Teachers and income protection/critical illness.

havingaball74

I am a teacher. I have 6 months full and 6 months half pay. I also have a critical illness and life insurance policy. I am now wondering whether I should also get income protection (deferred for 52 weeks/half pay/own occupation). All serious illnesses are covered by my critical illness policy and I am questioning whether therefore whether it is worth getting the extra cover and paying the extra premiums? Also how easy would it be to get medical retirement through teacher pensions if the worst came to the worst and I permanently couldn't teach?
Should I get both? Cancel the CI and take out IP instead? Thanks in advance.

Weighty1

Personally, I'd have both in an ideal world (I do!)

What's the most common reason for teachers going off work.............stress, probably. Your critical illness plan wouldn't cover that whereas an income protection plan would, at least the long term IP would, provided you've not got a history of mental health issues.

In addition to that, how much critical illness cover do you have? Most people cover their mortgage so in the event of a claim you can repay your mortgage but how do you then pay for food, council tax, gas, water, electric, the car etc etc etc.

You could look at a policy with a split deferred period so that you start to receive an income after 6-months to top up your 1/2 pay and then a 2nd element starts to pay out after 12-months when the sick pay stops altogether. A 6-month deferred period is often only very slightly more expensive than a 12-month deferred period but would maximise the chance of you claiming on the plan and therefore gaining some actual benefit from it.

Aretnap

havingaball74 wrote: »

All serious illnesses are covered by my critical illness policy...

Really? Usually there's a list of conditions, of specified severity, which will result in a payout - and if your condition isn't on the list there's no payout, no matter how severe it is. The list covers quite a few serious illnesses - but it's by no means comprehensive.

It's worth remembering that many of the most common reasons for long term absence from work are not the dramatic things that we traditionally think of as serious illnesses like heart attacks and cancer, but more "mundane" things like stress/depression/other mental health issues, and back pain/other musculoskeletal problems. They would not tend to be covered by a standard critical illness policy.

Also as above consider how much CI cover you actually have, and how long it would last if you were off work indefinitely. A mortgage sized amount of money, say £250K, may sound like a fortune, but if you have to stop working in your 40s and have another 25 years to go to retirement then £10K/year isn't going to buy you a great quality of life.

CI cover has its place and the ideal would be to have both critical illness and income protection, but if I had to choose between them I'd choose income protection.

Quentin

Weighty1 wrote: »

Personally, I'd have both in an ideal world (I do!)

What's the most common reason for teachers going off work.............stress, probably. Your critical illness plan would cover that ...

Highly unlikely!!

Weighty1

Quentin wrote: »

Highly unlikely!!

I think if you'd have read the full post it was fairly obvious that I meant "wouldN'T".

Now where's that roll-eyes emoji.....

ACG

Income protection for a teacher is quite expensive if you go beyond age 55. As weighty says, stress is a massive payout for teachers. If you have the budget, go for it. If your budget is a little short, maybe look at an earlier end date/lower cover amount.

parking_question_chap

Weighty1 wrote: »

I think if you'd have read the full post it was fairly obvious that I meant "wouldN'T".

Now where's that roll-eyes emoji.....

Is it always somebody elses fault that you didn`t proof read?

Weighty1

parking_question_chap wrote: »

Is it always somebody elses fault that you didn`t proof read?

Not at all, but on the basis that it's FREE input I'm giving I shouldn't be called to task on every error which could easily be worked out had the post but read in full and not taken completely out of context.

Chris_Pollard

"Also how easy would it be to get medical retirement through teacher pensions if the worst came to the worst and I permanently couldn't teach?"

Im not sure what you are asking - is the process easy? Are the criteria strict? Early retirement due to ill health would normally require a substantial amount of medical and third party expert information to evidence that the medical condition was permanent, unlikely to ever improve and rendered the person totally incapable of performing their occupation ever again.

It has not been uncommon for some local authorities to take a particularly lenient view over the severity and the permanence of a condition when it suits their own agenda or purposes, and the conclusion reached may not be shared by insurers or other parties. This is a point of some contention where "lifestyle" early retirement choices are made that are in part, but not wholly, supported by a medical condition.

I'm not sure this is a particularly helpful response, but if you are able to be more specific about the question, I'll have another go......