Life Happens — the organization formerly known as the LIFE Foundation — will be organizing another great Disability Insurance Awareness Month campaign in May.
The Council for Disability Awareness (CDA) will do its part to supply statistics illustrating how common disability is and why workers need to protect their incomes.
Agents and brokers will go out and try to beat the bushes for the uninsured, the underinsured, and people who respond with a blank look when asked about their income protection arrangements. Anyone who feels the force of that campaign will probably wonder what all the fuss is about.
Of course, some people figure out how to budget for income protection. Some, sadly, don't, or truly can't. But we all know we should do that. Right?
No. Absolutely not. Not at all. I went into reporting, rather than sales, because I seem to have a personality that sucks product interest out of the universe rather than adding to it. When I try to tell people things such as, "You know, you could try saving money for retirement by buying a target-date retirement fund," or, "You know, if you can, it's a great idea to insure your income," they look at me as if I'd recommended that they trade in their cars for magic carpets.
If I tried to tell the people around me, "You know, lean turkey is actually healthier than pure arsenic," they would assume I was trying to get them to eat some kind of crazy health food poison. My utter failure as a positive influencer has hit me three times in my life.
Once was when a self-employed relative fell off a ladder, suffered a head injury, enjoyed a nearly miraculous recovery from a coma, but emerged with problems that interfered with his ability to work — and no income protection insurance, even though his uncle-in-law helped invent the concept of association life and disability insurance.
