Disability Insurance - What is it and Why in the World Should Any Woman Care?

Many people don't have adequate (or any, in some cases) disability insurance. Disability insurance covers you and your family financially if you or your husband are unable to work because of an accident or illness.

Why do you need disability insurance? Because the average American is 3 to 6 times more likely to become disabled than they are likely to die before they are 65 years old.

Sometimes people are injured or sick and not able to work, but it only lasts a short while - but sometimes - the short term disability becomes a long term disability! And what do you do then? If it only lasts a short while many people have enough money saved to pay the bills until the person can get back to work. Or maybe they have family that can help out, or the spouse makes a high enough income to pay the major bills for a while.

After a few months most people would start to have serious financial problems if the main source of income for the family can't work. And who wants to have to start taking money out of their retirement savings or money saved for their kids to go to college just to pay bills because their income is taken away for a while?

And what happens if your husband becomes permanently disabled and can never work again? Think that can't happen? A person at age 25 has a 25% chance of a short term disability lasting their whole life! And a person who is 55 has a 40% chance of a short term disability lasting the rest of their life! And all the life insurance you could have ever bought won't help you a bit in this case!

Do You Really Need Long Term Disability Insurance?

Despite the grim news in the preceding paragraphs - you may not need to buy any disability insurance! If depends.

- If you have enough money saved and invested already that you and your family could live off of what you already have with no more additional income - in other words - if you are financially independent.

- If the other spouse makes enough money to support the whole family. Although its totally conceivable that both spouses in a marriage could end up disabled - like from an accident. So even this may not exclude you from need some other disability insurance policy. Remember the spouse could also lose their job at some point, may have to quit to take care of you, or you may end up getting divorced.

- The other case when you may not need it is if your employer provides some disability insurance. You need to check with your employer to know for sure. But be careful and ask lots of questions - many policies covered by employers will only cover your disability if it is caused by something related to your job. And there may be lifetime limits to how much money you can get too - which may not be enough.

OK, so your not financially independent, your spouse makes a decent income, but not enough to support your whole family. Then you are in the situation as most of us!

Determining Your Disability Insurance Need

So you need more coverage! But how much? It is a good idea to make an estimate of your monthly costs to determine how much you need. Don't add in things you don't really need, but don't forget those that you do!

Now its time to go to Part 2 and learn more about disability insurance terms or Part 3 to learn more about where you can get disability insurance from and what to look for in a policy.