Your Greatest Asset

If you were to take into consideration everything you have, what is your most valuable asset? Is it your house, your car, your 401(k), your checking account, or something else you possess? In reality, it is none of these things! The biggest asset a person has is their ability to work. Don’t you agree? Think about it, if you were to lose your ability to work and could no longer produce an income, would you be able to keep your car/house? How long would any of the assets I listed above last you?
Do you remember the last time you went on vacation? Think about all the planning that went into that. You might have had to save for months or years to take it; you knew when you would return to work, when your next paycheck was coming, how much the vacation was going to cost you, etc… What would happen if you were forced to take a surprise vacation starting tomorrow? This time though, you don’t know when you can return to work. You don’t know when your next paycheck will come, and you have no idea how much it is going to cost you? Do you have savings in the bank to cover it? Would you and your family be okay? That is what it means to suffer a long-term disability.
You might be thinking; won’t worker’s compensation take care of me? It can, if you were hurt on the job, but the reality is most long-term disabilities do not stem from a work accident, but rather a decline in health, injury, or development of a condition or illness? You may think this won’t happen to you, but between the ages of 35-65, 1 out of 3 people will suffer a disability for over 90 days and 1 out of 8 people will become disabled for 5 years or more.
What about Social Security Disability? According to ssa.gov, in 2017 almost 2.2 million individuals filed for disability in 2017. Of that 2.2 million that applied, only a little over 750k were accepted. On average it takes between 2-3 years to get approved by Social Security Disability. Do you have enough savings to last that long?
The reason I am writing about this is not to scare you. It’s that I don’t want to see any of my friends, family, neighbors, or anyone else I care about, suffer when there was something I could have done to prevent it. If this is something that you are concerned about, please give me a call and I will be happy to help in any way I can.