Income Protection
Protecting your earning power — disability coverage sized to your real income, not just what a group plan caps at. Especially for physicians and high earners whose group LTD falls short.
Start with your situation
A few quick taps make the first conversation specific to your occupation, income, and what group coverage actually leaves exposed. Nothing is sent until you add your contact details on the next step. Prefer to read first? The detail is just below.
Your occupation
Your income structure
Current disability coverage
For physicians: true own-occupation coverage?
What's prompting this?
Physician? The full guide covers own-occupation, the riders that matter, issue and participation limits, cost, and the resident GSI window: Physician disability insurance: what actually matters →
Why income protection matters
Your ability to earn is usually your largest asset, and it's the one most people insure least. Group long-term disability feels like enough until you read the fine print: it typically covers only base salary, caps at a monthly dollar figure well below a high earner's income, and is taxable when the employer pays the premium — so the real replacement rate can be a fraction of what you'd expect.
For physicians the definition matters even more. A true specialty own-occupation policy pays if you can't perform your own specialty, even if you could work in another role — a distinction a generic policy quietly omits.
What this planning area covers
We work on individual disability coverage that supplements a group plan and is sized to your total compensation, not just base. For physicians, that means specialty own-occupation coverage; for residents and new attendings, it often means using the guaranteed-standard-issue window before it closes.
Honest framing: coverage is limited by what carriers will issue for your income and occupation class, and that ceiling is real. We size to it honestly rather than illustrate a number that can't be placed.
How we approach the conversation
The starting point is what your group coverage actually replaces after the cap and after tax, measured against your real income. That gap is the thing to close. From there, how much individual coverage can be issued depends on carrier issue and participation limits for your class, which we determine with stacked illustrations across carriers.
We talk trade-offs plainly: definitions, riders, benefit and elimination periods, and the difference between what looks good on an illustration and what a carrier will actually underwrite.
Where insurance ends and other professionals begin
Comprehensive financial planning is the work of your advisor and CPA. We focus on the income-protection piece and how it fits the rest. We coordinate with them; we do not replace them.