An unforeseen disability due to injury or illness that would prevent you from earning an income is an event that, if left unprotected, can have a catastrophic impact on your financial health. If you are unable to earn an income, meeting household expenses either in the short- or long-term could force you to liquidate assets set aside for other purposes, such as your retirement or your child’s education savings. The purpose...
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3 Key Questions When Reviewing Your Disability Insurance: 1. Is my group disability coverage enough? A comprehensive analysis would be needed to say for sure, but often a group disability plan will not provide adequate income replacement in the event of an extended disability. Key areas to review, aside from the monthly benefit, would be the “own occupation” period, benefit duration, and the definition of disability. Individual polices tend to have...
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One of the reasons we ask so many questions (sometimes 60 or more) when we first meet a client is to try to understand the person, not just the numbers. You can learn a lot about a person’s decision making when you understand where they came from. It’s our walk of life that influences how we look at the world. I find this especially true when it comes to planning for...
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While not very exciting, one important assessment we make on our clients’ financial situation is whether they are adequately insured. The consequences of being underinsured can be catastrophic and, because of this, reviewing coverage on all your policies is one of the checklist items on our internal ‘standard of care’ document. While we do not sell insurance or claim to be on the leading edge of changes in this arena...
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Saving for a child’s college expenses is becoming increasingly difficult. As a parent, the competing forces of tuition inflation and one’s own retirement preparedness can bring about stress over trying to adequately save for both. There is a balance to be struck between the two, keeping in mind that kids can get jobs and take out loans. Retirement, ideally, should not include you getting a job or taking out a...
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If you are a social media user, you constantly see friends updating their posts, tweets, snaps, and photos. As you see these updates, you may feel obligated to fit in with the social media users by creating these same types of updates. Here is a short list of the yearly “required” postings:
One of the common questions we hear from clients is about whether they should keep an existing life insurance policy. This is often both a financial and emotional decision because it can be hard to determine if the need still exists, and because it can be hard to let go of something that has given you a sense of security for a long time. Here are some steps to take...
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