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Risk Assessment and Insurance

The best financial plan can be completely derailed by an unexpected impact such as losing your job, suffering a disability, needing long-term care, or even death.  While these are often not easy subjects to discuss, we believe it is critical to protect yourself, your family, and your savings against the risk of a catastrophic event.  Many people believe that they have the right amount of insurance, but we have found that is rarely the case.  Often the issue is not having enough insurance of the right type to completely address the financial consequences of a negative impact.  This can result from a lack of knowledge about the different types of insurance products and their costs, never having projected what the actual needs would be, or a natural tendency to simply avoid thinking about something really bad happening.  In other cases, people can have too much insurance, for example because their children are now grown and no longer reliant on them, and the premiums they are paying could be better used in other ways.  Whatever the situation, we can help you work through all these roadblocks and develop a sound, straightforward plan for how you will protect yourself and your loved ones.  

The most common types of insurance to protect you and your family include:

  • Emergency fund – making sure you have enough cash or liquid assets to cover major expenses such as a new roof on your home, and enough to pay your bills if you should lose your job for the period of time you think it would take to find a new one – we can help you decide how large your emergency fund should be
  • Life insurance – if there is a person or people that will be impacted financially by your death, we can help you figure out if a term or a permanent policy is most appropriate and how much the benefit should be
  • Medical insurance, FSAs and HSAs – we can help you coordinate your plan deductible and costs with funding a tax-advantaged savings account
  • Disability insurance – often this benefit is provided through your employer but benefits can vary – we can help you understand how the coverage you have will work and if it makes sense to supplement it
  • Long-term care insurance – while it can be expensive, having long-term care insurance can give you choices about where you live and who cares for you as you age that can be really valuable – we can help you figure out when you should initiate a policy, how much coverage to get and what features to include

Bring us your current policies to review and we will provide you with an assessment of any gaps or over-coverage that we find.