Your life insurance – Can you take it with you? “Post-Pink Slip” Lesson #2
In my last post, I mentioned that I took several important points away from my session with Manchester, NH-based Dynamic Networking Group. Lesson #2 in this series is a short and sweet one: If the life insurance provided by your employer is crucial to your family’s financial well-being, check now — before your job is at risk — to make sure you can take it with you in the event of a layoff. If it isn’t, you’ll want to look into obtaining a private policy that will cover you no matter your employment status. (Ditto if your employer policy is portable, but too costly vs. other comparable alternatives.)
In the not-too-distant past, this was hardly even an issue because 1) employer-sponsored life insurance could usually be converted to a policy you could take with you, and 2) employment gaps were typically few, far between, and relatively short. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the latter is no longer true.
But for the first time, at the Dynamic Networking Group meeting, I heard from a group member about an employer-sponsored policy that was not portable. Theoretically, this was always possible, that such policies were out there; I’d just never run across one. Now I don’t mean to attach too much significance to one instance of this, or suggest that it’s a trend. However, in thinking about the damage that could be done to a family’s security by overlooking this, I’m adding it to my checklist of items permanent employees will want to start paying more attention to in our new, pink slip-happy world, and I recommend you do the same.
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