Why I want to be covered for Early CI

Most of the young adults who have asked me about life insurance knows that I am a believer of Early Critical Illnesses (Early CI) coverage – especially for certain profiles of people. I happen to be one because

1. I am young and am just started out
2. I am a self employed (your working profile)
3. I would want to recover in style

Young
I believe early CI coverage to be important for young adults because we are all just starting out in our lives. During this stage, we are working hard to achieve our dreams and goals – making sure we will be able to pursue our needs and wants at some point in the future- get married, own our own property, start a business, travel, etc. At this stage, most young adults also probably do not have much (yet). Likely $30k- $90k (of your own money) if you have only been working for less than 3 years.

If you were to fall ill at this point, your goals would likely be disrupted- savings come to a standstill and existing savings may be depleted in the course of recovery. For this reason, I believe in early critical illness coverage. Because falling ill is bad enough without having my future goals mucked up too. So yes, I want someone (whoever/whatever it is) to give me a lump sum of money to protect my plans.

Self Employed
Having a healthy physical and mental being is of utmost importance to me as a self employed, more so as I am in the advisory line where being present is well, a prerequisite. If I were to be ill for an extended period of time, I know I would want to (will have to) hire another personal assistant so that I can direct my energy to the most important parts of the job. This would then be an additional out of pocket cost to me.

Hence, your job benefits and your role in the firm would influence your need to be covered for this early CI. Beyond the workplace, it is also ideal to consider the family – how likely would you incur additional cost for the family if you fall ill? Or on the other hand, how much are you able to (or want to) rely on the family in such an event?

Recover in style
Early CI is often not life-threatening upon detection and optimistically, most would recover from such an event. Through the course my work, some of my clients have shared their personal stories with me about how they themselves or a party of their family faced an event like this and recovered… so it got me thinking about how I would want to celebrate the recovery: simple enough, a crazy holiday for everyone. My treat.

All in all, this is why I believe in having early CI coverage for myself.. The above factors may not stay relevant forever but at this moment, something’s backing me up

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The Solution

There are many different vehicles to use to receive early critical illness coverage. Self insurance aside, there are term plans and whole life plans. Plans that require you to pay for as long as you wish to receive the coverage, and those that require you to pay only a certain number of years. There are insurers which follow unique definitions of critical illnesses, and others which follow the standard definition. Some give an additional coverage for special stated illnesses, others that don’t. At the end of the day, all we need to do is to find one that is suitable for ourselves.