Where to start

Unexpected illness. Unforeseen accidents. Life’s uncertainties. All of them are part of life and could happen to anyone at any point. And they can have a big impact on your finances and family’s future. That’s where insurance comes in. Insurance is meant to keep you and your family financially secure during those times when life doesn’t go as planned.

If anyone relies on your income — either yourself or your family — you may need insurance. If something happened and you weren’t able to provide for your loved ones anymore, you’d need to have a plan in place to help make sure that you and your family can move forward with little financial disruption. Luckily, there are different types of insurance that can help:

• if you want to protect your income in the case of illness or an accident preventing you from working, options like Critical Illness or Disability insurance are available.
• and if you pass away unexpectedly, life insurance can help make sure your loved ones are taken care of and can continue on without financial hardship.

If you’re employed, you may already have some of the above coverage as part of your group benefits through your employer. The thing is, coverage through group benefits often comes with limitations:

• for life insurance, it may only provide you with coverage of once or twice your salary. Which may not be enough to help pay off debt like the mortgage or pay for your kids’ university tuition.
• for disability insurance, it may only provide coverage for short-term disability. But what if you’re not able to work for longer?  

In addition, your coverage is tied to your employment, so if you change career or are in-between jobs, you lose it.

How much your insurance covers largely depends on you and the amount of coverage you choose. In making that decision, you’ll want to choose an amount that is enough to cover your and your family future needs:

• for disability insurance, you may want to consider your debt like mortgage payment and living expenses like groceries, hydro and car payments. You’d want to make sure that your coverage is enough to pay for these expenses for a short or longer period of time.
• for life insurance, you may want to consider how much your loved ones would need to pay off any debt (mortgage, credit cards), maintain their standard of living (groceries, healthcare) and how much you'd need to secure your children’s education or spouse retirement.

The cost of insurance is based on a number of factors, from the age and health status of the people you want insured, as well as the amount of coverage you want and how long you want the coverage to last.

Get started by using our scenario planner tool and get an idea of what type of insurance and how much you may need to help protect yourself and your family.