Thread by @patio11

Periodic PSA:

If you are young, healthy, and work in tech, your primary asset is likely your future earning potential. A few dozen people who follow me will, actuarially speaking, not be able to work the expected length of their careers due to illness/etc.

This is insurable.

The type of insurance you want is “private long-term disability insurance.” You can speak to an insurance agent about it.

(If you have a complicated international life like me, take a look Petersen International Underwriters, which is available through Insubuy.)

You may receive this as a benefit through work. It’s relatively standard in tech. I’d suggest you have a policy in your own name as well; a lot of the things that can result in you not being able to work can result in you losing your job prior to qualifying for benefits.

The general thing you’re looking to buy is “Pays 60% of your current salary through age of retirement given inability to work longer than X” where you want to set X to their max value (120 days in my case).

You want “own occupation”, which pays if you can’t do your actual job.

There is a cheaper version (“any occupation”) which pays only if you’re unable to do *any* job, but there are ways to be functionally disabled from e.g. programming w/o being unable to work a cash register, in which case no benefits.

“How much?” Depends on who you go through, your present health, your occupation (if you follow me yours will be cheap), and length of time you have it in force for, but rough order of magnitude is 1.5%~2% of your gross salary for benefits of 60% of it.

Also: term life insurance, which is really, really cheap (given youth and healthy), is something you should consider mandatory if anyone depends on your income. Add a new policy (or replace) if you have a child / etc.

This is also offered through work but same logic applies.