Risk and Insurance Planning
We protect our assets. However, reaching the “just right” Goldilocks state can be difficult. Do we have “too much” or “too little” protection? After all, insuring everything would be too costly. Fortunately, we there are ways of looking at risk through a framework and finding gaps to be addressed. This is what risk and insurance planning is all about.
In Risk and Insurance Planning:
- Evaluate whether to insure or self-insure for a given risk. Then, we decide where to spend limited dollars.
- Determine when, how and how much, if any, to insure (i.e. health, life, disability, long term care, property and casualty). For instance, our insurance decisions are influenced by our net worth, stage of life, cost of insurance, etc.
- Understand Medicare and Medicaid. Similarly, we know what’s not included and determine if additional protection should be added.
- Understand tax-favored health plans, like Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Health Flexible Spending Arrangements (FSAs) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs). After all, we stretch our healthcare dollars, realizing healthcare expenses are increasing faster than average costs.
- Know annuity pros and cons. In other words, we study products before purchasing. We know annuities can be complex and often misunderstood.
- Understand the taxation and income planning opportunities and impacts. For example, we see significant tax advantages of health plans. Also, increased Medicare premiums for higher income earners can impact tax planning.
Plenteous Financial Wellness Wheel
Understand what the wheel is all about and explore the spokes to identify the planning gaps you need to fill.