Most people consider life insurance and disability insurance a nice thing to have but not essential. For a doctor, however, not having these two insurances is just too risky.
While both these insurances cost physicians a portion of their income, the protection they bring are well worth the cost, and here why…
The Odds are 4 to 1
According to the Council for Disability Awareness, 25% of American 20-year-olds will be disabled for more than a year before they retire.
That means that if you and four of your colleagues were standing in a room, and no one has disability insurance, one of you would have wished you would.
With odds like that, it wouldn’t be prudent to go without disability insurance. Now those are the odds for disability, but accidents are unpredictable.
Read: Why Life Insurance Is More Important Than You Think
What if you were in an accident that left you worse than just disabled? Who would take care of your family in that situation? That’s where life insurance comes in.
Doctors Have More to Protect
The average doctor makes more than the average American. This means that replacing their income for months could mean the same as the replacement of others’ income for a whole year.
Since most people live within their means, doctors have a higher living expense than most.
A doctor’s mortgage, auto payment, and not to mention their hefty malpractice insurance premiums would be hard to cover with no income.
This is the same for whether you are left disabled or your family had to figure out how to pay for these bills in the case of your death.
This makes disability insurance and life insurance equally important to protect your assets.
Waiting Until You Need It Is Too Late
The best time to get life insurance and disability insurance is when you are young for two reasons.
First, you’ll get a much cheaper premium if you start your policy in your early years of employment.
Second, if you wait too long, you might be too late. You never know when you’ll need disability insurance and we don’t ever expect death to come knocking.
In this regard, it’s better safe than sorry. The earlier you protect yourself and your family with life and disability insurance, the better.
Some Additional Tips
Even if you’ve been convinced that you should invest in these insurances, you may not know what to look for. That’s understandable.
These types of insurance policies vary greatly, not only in the amount of coverage but in their terms and clauses.
One thing that always helps is to have a professional on your side to help you choose the right policy for you.
With disability insurance, you have long term and short term disability, group disability and individual disability, and own-occupation or any-occupation disability insurance.
It can all get very confusing but it’s best to get a few different disability insurance quotes to compare.
You may be thinking that you’re already covered since your employer provides a disability policy for you. Unfortunately, these group policies almost always lack in coverage, leaving a huge gap to fill.
Life insurance is similar, but with this type of insurance, the focus is on the amount of coverage. This is a very personal choice but you need to take into consideration your situation now, as well as what you expect in the future.
You can ladder your life insurance to address your changing needs. For example, if when you first buy a life insurance policy you have no children but later have them, you can buy additional life insurance to protect the cost of raising those children.
This way you can save a little money on life insurance in the beginning but still rest easy knowing that you are protecting every new priority as it comes your way.
Conclusion
Insurance of any kind is meant to protect you from unforeseen occurrences and sustaining a life-changing illness, injury, or even death can never be predicted.
You do still have control, however, of how dire your financial situation will be if such a catastrophic event does befall you by purchasing disability and life insurance.
As a doctor, you worked hard to earn your income. You should protect it as hard as you worked for it.
