Insurance Insurance

An Income Protection Insurance Guide

If you're working and you're the main breadwinner or income earner for your family, having some protection or insurance for the money that you bring in is a good idea. In other words, what would you do if you suddenly lost your job or couldn't work? How would you pay your bills and feed your family? If you don't have much in savings, you could end up with a serious financial problem very quickly. If you have income protection insurance, though, you can be much safer and have a lot more peace of mind, even if you do end up losing your income for some reason.

There are all kinds of ways that a person can lose his income, and getting an income protection quote for insurance well before you have any income problems is a great idea. You need to get a quote from several different places, though, because a lot of quotes are different, depending on the insurance company you work with and the specifics of your particular situation. You can't expect all of the income protection cover options to be exactly the same in the price that they offer and the coverage that you can get for that price. It's very important to keep that in mind, because you'll want to get the best coverage for your situation.

When you plan on getting an income protection quote, talk with your family first. They might have a lot of thoughts about how much income will really be needed and for how long. If you pay attention to what they have to say, you can take that information to the insurance agent of your choice - or talk to several of them - to get a better and more realistic income protection quote for you. That's a great thing to do, and a nice way to show that you're really interested in making sure your family is taken care of if you lose your job. If the standard of living is far reduced, that won't be as helpful to you as having the income you were used to in the past.

Income protection insurance is good for layoffs and other similar issues, but be sure to ask questions about any income protection cover you decide to get. If, for some reason, you are fired, will you still be covered? If not, that's something to be aware of. What if your hours are cut or you want to go back to school? If you can't get any kind of income protection insurance for those possibilities, you'll want to know that.

There's nothing wrong with insurance that doesn't cover those kinds of things, but if you don't have them covered you'll need to be aware of that. You don't want to quit your job, thinking that you can go back to school or look for another job at a later date, only to find that your income protection cover isn't any good that way and you suddenly don't have any income at all.

Income protection insurance provides an income if you are put out of work on account of sudden illness or injury. The idea behind Income protection insurance is to put you back to the same position you were in, before you were rendered incapable of work due to adverse health conditions. The good thing about this insurance is that it pays a regular monthly income that is absolutely tax-free.

However, you may want to note that the insurance is not designed to let you make a profit out of your misfortune. The maximum amount that you could expect to extract out of the insurance is the after-tax earnings that you would have lost due to illness, after deducting an adjustment for state benefits you can claim later. In effect, you could hope to get around 50% to 65% of your earnings before-tax. Attractive as it may seem, you need to be sure that you have indeed taken a very close look at the fine print of your policy document so that you are sure what to expect from it when you really need it.

Income protection insurance could be of long term, where the repayment policies are intended to kick in between the time when your employer has stopped paying sick pay, and the time it takes when you get to collect your pension. The shorter-term policies, on the other hand, protect a mortgage, or other obligations such as a bank loan or other payment. These policies could be expected to start after a few weeks but they tend to stop entirely in a period of 12 to 24 months.

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