition is the policy
'Own occupation' pays if you can't do your job. 'Any occupation' pays only if you can't do any job. Two words in the contract, completely different protection.
The risk people consistently underrate.
of today's 20-year-olds will experience a disability before reaching retirement age
of income a typical policy replaces — tax-free when you pay the premiums yourself
the common waiting period before long-term benefits begin — your emergency fund's job
Social Security Administration disability estimates and common policy structures — actual terms vary by carrier, occupation, and health.
Coverage through work vs. coverage you own.
Group LTD (through work)
- ●Often free or cheap — if it's offered, take it
- ●Typically 60% of base salary; bonuses and commissions usually don't count
- ●Benefits are taxable when the employer pays the premium
- ●Ends the day you leave the job
An individual policy
- ●Portable — it follows you across every job change
- ●Can be non-cancelable, with premiums guaranteed not to rise
- ●Benefits arrive tax-free when you pay with after-tax dollars
- ●Can lock in own-occupation protection for specialized careers
Group coverage is a foundation worth taking. An individual policy is what makes the protection actually yours.
The three false comforts.
Tap a card to flip it.
The two words that decide everything.
If you remember one thing from this page, make it the definition of disability. An 'own occupation' policy pays when you can't perform your specific job — a surgeon who can no longer operate collects, even if she could teach. An 'any occupation' policy pays only when you can't do any reasonable work at all, a much higher bar.
Own-occupation coverage costs more, and for people with years of training invested in a specific skill — surgeons, dentists, trial attorneys, skilled trades — it's usually the difference between insurance that works and insurance that technically exists. Typical cost for solid individual coverage runs around 1–3% of income: the most underrated line item in a working family's budget.
What would three missing paychecks mean at your house?
A short conversation maps your gap: what work provides, what it misses, and what it would take to make your income genuinely secure.