Every retirement plan rests on one assumption: that you keep earning until you decide to stop. Your ability to work is the asset that funds all the others, and it’s the one most people never insure.
This is the least discussed and most commonly skipped coverage we offer. It’s also the one where the gap between what people think they have and what they actually have is widest.
What group coverage usually leaves out
If you have disability coverage through an employer, it’s worth reading rather than assuming. A few things are common and surprising.
It’s taxable. When your employer pays the premium, the benefit is taxable income. A policy that replaces 60% of your pay replaces closer to 45% of what you were actually taking home.
It’s capped. Group plans cap the monthly benefit. Higher earners often discover the cap replaces a much smaller share of their income than the percentage suggested.
It usually excludes bonus and commission. If a meaningful part of your income is variable, check whether it counts as covered earnings. Frequently it doesn’t.
It’s not yours. Group coverage ends when the job does, generally without the option to take it with you.
The definition that matters most
One clause determines whether a policy pays when you need it: how it defines disability.
Own occupation pays if you can’t perform the duties of your specific job, even if you could do some other kind of work. Any occupation pays only if you can’t work at all in any job you’re reasonably suited to.
For anyone whose income depends on specialized skills, that difference is the entire policy. A surgeon who loses fine motor control can still work — just not as a surgeon. Under an any-occupation definition, that may not be a claim.
Two other terms do most of the remaining work. The elimination period is how long you wait before benefits start, usually 60 to 180 days — longer waits cost less, and you fund the gap from savings. The benefit period is how long payments continue, commonly two years, five years, or to age 65. A cheap policy is often cheap because of these two numbers rather than because of anything about the carrier.
If you own a business
There are two separate exposures. Personal disability income replaces what you pay yourself. Business overhead expense coverage is different — it pays rent, staff wages, and the fixed costs that keep running whether you’re there or not, so the business survives long enough for you to come back to it.
For agencies and professional practices especially, the second one is often the larger hole. The business has obligations that don’t pause for your recovery.
Benefits and eligibility are subject to the terms of the issued policy, including definitions of disability, waiting periods, and exclusions. Guarantees depend on the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company.
What a review looks like
If you have group coverage, we read the actual certificate — the definition of disability, the cap, what counts as earnings, and what’s excluded. That usually answers the question of whether you need anything more.
Then we look at the gap between the benefit and what your household actually needs to run, and whether individual coverage on top of the group plan closes it at a sensible price. If your group coverage is genuinely good, we’ll tell you that.
Browning Life and Retirement Solutions 