NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Preparing for Worst-Case Scenarios: Choosing the Right Insurance Policy to Protect Your Income
14 Nov 2024
It's open enrollment season, and a great time to explore coverage options to protect your income, such as life insurance and disability insurance. Hosts Sean Pyles and Liz Weston discuss the importance of insurance coverage, highlighting statistics around how many people are underinsured or lack adequate coverage. To dive deeper into different types of coverage, Liz welcomes Insurance Nerd Ryan Brady and John Ryan, founder and CEO of Ryan Insurance Strategy Consultants, to explain various types of insurance. In this episode, they talk about life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment insurance (AD&D) insurance, and disability insurance, and explore the nuances of employer-provided life insurance and supplemental insurance. Plus: the complexities of disability insurance, comparing short-term and long-term coverage, and the interplay between employer-provided disability insurance, individual disability insurance, workers' compensation, and Social Security. Use NerdWallet's free life insurance calculator to figure out how much life insurance you need: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/how-much-life-insurance-do-i-need In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: life insurance, disability insurance, workplace benefits, financial needs, income protection, supplemental insurance, accidental death and dismemberment insurance (AD&D), disability coverage, short-term disability, long-term disability, employer-provided disability insurance, choosing an insurance policy, workers' compensation, Social Security, insurance complexities, income safeguards, accidental death insurance, dismemberment insurance, critical illness insurance, hospital indemnity coverage, and pre-existing conditions clauses. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [email protected]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Hello listeners, Sean here. Today and this month, we were prizing a special series we brought you last year on open enrollment. It was such a comprehensive look at all the decisions that people have to make at this time of year that we decided to run it again. My guest was my former and now retired co-host, Liz Weston. So she's back, sort of.
Anyway, we hope you find this useful and enjoyable as we move through the holidays and open enrollment season. Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Liz Weston.
And today we have the second episode of our nerdy deep dive into open enrollment, that time of year we all look forward to when we get to think about health plans, life insurance, vision and dental, and oh, so much more.
Yes, and in this week's episode, we're going deep on insurance that's supposed to help you protect your income if something happens to you and you can't provide for yourself or your family. In other words, you are either disabled or you die. Liz, nobody wants to talk about this stuff. I know, I know, but everybody really, really needs to.
Sean, this is so incredibly important and too many people ignore it. Insurance of all kinds is meant to protect you from costs you couldn't easily pay out of pocket. But too many people who need certain types of insurance just don't have it. And others get talked into buying policies they don't need, right? Yeah. Absolutely.
There's a reason life insurance salespeople don't have, shall we say, the most positive of reputations. But that doesn't mean you should stay away from the concept altogether. Now, we're not here to tell people what to do, but I think it's worth hearing the case for having some sort of financial backstop if that thing you think will never happen to you happens to you.
Yeah. So you mentioned that the main purpose of all of this is to protect income if you're unable to work.
Yes, one place where people tend to be critically underinsured is their income. How would you get by if you could no longer do your job? How would your loved ones manage if you're no longer here? Disability and life insurance can help fill the financial gaps if something bad or something worse happens to you.
So today we're going to look at all the different types of insurance that can protect your income because open enrollment is a great time to review your options.
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