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The process of getting long term disability coverage was fairly smooth. I decided to go with Metlife, because they had a pretty good reputation and were responsive to my questions. (I figured if a company wasn’t responsive during the initial stages, I didn’t want them.) Their representative came out and met with me, and answered all my questions. He was also patient during the months(!) I procrastinated on doing this, and created a variety of different packages for me based on different scenarios & costs.

In the end, I went with what’s called “own occupation” disability insurance, which pays if you cannot work in your current occupation (even if you could still work at other types of jobs.) I chose a 90-day elimination period on my policy, even though I currently have other coverage that would kick in before then. Since it’s unlikely that a person will remain at the same job forever, I didn’t want to take chances. (And the price difference was negligible between that and a 6-month elimination period.) For a nice overview of some of the terms used in disability insurance and tips on searching for it, check out this guide.

My policy had to go through the underwriting process, which meant that in addition to the many, many questions I had to answer as part of the application process, Metlife checked out my entire medical history. One of my health care providers commented to me that they’d never been asked to provide that much detailed information to an insurance company before, so apparently the process was extremely through. This took about a month, and then I was issued my policy.

Obviously the best time to get this type of policy is when you have little chance of needing it. If you have things in your medical history that could result in a future disability, companies are likely to either exclude coverage for those things, or refuse to cover you at all. Disability insurance is also cheaper when you’re young and healthy.