Protecting your financial branches by looking after the roots

It’s perfectly normal to insure your house, your phone, your pet – but too many people aren’t insuring the very thing that pays for all of that!

I’m not just talking about protection that covers your mortgage (although this is important), but I’m talking about protecting the effect that certain eventualities may have on everything else.

If you were to die, would it just be your mortgage which you would want to pay off? Or would you want to ensure your partner, or someone else, could look after your children, for example? It’s likely that, depending on the age of your dependants, the survivor would either need to change their working hours to accommodate, or would need to pay for further childcare. This is not to mention the fact that they would likely also be losing the second income that may have been coming into your household previously!

What about if you weren’t to die but were to contract an illness which affects your ability to work and generate an income? Would your company sick pay be sufficient, or would you require some sort of protection against the lost income? This doesn’t necessarily have to be in the event of a life-threatening illness, it could be due to an injury, for instance, which prevents you from doing your day-job for a period of time.

You may be thinking that you have savings or investments that could be called upon should they be required. This may be true but what effect does that have longer-term? If you were planning on using these investments for later life, then spending them now on ‘self-protection’ means they aren’t available later. This may mean not having the lifestyle you had worked hard to save up for, or it could mean having to retire later than planned, or not having the ability to help your children with that house deposit if that was your plan.

Let me be clear - Hopefully protection is a massive waste of money, and you never need to use it! However, it gives you peace of mind and allows you to protect yourself against something leading to your plans being completely scuppered and the effect that may have on you and/or your family now and in the future.

It doesn’t need to cost the earth either!

Income Protection that will pay £1,500 per month after a deferral period of 3 months from claim up until retirement at age 65 (if required) could cost less than £25 per month for a 35-year-old taking cover out now - with that premium guaranteed to stay the same throughout regardless of changes to health during the term.

Get in touch if you want to discuss your current position and how you can best protect yourself and your loved ones.