Is your client’s financial plan protected if their paycheck stops?

May is Disability Insurance Awareness Month, making it a timely opportunity for financial professionals to revisit one of the most important, but often overlooked areas of protection planning... income. 

Your clients may have a retirement strategy, life insurance, savings goals, and a plan. But many of those plans are built around one key assumption: their income will continue. 

So, what happens if it does not? 

For many clients, their paycheck is what keeps everything moving. It supports their household, funds their savings, helps cover debt obligations, and allows them to continue working toward long-term financial goals. If an illness or injury prevents them from working, even temporarily, the impact can extend far beyond monthly expenses. 

That is where disability insurance can become an important part of the planning conversation. 

The income behind the plan 

Clients often understand the importance of protecting major assets like their home, car, or business. But they may not always think about protecting the income that helps pay for those assets in the first place. 

For financial professionals, this creates an opportunity to help clients look at protection planning more holistically. Disability insurance is not simply about replacing a paycheck. It is about helping protect the financial foundation their broader plan depends on. 

Without income, clients may be forced to rely on savings, reduce retirement contributions, take on debt, or delay important financial goals. In some cases, interruption can create a ripple effect that changes the direction of their entire financial plan. 

Why clients may overlook disability insurance 

Disability insurance can be easy for clients to postpone because the risk may feel distant or unlikely. Some may assume they are already covered through work. Others may not know how much of their income would actually be replaced, how long benefits would last, or whether their current coverage would be enough to support their lifestyle. 

That is why the conversation matters. 

Financial professionals can help clients move beyond assumptions and ask better questions: 

How long could your household continue if your income stopped? 

Would your savings strategy stay on track? 

Could you continue paying your mortgage, business expenses, or other obligations? 

Do you know how much income your current coverage would replace? 

These questions can help clients better understand the role income protection may play in their overall financial picture. 

A timely reason to start the conversation 

Disability Insurance Awareness Month gives financial professionals a natural opportunity to bring income protection into client reviews and planning conversations. 

It does not have to be a complicated discussion. In many cases, it starts with helping clients recognize that their income is one of their most valuable financial assets. From there, financial professionals can help identify potential gaps, review existing coverage, and determine whether additional protection may be appropriate. 

For clients, the conversation can bring clarity. For financial professionals, it can create a meaningful opportunity to reinforce the value of comprehensive planning. 

Helping clients protect what keeps their plan moving 

A strong financial plan should be considered more than where a client wants to go. It should also consider what could interrupt their ability to get there. 

Disability insurance can help protect the income behind a client’s goals, lifestyle, and long-term strategy. During Disability Insurance Awareness Month, now is the right time to revisit that conversation. 

Contact your MVP Financial representative to explore disability insurance solutions and help your clients protect the income behind their financial plan. 

Split Annuity Solution Turns $300,000 into over $625,000 Overnight

 Retired clients have a primary fear: Outliving their assets. This strategy addresses that fear on two fronts: Providing a growth opportunity while creating a benefit pool to tap should they need care as they age.

The fact that retirees fear outliving their money comes as no surprise. For those earlier in retirement or even pre-retirees, lifestyle changes or increasing their rate of savings can make a big difference in preventing that eventuality. That said, a good planning approach can do even more.

In this case, a retired client has some under-utilize assets that are not delivering any real growth to hedge against a potential increased future income need. A simple solution is to reposition those assets into something like a Fixed Indexed Annuity (FIA) to deliver both growth potential and protect against losses. Of course, if the primary driver of the client’s fears is paying for care when they need it, that strategy does little to put them at ease. The temptation in that instance may be to look at a care planning product as the solution, but even the annuity-based care planning products don’t offer any real growth potential and fail to address the client’s need for future income even if they remain healthy.

The solution here may be to do both. Using a 70-year-old male with $300K in under-utilized assets as our example client, it’s possible to turn that $300K into more than $625K by repositioning the funds. The combination of the FIA and an Annuity-Based Long-Term Care Annuity unlocks a flexible, tax-efficient solution.

In the example below, the use of a bonus annuity replenishes some of the funds used for care planning at day 1, and the client’s combined account value increased to over $321,000 on day one.

The superiority of the strategy if the client needs care is obvious. The other element, actual growth of the asset even if he remains healthy, is also quite positive. Year one combined surrender value is $321,637 and continues to grow into the future.

The bottom line? A strategy that delivers the growth potential the client desires while hedging the cost of care later in life. Should the client need care, the benefits from the annuity are generally income tax free, making this dual solution approach even more appealing.