insurance

[hotdogz]

hey all, i'm 2 years out of residency practicing in ny, and wanted to get some advice, personal experiences, suggestions on disability and life insurance. What do you guys have, what are good companies to go through. I'm thinking of changing my disability right now to the AMA sponsored program, anyone have this or use this? Also in terms of life insurance, do you recommend term, universal, or whole life. Thanks, eager to hear responses.

dogz

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[Oggg]

hey all, i'm 2 years out of residency practicing in ny, and wanted to get some advice, personal experiences, suggestions on disability and life insurance. What do you guys have, what are good companies to go through. I'm thinking of changing my disability right now to the AMA sponsored program, anyone have this or use this? Also in terms of life insurance, do you recommend term, universal, or whole life. Thanks, eager to hear responses.

dogz

geez you should've gotten disability insurance in residency... Assuming that you are an anesthesiologist, you should definitely get a disability policy that considers you disabled if you can't do anesthesia. I'm guessing the AMA isn't like that. Ask your colleagues who their insurance guy is, and then get quotes through them. If they have any experience with own-occupation disability ins, they'll find all the latest companies that still offer this.

Life insurance - well I'm trying to get some myself. It seems like whole life requires a large "downpayment" and then you get a stable cash flow from it, but it's not liquid and not that high a percent. Term is cheap, and you get nothing back from it when you stop paying, though you use your leftover cash to invest. Universal used to be popular, but you pay an bigger premium, and then invest pretax dollars.

I'm probably going to go term life.

 

[pgg]

hey all, i'm 2 years out of residency practicing in ny, and wanted to get some advice, personal experiences, suggestions on disability and life insurance. What do you guys have, what are good companies to go through. I'm thinking of changing my disability right now to the AMA sponsored program, anyone have this or use this? Also in terms of life insurance, do you recommend term, universal, or whole life. Thanks, eager to hear responses.

dogz

I have an AMA policy because no one else will sell own occ disability insurance to active duty military. The big problem with the AMA policy is that it will only pay out for 5 years (unless this has changed). The other big problem is that you need to be a member of the AMA, and I hate giving those clowns money. It is pretty cheap though.

Term life insurance is a no-brainer for 99% of people. If you can't come up with a specific reason why non-term life insurance is right for your specific circumstances, get term.

 

[deleted126335]

hey all, i'm 2 years out of residency practicing in ny, and wanted to get some advice, personal experiences, suggestions on disability and life insurance. What do you guys have, what are good companies to go through. I'm thinking of changing my disability right now to the AMA sponsored program, anyone have this or use this? Also in terms of life insurance, do you recommend term, universal, or whole life. Thanks, eager to hear responses.

dogz

buy a 20-30 year level term policy depending on age and family status and plans. $3 million or so.

Haven't shopped for disability in a long time and the market has changed.

 

[jwk]

Term is so dirt cheap for younger healthier individuals it's foolish not to get it when you have the need i.e. spouse and kids. The general rule of thumb is 10x annual earnings, but that may not be enough depending on where you are and how big your family is. $3M would go a lot further towards covering living expenses in Atlanta than it would in SF or NYC.

Occupation specific disability insurance is getting harder and harder to get and more expensive to boot. I got mine almost 20 years ago, but unfortunately did not get an inflation rider along with it, so I will still get the same dollar amount now that I would have when I first got it. Companies will limit how much you can get - so if you make $300k a year, chances are you can't buy a disability insurance policy that pays $600k a year. However, they will allow you to factor replacing benefits as well as premium pay (like OT or shift bonuses) into the mix if you receive those over and above your base compensation.