Short Term Disability Insurance
Short term disability insurance provides a portion of your regular income for up to a year if you can't work due to an illness or injury regardless of where the illness or injury first occurred.While health, cancer, and accident insurance help cover medical bills, short term disability insurance provides a financial bridge for your household to pay everyday bills while rehabilitating from being sick or injured. It may also coordinate with benefits from Social Security or Worker’s Compensation.
What if you couldn't work for 3 months or more?
How would you pay the mortgage and other bills?
How would you maintain your current standard of living?
Many people don't believe it can happen to them. The truth is that nearly 1 in 3 Americans become disabled (i.e., unable to work for at least 90 consecutive days) at some point during their working years.
Without disability insurance, paying for life's regular commitments like your mortgage, groceries, and utilities will necessarily come from your savings. Even if you can afford it, do you really want to cover loss of salary from your savings?
A disability is an illness or injury that prevents you from performing your regular occupation for an extended period of time.
Short Term Disability insurance pays monthly benefits after an elimination period (a period of time between your injury/illness and the start of benefits). Your monthly benefit depends on several factors including whether you are totally or partially disabled and the level of benefits you chose when you purchased your policy. Your benefits generally continue as long as you are under a physician’s care and are unable to return to work (for the duration of the benefit period you chose when you purchased your policy).
Is Short Term Disability Insurance Really Necessary?
Short term disability insurance may not be needed if you have the finances to pay your bills for up to 6 months. On the other hand, short term disability insurance make sense if:
- You can’t afford to pay your bills solely from savings for 90 or more.
- You are your family’s sole or primary wage earner.
- Your other insurance policies (health, auto, home, etc.) have high deductibles or require out-of-pocket payments.
Your employer may offer short term disability insurance as part of your benefits package or offer it as an option for which you can pay the premium. These policies are generally full of exclusions and can give a false sense of security. We recommend looking at supplemental disability insurance to ensure you're properly covered.
If short term disabilty coverage isn't available where you work, contact us and let's talk through the affordable options.
If you are considering short term disability insurance and have questions, please submit your information using the form to the right to contact a certified disability insurance advisor.