If you were born after 1st January 1961 you are not entitled to a State disability pension. This affects freelancers, self employed, employees, housewives, workers, students and trainees.
Actually, it affects almost everyone!
It has become much more difficult in the last few years to secure your standard of living if you can no longer do your job because you are long-term sick. Current social legislation requires you to accept any job on the market regardless of your professional background and experience.
For example: a company manager who can work between 3 and 6 hours a day as a hotel porter has to accept it and even then will get only half of the so called Erwerbsminderungsrente. To be entitled to this, you have to have worked for at least the last 5 years and been in the compulsory national pension scheme for the previous 3 years.
If you can work more than 6 hours a day, you don't even have a right to the Erwerbsminderungsrente.
What is Erwerbsminderungsrente?
This mini disability pension pays out less than 20% of your last net income. In other words - depending on your income - you will face losing between 77% and 81% if you are considered semi-disabled and 46% and 62% for full disability.
Housewives have absolutely nothing to expect from the State if they can't work in the household because of illness or accident.
The same problem applies to students and trainees - there is no safety net any more.
Summary: If you don't insure yourself for potential loss of income, nobody else will!
What does such a private insurance cost? This depends on what kind of job you do, your age, state of health, hobbies and level of cover required.
This is one of the options for making sure you have enough money to live a decent life despite ill health.
Tip: In combination with a Rürup pension, you can tax deduct a good part of the premium.
Published |
31/03/2012 |
John Gunn