You’ve just become disabled, but you’re not worried. Why? Because you think Social Security disability payments will “take care of you.” Really? According to statistics from the Social Security Administration, the average person who has qualified for Social Security benefits receives $1,125.10 a month.
If you’re making $50,000 per year, how long could you (and your family) survive on a disability payment of $1,125.10 per month? That’s only $13,501 per year, or 27% of your income. This assumes you qualify for benefits, and not everybody does. And if you do, it may still be more than two years—yes, years— before you start to receive any payments. What will you do in the meantime?
What am I talking about? You protect your home by insuring it against loss. You do the same for your car, boat, motorcycle, RV and personal property, but have you insured your paycheck?
Yes, I am talking about disability insurance. You protect your worldly goods with insurance, and you also need to protect your income against loss. If you become ill or injured and are unable to work, disability insurance pays you a percentage of your income until you can return to work.
May is Disability Insurance Awareness Month, the perfect time to talk to your advisor or agent and learn how to protect your paycheck.
Have you put off getting life insurance (or more of it) because you think it’s too expensive? You may want to reconsider when you learn this: Most people believe life insurance costs nearly three times as much as it actually does, according to a new LIFE Foundation and LIMRA study.
Take this example: the annual cost of a 20-year, $250,000, level-term life policy for a healthy 30-year old consumer is roughly $150 a year, but Americans estimate the cost at $400!
Here are 10 other facts from the 2012 Insurance Barometer Study that may surprise you. We’ve made them “tweetable” so you can share: Simply click on the fact you’d like to tweet and the tweet will be generated for you. And be sure to follow us on Twitter at @LIFE_Foundation.
In pop culture, life insurance agents often get cast in a less than flattering light, but I’m going to tell you one of my favorite stories that may change your view.
My sister-in-law Anne’s mother died several years ago. She was 75 and had lived a long, full life, which included raising five children on her own. Her husband had died when the children were young—Anne was small at the time.
Fortunately her father had had the foresight to buy life insurance. He realized, even as a young man, that it was important to put protection in place for his wife and five children, in case something were to happen to him. His wife, however, was not pleased about that money going toward premium payments. She would have preferred it to go to whatever other household needs were urgent, as money was tight at the time. Her husband, however, persisted with the coverage. Within six months of purchasing it, he was diagnosed with melanoma; he died five years later.
The young widow raised those five kids and sent them off into the world, something that would have been an almost insurmountable task without that life insurance money.
While certainly a compelling story, it doesn’t end there.
When Anne was at her mother’s wake, someone came up and introduced himself. It was the agent who had sold her father his life insurance. He had come, 50 years after his “sale,” simply to pay his respects and to see how these “children” were doing.
But the encounter went beyond even that. The agent was able to tell Anne about her father and how concerned he had been about making sure his wife and children were taken care of. Anne was moved to tears, as it was the first time in her life that she had met a friend of her father’s who could tell her a story about the great character of her father.
This is what life insurance agents are really like.
When the world is whirling and spinning around us—the demands of work and home and family—it’s hard to keep life in balance. Sometimes it can be something simple, like the wisdom of a child, that can right the tilting axis of the world.
That’s what this video does. I’ve seen it a dozen times over the course of several years and it never fails to stop me in my tracks. While all the photos and captions are poignant, one always makes me take a step back from what I think is important and just take a breath: the image of the small boy with his Papaw, in matching overalls, heading up the hill to the fishing hole. There’s just something universal about that shot. And what in the world more important than holding hands with a loved one?
Jermaine Suggs was living the life of an average college student when life dealt him a one-two blow: He lost his grandmother and father within a week’s time.
In addition, his father left behind a business deeply in debt and no life insurance, forcing Jermaine to rework his future. He left college and began working at a gas station to help his mother (with him in the photo) out and to put money aside to eventually return to school.
“It’s a common saying that a person can take nothing with them into the after-life. I would like to amend that by adding that even though nothing can be taken into the after-life, something can be left behind: Call it an after-death blessing and its name is life insurance.”
ally? According to statistics from the Social Security Administration, the average person who has qualified for Social Security benefits receives $1,125.10 a month.
