Are You Carrying Enough Life Insurance?
Contributed by Shawn M Johnson, ChFC®, CLU®, CLTC
Having worked with dentists and physicians for decades now, we believe we understand their career trajectory, and with that comes an understanding of their financial trajectory. Most incur a substantial amount of debt to fund their education. Upon graduation, that debt trend shifts as they begin to make money. If this is you, then you know what I mean (and if you are still in training, hopefully this will be your story soon). At some point, you will be able to save money toward future goals. You may purchase your home, perhaps you will start a family and choose to provide opportunities for your children. All of this is possible.
How will your family continue living the way you envisioned?
When all this growth is happening in your life, it’s easy to ignore the potential risks that could get in the way of your vision for the future. Or, you may be so busy with an expanding practice, a growing family, and other initiatives that you simply forget to account for possible disruptions to your financial picture. What if the unexpected happens?
Something I know from personal experience through giving financial advice to many dental and medical professionals is that from a life insurance perspective many of you are woefully underinsured. What does it mean to be underinsured? It may seem obvious, but it basically means that if you were to unexpectedly pass away, your family would not be able to maintain the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed based on your income.
A significant portion of the population is underinsured.
It’s not just dentists and physicians who are underinsured when it comes to life insurance; it’s a big swath of the working population. According to research conducted by the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association (LIMRA) and Life Happens, “Overall, 52% of American adults report owning life insurance, and 41% of adults — both insured and uninsured — say they don’t have sufficient life insurance coverage.”
If you are reading this, chances are high you are a dentist or physician, and it’s possible that you, too, may be among the 41% of the American population that doesn’t have sufficient life insurance coverage. For example, unless there are significant additional assets, a specialist earning say $400,000-500,000 a year may not be appropriately covered with just $2 million of life insurance.
Whether you make more or less than this in annual income is not the question. The point is: when was the last time you sat down to calculate how much insurance you truly need? People tend to buy life insurance in their thirties when they are thinking of having or starting a family. Many never go back to revise that amount as their family grows, or as their income grows.
Private equity has driven up the price of practices.
Another reason to re-evaluate your life insurance coverage has to do with practice values. If you are a partner in private practice, you may have noticed that practice values have gone up dramatically in recent years. This is because private equity firms have entered the dental and medical space and have started acquiring practices, thereby driving up prices. If you were to have a valuation done on your practice, and it showed an increase in value, that should propel you to increase your life insurance coverage to adequately fund your buy-sell agreement.
Other things that have been trending upwards in the past few years are incomes – which ties into another upward trending factor, namely inflation. Rising inflation means that the cost of everything is going up, and with it naturally the replacement cost of everything in your life is going up. Your life insurance policies need to be updated to reflect these increases in price.
How do you know how much life insurance you need?
You may ask, how does one calculate one’s life insurance needs? Without getting into too detailed of a calculation here, I’d say the simplest answer is your life insurance need is the amount of money your family will need in the future to live minus the assets (including retirement plans) and life insurance you currently have. This will give you a ballpark number, it’s a starting point. If you work with a financial professional, they will ask you how much you’re saving, how much taxes you’re paying, what assets you have and how they are invested. That will give you a more accurate picture.
Another way to look at this is to ask, in your current life – how much are you saving, versus spending (and that includes taxes, because taxes reflect money that you are not saving). Whatever you make in income, if you are spending 80% and saving 20%, that “spending” column needs to be replaced in the unfortunate event that you are no longer here to make that money. That 80% of your income today needs to be produced plus inflation protection for the rest of your spouse’s life, and it needs to provide for the amount you want to provide for your children’s educational needs, as well as legacy desires, if you have any. Typically, we do not include your home as an asset in these calculations because if you pass away, your family will still need a place to live and will likely incur costs associated with this expense. Anyway, you do the math, and you will probably realize that you are underinsured.
Review your existing life insurance coverage with an experienced professional
The best gift you can give yourself and your loved ones is to set up a meeting with an insurance professional to accurately calculate your life insurance need. From there, if you identify that you are underinsured, you can look at what is the right kind of insurance for you. Too many people get caught up in the question of “what kind of insurance should I buy?” and then abandon it altogether because they don’t understand the different products or they get overwhelmed by price-shopping, etc. The best place to begin is to figure out how much you need. Once you know that, you can move to the next step of determining how best to fill your insurance coverage gap.
If you have any questions about this, feel free to reach out to me!
Shawn Johnson is Vice President, Business Development, Treloar & Heisel, Inc.; CA Insurance Lic. # 0M88197
AR Insurance Lic #3667701
About Treloar & Heisel
Treloar & Heisel, an EPIC Company, is a financial services provider to dental and medical professionals across the country. We assist thousands of clients from residency through retirement and strive to deliver the highest level of service with custom-tailored advice and a strong national network.
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