Disability Insurance: A necessity for Postal Subs
Disability insurance pays benefits when you are unable to earn a living because you are sick or injured. Most disability policies pay you a benefit that replaces a percentage of your earned income when you can’t work.
Why would you need disability insurance?
Your chances of being disabled for longer than three months are much greater than your chances of dying prematurely, due in part to medicine that has made many fatal illnesses treatable. (Source: 1985 Commissioner’s Individual Disability Table A–most recent data available.) Although this is good news, it increases your need to protect your income with disability insurance.
Consider what might happen if you suffered an injury or illness and couldn’t work for days, months, or even years. If you’re single, do you have other means of support? If you’re married, you may be able to rely on your spouse for income, but you probably also have many financial obligations, such as supporting your children and paying your mortgage. Could your spouse’s income support your whole family? In addition, remember that you don’t have to be working in a hazardous position to need disability insurance. Accidents happen not only on the job but also at home, and illness can strike anyone.
What do you need to know about disability insurance?
Once you become disabled and apply for benefits, you have to wait for a certain amount of time after the onset of your disability before you receive benefits. If you are applying for benefits under a private insurance policy, this amount of time (known as the elimination period) ranges from 30 to 365 days, although the most common period is 90 days. Group insurance policies through your employer will generally have a waiting period of no more than 8 days for short-term policies that pay benefits for up to six months, and 90 days for long-term policies that pay benefits up to age 65.
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