Turn your questions
into a clear next step.
Organize a conversation around your career. Explore a household cash-flow scenario. Leave with something useful to review.
Better questions.
A more useful conversation.
Choose three options to organize the questions you bring to an advisor.
Your discussion brief
Questions to bring
Gather privately
Keep exploring
An educational checklist based on your selections. It does not assess eligibility or recommend a policy. Do not send medical records through a general enquiry form.
A useful checklist for any starting point
- Gather your current benefit booklets and individual policy contracts.
- Write down the work you do and the household commitments you want to discuss.
- Ask about definitions, limitations, costs, and what changes when you move jobs.
- Check the advisor’s state licensing, insurer relationships, and compensation.
If income paused,
what would the gap be?
Explore a simplified monthly budget scenario. Use amounts in today’s dollars that would actually be available to spend.
Your illustrative scenario
This is arithmetic using your assumptions, not an insurance benefit or coverage recommendation. It assumes constant spending and income, immediate access to savings, and no inflation, investment returns, or new costs. Taxes, benefit waiting periods, claim decisions, offsets, and limits are not calculated. A $0 gap does not mean you have enough insurance.
See the method and a worked example
Monthly gap = monthly spending − continuing spendable income, with a minimum of $0. Savings runway = available savings ÷ monthly gap, rounded down to one decimal place. When the gap is $0, no runway is calculated.
Example only: $8,000 spending − $2,000 continuing income = a $6,000 monthly gap. $24,000 savings ÷ $6,000 = 4.0 months. This is not a suggested budget or coverage amount.
Sources
Drs Choices summarizes and compares these sources on this page. Each entry links to the original if you want to verify the wording yourself.
NAIC: Comparing disability insurance
View original source for “NAIC: Comparing disability insurance” (opens in a new tab)NAIC: Life insurance consumer guide
View original source for “NAIC: Life insurance consumer guide” (opens in a new tab)
A thoughtful decision
starts with the actual terms.
Use your brief alongside current policy documents and a conversation with an appropriately licensed advisor.