This Nurse Demystifies Disability Insurance - Ep. 27
Nicholas Mancuso from PolicyGenius joins us to discuss disability insurance and why it’s a must especially for those on the path to financial independence. Nicholas breaks down policy types and what you should look for in your coverage through your employer. Bottom line: we can’t afford to not have it. Check out Policygenius for quotes and more information about disability insurance.
Get Disability Insurance in place TODAY
Please join me here, and follow me on social media, Instagram and Facebook.
Join the Financially Intentional community and get access to resources to guide you on the path to Financial Freedom.
Oh and please subscribe and leave a review on whatever app you're using to stream this podcast.
Stay connected:
Join the NOF Facebook group
To read the full show notes, visit www.nursesonfirepodcast.com/podcast
How to share a podcast
How to subscribe, rate and review a podcast
To learn more about the giveaway, click here
I’d love for you to join me at the Financial Freedom Summit in St. Louis May 1-3, 2020
TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy: 03:28 I want to welcome Nicholas Mancuso to the Nurses on FIRE Podcast. Nicholas is an insurance specialist at Policygenius and... Well, actually I don't even know if that's your real role. So, I'll go ahead and let you introduce yourself, explain what you do at Policygenius and we are going to discuss all things about disability insurance. So, I am super honored to have you here Nicholas and congratulations on getting engaged yesterday on Christmas.
Nicholas Mancuso: 03:59 Thank you so much. Yup, it's a great time getting engaged. I'm really happy to be engaged now. But yeah, my name is Nicholas Mancuso. I am the Senior Operations Manager for disability and advanced planning at Policygenius. I've been working in insurance for about six to seven years already. I was a financial advisor before I came here and I brought my skills to Policygenius and develop the marketplace that we have.
Naseema McElroy: 04:21 That's awesome. So personally, how do you find working on this side in the insurance world versus doing financial planning?
Nicholas Mancuso: 04:31 Sure. I think, well it's still considered financial planning and we're still helping people to do what we want, but we're a little bit more specialized in the insurance aspect. Personally, I love the disability insurance. When I was 27 years old, I actually fell and broke my hip singing karaoke. So I was disabled for about four and a half months. I went through it by myself. So insurance kind of holds a soft spot in my heart. I think that when we're doing a financial plan, it's important to have this as the backbone to ensure success. And that's why I'm here. And that's why I like insurance. You can actually help people and do the right thing for them and get their financial plans to stay on track.
Naseema McElroy: 05:06 Yes. And I have to ask, what were you singing in order to break your hip?
Nicholas Mancuso: 05:11 Sure. So, it was "I Want It That Way" by Backstreet Boys. I was doing what's called the eight basic boy band dance moves, which are point, grab, pull in, throw away, off the hands, would you like some chips, swim and yes. And then I slipped and fell and broke my hip.
Naseema McElroy: 05:32 You are good. Those moves are really good. So, I'm hoping everybody is watching on the YouTube channel 'cause Nicholas has those moves. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about disability insurance. So obviously, this podcast is for nurses on the path to financial independence and I want you to explain why disability insurance is a critical part of financial independence, FIRE planning.
Nicholas Mancuso: 06:00 Sure. So, specifically with FIRE planning and talking to that aspect, the thing that we want to do more in FIRE planning is to put as much away as possible so we can achieve this goal early, right? We're not staggering things 'til we get to retirement. The goal is to retire early. So in order to do that, we have to stay on target and on the trajectory to what we're going to accomplish. If something comes up to derail that target, we may not end up where we want to be. So in this matter, when we are FIRE planning, what we're doing is we're banking on accomplishing our goals. If something comes to derail that we need to prevent that from messing with our trajectory. So with insurances, specifically life insurance's for the rest of our family, but disability insurance is the more kind of like selfish insurance. This is directly going to impact me. I need to ensure that my income is going to continue no matter what so I can get to the peak of the mountain that I intend to climb.
Naseema McElroy: 06:49 Yes. I love that. I like that, the selfish insurance. But it's really not because if you ain't bringing in no money, ain't nobody eating. No, God. I'm just saying over here that it's going to drastically affect a lot of people.
Nicholas Mancuso: 07:05 Oh yeah, 100%. I mean if your family is going to depend on you and everyone who depends on you as well. But don't you have to depend on you if you're still alive and you can't work.
Naseema McElroy: 07:12 Yes. So I love that. I like the way that you differentiate it between life insurance, which is after you're gone. If something happened to you, your family is being taken care of. But this is in the present and yes we all are going to die, but the chances that we're going to use disability insurance is pretty common. Can you talk about how often people usually have to take out these policies and like the age ranges of people 'cause you think about disability, you think about "Oh I'm probably not going to use that. Maybe that's for older people."
Nicholas Mancuso: 07:42 Sure. Actually, disability insurance is the older you get, the less you need it because the window to get towards retirement starts to get smaller and smaller. Disability insurance is extremely important the longer you have to go because it actually increases the amount that you can be paid. The age range policy is pretty much if you're in your working years, usually, between 22 to 65 is where the age range of payment can be. It can extend to 67 or 70 depending on the policy you purchase, but usually, you can't purchase it past the age of 61. What you want to do is really kind of get it while you're young, when the price is very low and it can lock in and that if something happens to derail you aren't completely off of where you need to be considering that the average length of a disability claim is 34 months but they can extend way longer. Shocking number is actually one in four people are disabled during their working years.
Naseema McElroy: 08:34 Wow. And like you had to use it in your twenties. So you never know. So super critical.
Nicholas Mancuso: 08:42 And unfortunately, I did not have it when I was disabled and I had used all of my liquid savings and hit a catastrophic health care plan almost immediately because I was 27 years old and didn't have very good health care. So that deductible was really high and it was a struggle and I was lucky that I didn't have anybody else depending on me at that time as well.
Naseema McElroy: 08:59 Can you walk us through, if you did have a policy in place, what would that look like? Like how would you initiate that policy? What is the elimination period and so on and so forth for people to understand like the actual application of disability policy?
Nicholas Mancuso: 09:17 Sure. So I guess based on how long I was out of work for and disabled for, I would have triggered two different policies. The first would have been short term disability policy, which means people have with their employer. It would have kicked in typically around either after seven days or 14 days, sometimes eight days, really depending on the type of policy your employer has. But once I was out of work for that long, I would have gone to the doctor. The doctor would have justified that I was unable to do the duties of my job and therefore I was disabled and the payments would have started. Those policies, group policies can either last 90 days to 180 days. Sometimes they call them in weeks, so 26 weeks, but once we crossed that threshold, a long term disability policy would then kick in. This is somewhere around 90 days of elimination, meaning how long you have to be out of work or 180 days. Doesn't necessarily have to be consecutive. It does have to be within what's called an accumulation period. So if I tried to go back to work for two days and all of a sudden it didn't work, it doesn't restart the clock, but it would have kicked over to the long term disability and that would have paid tax-free benefits to me, typically 60% of my gross income or to supplement my insurance until I fully recovered and went back to work in the event I didn't fully recover and I went back to work part-time and I was limited due to the disability. A partial payout could have happened. So there's a lot of different ways that these policies can be activated, but the goal is to replace your take-home income. That is the ultimate goal so that we use 100% of our cash flow for something that I'm not making kind of trade-offs of where I'm going to apply my money, I'm going to be able to continue fully on my trajectory.
Naseema McElroy: 10:49 So at that age, I'm assuming that the reason why you didn't have a disability insurance say through your employer is because it just wasn't something that your employer offered. Like can you talk to us about what employers usually offer for employees versus supplemental insurance or what you buy on the marketplace on your own?
Nicholas Mancuso: 11:09 Sure. So they can have insurance by the way. I was 10 99. So I was an independent contractor at the time. Even if my employer offered benefits, I was not eligible. But now, employers offer different types of coverage and it depends where you are. Some States require short-term disability to be offered if you have any employees such as New York, New Jersey I believe from Mod California has a beautiful short-term policy through the state. And then long-term disability really kind of varies. It depends on the industry that you're working in. Health care is actually very good at offering group policies for their employees, but when you start to get into the private sector in small businesses, maybe not as much because those group benefits are not as robust or federally required such as health care. So it can really differ. The one major thing about employer-sponsored policies is that your employers are paying for it. So the IRS, I like to say is like a shadow and it's always going to peak out when the sun comes up. And the thing we have to remember is the IRS, the government wants their money. So if your employer is paying this benefit on your behalf and then you receive a benefit from it, they're going to look at that as income and it's going to be taxed. Employer policies, if they're replacing 60% of your gross that's supposed to be after-tax, whoever your employers are paying for it, it will now be reduced further by taxes. And it leaves a significant gap in our cash flow, especially in FIRE planning, where we're trying to save as much as possible and we're keeping our trajectory in order to hit this timeline that we set forward for ourselves. In the event that the disability, we don't want 40% of our gross, we want the full 66 or as much as we can get as close to taking home as possible so that our allocation is on par with where we had it before the disability.
Nicholas Mancuso: 12:52 And that's where supplemental insurance comes in. What we want to do is bridge the gap in the taxable nature of your group benefits if it's completely employer-paid. Some benefits offer options where you can pay into it and buy it up, maybe increase the benefit amount or you can pay the taxes on it. And there are some upsides and downsides to that, including portability and other things. [Naseema: Portability just means taking the coverage with you if you lead them, play it.] Correct. So on average, somebody will change jobs around seven times in their life. Like I said, not every employer will offer coverage and then not every employment situation such as 1099 which will allow you to be eligible for those. So portability is a really important feature of insurance where you can take this with you as you progress in your career.
Naseema McElroy: 13:36 So a lot of my nurses that listen to this podcast are travelers or per diem or 1099 employees. And I know that the availability of coverage will depend on the specific employer at the time and if they're working within an agency. But for you, if you, like for example, you were a totally 1099 so you didn't have the coverage through your employer, then you would just have to buy a supplemental policy, right?
Nicholas Mancuso: 14:05 Correct. So I would have gotten a full individual policy. Correct. Supplemental policies and individual policies are essentially the same thing. The only difference is the amount of benefit that you receive is either designed to supplement your group or it's your full income replacement. The thing is insurance companies won't allow you to purchase more than a certain percentage of your income. They don't want you to be worth more disabled and unable to work. They don't want you to purposely go out and get disabled and get a raise or something, so they're going to limit you there and that's why the supplemental policies are actually a great feature for people who have group policies. They aren't 100% portable. They are yours to take with you. The definitions are typically stronger and it gets you to that full income replacement that you're looking for to keep trajectory goal.
Naseema McElroy: 14:47 Awesome. Got that. I have a buy-up policy for my coverage for my group coverage right now and also have a supplemental policy that's totally portable and I can't say that I was particularly versed on what that all meant and if I even needed it. But now I'm very convinced that it's super important for me to have, especially because my family so heavily depends on my income and so does my business and everything else. So how does somebody know how much insurance they need or if they need insurance in general, disability insurance that is?
Nicholas Mancuso: 15:23 Sure. So the need for disability insurance is really easy to determine. One is do we depend on our income to save and invest and retire eventually because one day it's going to stop and usually that's when we have enough to retire, hopefully. And if we're dependent on this income to keep coming in, then we need to have some type of protection there to keep it. What I like to say and compare it to is the goose and the golden egg, you know, if you had the choice to get one of the other, would you rather have the goose and the golden egg. The golden egg is a great thing to have, but if something were to happen, you would have to spend that egg and the nice thing about having the goose is that it's going to keep laying these eggs. That's what I like to think of disability insurance.
Nicholas Mancuso: 16:03 If you think of your income as your goose and you're relying on that to lay eggs, we probably need to talk about getting full coverage here. In terms of calculating enough benefit for us, if specifically we're doing a FIRE plan, we need to consider what the breakdown of our savings are, how much we're putting away, how much we're using for base benefits. If you rely on let's say just a group policy and it may be taxable, where is the tradeoff going to come or are we going to lower the savings amount and does it set our target further out? Are we going to dial back expenses or are we going to keep things where they are? If we're keeping things where they are, we should have full income protection, meaning roughly 66% of our income in post-tax dollars. So that means non-taxable benefit. That's the replacement that we're trying to get entirely. So essentially, if you're making $100,000 a year for easy math, roughly, we want to take home $66,000 a month or five $66,000 a year or $5,500 a month in tax-free benefit.
Naseema McElroy: 17:07 And I think it's important that you're talking about post-tax benefits versus pre-tax benefits because like you mentioned earlier, if you're getting your policy through your employer, that benefit is taxable unless you buy a buy-up and then you know, it kind of replaces more of your income. But chances are it's not going to meet that 66%, correct, after taxes.
Nicholas Mancuso: 17:28 The buy-up, if you're only working at that employer and you're not per diem anywhere else, or you don't have 10 99 income anywhere else, it should replace your full income. However, if we're working outside of our employer and these kinds of independent or per diem roles, that's not included in your group benefits. So we're going to have an income gap there and we should have supplements.
Naseema McElroy: 17:47 Got you. Okay. So that's where a supplemental definitely is essential. Can you talk about group coverage and the minimum amount of hours somebody needs to work? I have a lot of nurses that are per diem and you know they kinda just work minimum shifts. How many hours, like per pay period per month or however it's defined. Do nurses need to work in order to typically qualify for group coverage?
Nicholas Mancuso: 18:12 So there's a slight dependency on your employer for that one. Certain employers have different rules here and depend on the plan. We like to see between an average of 30 to 32 hours per week. Now, it depends on where your scheduling comes in because I know in my past a lot of my nurse friends like to schedule themselves to have like as much time off in a row together and then kind of work straight like 1212 or all 12 so that they can kind of take vacations or live the life that they want to live. And I think that as long as it kind of works out for an average that you could be okay, but really the person to ask for that, and I don't want to give any definitive. It would be your HR specialist at the hospital who would know more about the individual plan that you have there.
Naseema McElroy: 18:59 Nice. Okay. Yeah, so check with HR in regards to that. But as long as you're almost meeting full time hours, basically, you qualify for group coverage. Other than that, you probably need to be looking at getting an individual disability policy if you're just working kind of minimum shifts if you're not covering like if you're just making work in somewhere just to meet the minimum requirements, you probably need to have your own supplemental insurance. Does that sound right?
Nicholas Mancuso: 19:25 Yeah, I mean individual supplemental insurance also has hourly requirements. Some carriers, the minimum is 24 hours on average per week, which is one of the lowest guidelines. One of the mobile carriers for nurses happens to be surety and I think they're at 30 hours per week is the minimum for them.
Naseema McElroy: 19:43 Okay, so let's talk about how people can go about applying for disability insurance. Let's talk about Policygenius in in particular and why should we use Policygenius?
Nicholas Mancuso: 19:56 Sure. Policygenius is an online marketplace and what we do is we shop out to the top carriers in the industry to help you get the best deal for you because not everybody is in the same boat or with the same occupation or the same working features or in the same health or age. We want to really make sure that we have your full profile and that we can get you the best deal for you. So what we're going to do is for disability insurance, we work with 10 of the top carriers in the industry and we really want to take your profile, shop it out and see who's the best features for you. We'll work with you to consult on the specific design that's right for your financial profile. Maybe you are FIRE planning and we want to set that benefit period a little bit lower than 2865 maybe in 10 years because that's our target retirement date. We'll help you design the policies. We'll help educate you on what it is that you're actually purchasing. We want you to know what you're getting and we want you to feel good about it. And as brokers, that's where we're uniquely capable is that we don't work for any individual carrier. We're actually commissioned free as agents and that's done purposely to keep us unbiased and carrier agnostic. But what we want to do is we want to make a good recommendation for you, educate you on what you're purchasing and help you reach your financial trajectory.
Naseema McElroy: 21:08 So I think that's awesome because if you are kind of like mystified by kind of this whole disability insurance world like I know that I totally was until very recently and so it's still super confusing. I think that Policygenius is an excellent platform to be able to access so that you can get your questions answered and know that you can have unbiased support in regards in making sure that you get the coverage that you need, not the coverage that is recommended because of some kind of incentive that another agent may or may not have. I mean we always like to think that people have our best interest at heart, but it's always a bonus to know that you are not commissioned by the products individually as agents there. And so, there's that guarantee that you're working for our best interests. So that's awesome. And I love Policygenius as a platform in general because Policygenius does not just offer disability insurance, they offer life insurance and what else you guys offer?
Nicholas Mancuso: 22:12 We offer a home and auto insurance as well.
Naseema McElroy: 22:15 It's an excellent platform to shop. Most of your insurance saves mostly the insurance needs that you need. Everybody needs. I think it's a great company. I personally have used Policygenius and I've found it super duper affordable and I often use the platform 'cause I always like to see if I'm being charged too much. So I do at least a once a year assessment of how much I'm paying for things and if I can optimize that better and I can just do that very quickly over their platform. And what I love about the platform is you won't have 50 million salespeople calling you up and blowing you up, send you emails, just information is right there. No hassle, no haggle. I think it's an excellent platform. I think everybody needs disability insurance and that's why I'm super, super enthusiastic to have you on to discuss this because I couldn't have explained it so articulately as you because like I said this world is new to me, but I knew it was super important for me and for my family. I know it's super important for all my nurses and other people in my community that may need this. So what else do we need to cover? I think we pretty much cover, Oh you know what, one more thing I did want to ask you about is social security. So the difference between having your long term disability policy and what social security offers.
Nicholas Mancuso: 23:38 So social security is really based on how much you've been contributing towards it over time. Somebody who's just starting might not have as much in benefits as somebody who's been contributing to social security for years and years. In addition to that, one of the major difference here is definition of disability. What defines me as disabled. To start there, there's about four different definitions. There's one called any occupation, meaning that if I can perform the duties of any occupation, I'm not disabled. The second is what typical group policies are, which is called two year own occ. Meaning if you can't do the duties of your own occupation for the first three years of disability, you are disabled. After those three years you have to be unable to do within reason, any occupation. So based off of education and age and skill. I mean, they're not gonna expect you to go from being a nurse to rocket scientists flying to the moon.
Nicholas Mancuso: 24:31 Do you know what I mean? Like within reason, like if you can't perform the duties of your job, they're also not gonna expect you to go be a plumber. Like they want you to be relatively close to the same occupation. The third definition is called occupation. Meaning if you can't do the duties of your occupation and you're not working anywhere else and earning an income, you are disabled, which is a base definition of most individual policies. And then the strongest definition, which is what we like to put on policies, is if you cannot do the duties of your occupation, you are disabled. Even if you work in another field. So let's say as a nurse, you can no longer be bedside. However, you can work at a school and teach and help develop a new generation of nurses. You are technically not in your occupation anymore.
Nicholas Mancuso: 25:16 You can still receive disability claims and work and receive your income. Social security is the any occ definition, meaning that if you can work at all, you are not disabled. Actually, most people are actually denied claims on their first attempt to receive social security benefits. It's very, very hard to qualify for. What we want to do is not necessarily rely on social security to force us into the benefits early or have to fall that election. Either what you want is something that's going to protect you fully and also not be offset by social security in the event that you are fully disabled. It doesn't knock you out of eligibility for this benefit, so you can actually receive both. If social security pays out, it does not reduce or it does not have to reduce your individual payout and you can get that social security benefit on top.
Naseema McElroy: 26:06 But isn't there like an offset provision? Can you explain that? Like how does that work if you're receiving both benefits?
Nicholas Mancuso: 26:12 Sure, so in certain occupations, it's forced. In certain, it's an optional benefit, but essentially there is a rider that is attached to policies. Some call it social supplemental disability insurance rider, meaning that a certain portion of that benefit can be offset by social security payouts in the event that social security gives you money. So again, they don't want you worth more than disabled, unable to work. So if social security pays out, they will reduce the benefits that you receive from your individual policy. This is an optional benefit that you can put on your policy and it will reduce the cost slightly. But again, it comes at a trade-off.
Naseema McElroy: 26:47 Okay. So like you were talking about working as a professor in a nursing school while you're receiving benefits. Would you working as a professor reduce the amount of benefits you received?
Nicholas Mancuso: 27:01 So for a true individual policy with full on occupation, no it won't because the duties are vastly different.
Naseema McElroy: 27:09 But it depends on how that policy is written, right? Like that's, those are the kind of policies that you guys trade it. Right? Right,
Nicholas Mancuso: 27:16 Correct. So for individual policies, we do recommend own occupation. We want to make sure that just because you're disabled doesn't mean you can't advance your career or do something. I know myself, I don't still, well as evidence by me going out and breaking my hip at karaoke, but I also don't dance well, but I would want to do something with myself and I would get bored easily. In the event of a disability, I want to make sure that I'm able to kind of pursue my passions and work if I want to and it's not going to necessarily knock me out of the income that I would have otherwise been making had I been able to do these other duties. When we think of nurses who, especially are bedside, we're concerned with not only the ability to like lift patients and do these manual duties, but we're also concerned with our personal immune system and our health around 15 to 19% of claims are cancer. In the event you have a compromised immune system, you are not going to be able to work bedside.
Naseema McElroy: 28:08 So how are group policies typically classified?
Nicholas Mancuso: 28:14 It depends on the hospital system that you work in or your employer. Some group policies can be true on the occupation for the duration. Some policies can be two-year own occ and then any occupation thereafter. It really depends on the benefits that your payroll and your HR team have negotiated or the company itself has negotiated with the carriers. Also, those policies can change from year to year depending on who they sign up for. So not exactly portable or guaranteed in terms of those benefits. It really depends on the type of group policy you have, but sometimes they can be two-year own occupation. Sometimes they can be three-year own occupation and any thereafter and even sometimes it can differ depending on what position you hold in that hospital system.
Naseema McElroy: 28:59 Okay, got you. So that's another reason to check with your HR specialist around this, but that is also a reason to have your own supplemental policy. Right. Because those are the definitions you're going to make sure that we have in place to make sure that we can get our coverage if we're not able to perform our duties, our own occupation duties. Right. It's so confusing. I'm like own occupation, any occupation what does that mean okay. If anybody is confused, don't be ashamed. Okay. 'Cause this is a lot to understand.
Nicholas Mancuso: 29:35 If you're confused, we're happy to discuss things. We can be reached by phone, chat, anything that you want at policygenius.com and we're happy to just help educate and explain to you what you need for your policies.
Naseema McElroy: 29:47 No, I actually love it cause I was in just doing research for this interview, I was like confused about something and I just hit the chat function. You know sometimes when you do chat it's like bots are there, it's people that are like on the script and like they don't really understand what's going on. But the person who I chatted with was super informative and even in answering my question, she really went into depth to make sure that I was understanding what I was asking. And so I was like super duper impressed with just the chat functionality. Not to mention just the wealth of knowledge that I've received from, you know, people like Nicholas who I am fortunate to have contact with. But yeah, Policygenius just has been an amazing platform for me. So if you have any questions, if you're ever confused, I really feel like this is an excellent resource for you to have, even if you still haven't decided on purchasing any policies, just to know that you have all these people with such a great wealth of knowledge but also are unbiased in the policies that they're offering. I feel like it's super duper beneficial for anybody and especially my nurses out there. Before we wrap up, can you talk about a couple of the myths and misconceptions that you hear about disability insurance?
Nicholas Mancuso: 31:06 Sure. So one of the big myths about disability insurance is that people think that if they have a ton of savings, they don't need it. What I always like to say is a ton of savings can be a very relative thing. We want to make sure that we're ensuring those savings to be allocated to what we intend them for. So if we are using those savings to such as retire early, we don't necessarily want to spend them to live now if we should be using our income to continue those savings. So this idea of self-insurance is non-existent until we are out of the accumulation phase of our lives and it's one of those things where people say, I don't need this right now. I have this to hold me over. Another thing is that people have this assumption of like this is a waste because what if I don't need it?
Nicholas Mancuso: 31:51 And to that, I like to say insurance is like a seat belt. We don't get in our car and put our seat belt on expecting to get into an accident, nor are we mad at the seat belt and putting for putting it on if we didn't get into an accident. The truth is it's there if something happens and that's what it's supposed to do, you don't want to have to use it. It's actually a good thing to never have to use the policy that you've purchased. That mentality is kind of how I like to look at insurances and I think it's one of the misconceptions about insurance is that it's a waste. That seat belt and putting it on was not waste just because you didn't get into an accident. It was there to do its job and it did. What it would need to do is to be that seat belt. It's a be that safety net for you.
Naseema McElroy: 32:34 I love it and I'm super happy that I have it. Got my seat belt on y'all. Yeah. All right Nicholas, anything else you want to share with the Nurses on Fire community?
Nicholas Mancuso: 32:45 Sure. One thing that is specific to FIRE planning and the one thing I'd like to say is please speak to an advisor. Disability insurance policies are very adjustable. There's a lot of different levers we can pull in terms of writer's benefit amount, elimination periods, which can be adjusted to the kind of form with the group benefits that you might have such as the short term disability or even the ones that you have through the state. There's a lot of levers that we can pull to lower the cost in this so you can actually put more money into savings. So when you apply for something and you see a base price, that doesn't mean that's what it's been said. There's a lot of different things that we can do, especially with FIRE planning and maybe reducing that benefit period to more line up with your perceived retirement target in terms of age. We definitely want to work with you to kind of get things into a budget that we can. There are no one size fits all for these policies. There is a best practice and a recommendation, but it does need to be tailored to your profile. We do strongly recommend that you work with an advisor who is knowledgeable and can help you save money while you protect your money.
Naseema McElroy: 33:47 So, and you're saying working with an advisor, can people ask an advisor through Policygenius?
Nicholas Mancuso: 33:53 Absolutely. The same people that we spoke about on those chat features are the same people that would be speaking on the phone. Our agents are extremely knowledgeable and happy to work and educate with anyone who comes through that is looking to protect their goose.
Naseema McElroy: 34:06 Awesome. Thank you so much Nicholas. This has been great. I never thought I would have such a good time talking about disability insurance, but this has been so much fun and I especially love your dance moves. Keep it up, but don't break your hip again.
Nicholas Mancuso: 34:23 Let's see what it is. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.
Join the Facebook Community
Join the Financially Intentional community and get access to resources to guide you on the path to Financial Freedom.
Watch these Videos To Learn How to…
Keep Listening
Here are some more episodes you may enjoy…
Our guest shares how he lost everything—his properties, business, and even his personal relationships—during the financial crisis. But that wasn’t the end of his story.