Traditionally, an individual disability insurance policy is designed to pay out benefits to replace lost income if a physician becomes too sick or injured to work in their specialty. When determining their ideal benefit amount, many physicians only take into account their most basic living expenses, such as bills, rent, and groceries.
While it is essential that your benefit amount covers these essential expenses, it’s also important to remember that disabilities can interfere with your earning ability for years at a time. Living off the bare minimum benefit amount can have long-lasting impacts on your financial future if you are unable to contribute to your retirement plan during the course of a long-lasting disability. That’s where the retirement protection riders are designed to help.
A retirement protection rider is a provision added to an individual disability insurance policy that replaces missed payments to retirement accounts caused by a disability. If a doctor is unable to contribute to an IRA, 401(k), or similar plan due to a disability, the retirement protection rider will fund equivalent payments into an irrevocable trust during the disability claim. The policyholder can invest the benefits paid to the trust as they wish, similar to IRA contributions. The money held in the trust pays out to the policyholder during retirement.
A disability protection rider is most valuable to a policyholder in the event of a long-term or permanent disability. If a disability only prevents you from contributing to your retirement accounts for six to twelve months, you may be able to bounce back financially without any major changes to retirement goals by being able to do some catch up contributions. However, if you lose several years or more of retirement contributions, the results could be catastrophic for your ability to retire. In this case, disability retirement protection can help you build a nest egg to supplement your income during retirement.
It’s important to note that retirement protection riders are not the only way to protect your retirement plan in the event of a disability. The most common alternative is to simply opt for a larger benefit amount from your policy to cover both essential living costs and retirement contributions while you are on claim. This approach certainly can help you get more cash flow so you can make up for lost contributions into employer retirement plans while disabled. It doesn’t offset the tax deferred or tax free accumulation of the assets since you won’t have earned income that can be contributed toward a qualified plan. To make up for this shortfall you can adjust your benefit amount slightly higher to account for the drag from capital gain taxes.
Retirement protection riders also include several terms and stipulations that deter some policyholders. Here are some of the most commonly cited downsides to a retirement protection rider:
To determine if a retirement protection rider is right for you, make sure you speak with an independent advisor rather than a captive agent to crunch the numbers. If the cost of buying a policy with a bigger benefit amount is less than or similar to the cost of adding the retirement protection rider, just opt for the larger benefit amount.
However, if increasing your benefit amount would increase your monthly premiums more than adding retirement protection, you may want to go with the rider. Additionally, if you already have a disability policy but do not have the option to increase coverage, you can purchase retirement protection as a stand-alone policy to supplement your coverage.
At the end of the day, there are multiple ways that physicians can protect their retirement in the event of a disability. The most important thing is that doctors can continue to save for retirement even if they become too ill or hurt to work. If you’re considering retirement protection, talk with a financial advisor to discuss the advantages and limitations of these disability riders.
When you receive your quote comparison, our experienced advisor will review the quotes, explain all your options and the verbiage in each policy in detail to help you create a customized plan that meets your needs and your budget. We will review each element of the plan and the cost associated with it to help you evaluate the value and build unique, cost-effective coverage tailored to your situation.
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