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Medical Insurance

What Does It Mean When You Say No To Insurance

Have you ever wondered what does it mean to you when you decide to say No to a Financial Planner, who is doing up a financial needs analysis and at the same time recommending some insurance plans to you?

The Role Of A Financial Planner

Basically the role of a Financial Planner is to make you realize or indirectly disturb you emotionally with a Problem (concern about Medical Bills, not enough for Retirement or the means to save enough for your Child’s University Education) through a Financial Needs Analysis Process.

And after doing so, he will recommend a set of solutions to the above problems by means of  committing to a certain range of Insurance Product – Endowment, Investment-Linked Plans, Medical Insurance and/or Critical Illness Insurance.

The objective of this post is not to tell you much about what a Financial Planner does for a living and here I will assume that the Financial Planner who may be attending to you is capable of doing what he/she is required to do in Financial Planning.

But rather, I will focus on, if the Financial Planner has actually done well (to make you realize that you have a problem) but in the end you decide to say one of the Few Common Nos’ (known as Objections to us) like:

  • I Do Not Need Insurance
  • I Have No Extra Money For Insurance
  • I Would Like To Wait

So let’s get down to the first No…

No to Life Insurance!

What Does It Mean To You When You Say That You Do Not Need The Insurance…

Read More »What Does It Mean When You Say No To Insurance

Have You Started Your Retirement Planning?

Part of a Good Financial Planning is planning well and early for your retirement and a good rule of thumb of starting your retirement planning can be well around your mid 20s as you may have started working by then and have the means to start saving.

What To Note For Your Retirement Planning

And the things to note for your retirement planning would be basically

  • The retirement monthly income you would need for your daily expenses (without really working) and lifestyle
  • How long you plan for this retirement income to last

A general guideline to know how much you would need is to note down how much are your current expenses and once you have gotten this figure, do a rough estimation whether you would like to maintain this kind of lifestyle (you can choose to have an even better or just a simpler one – it’s your life, so your choice!)

Then the portion for the how long you plan for it to last would be a gut feel. An average person would wish to have a retirement income to last for 20 years starting from the average retirement age of 65.

Once you have your figures ready, head over to the CPF Board’s Retirement Savings Interactive Calculator to get a rough feel how much you need to start saving now to hit your desired retirement income.

A sample of my Retirement Planning would be like below:

My Retirement Planning

Hmmm… and seems like I do have to start saving like $600 per month for the next 37 years in order to achieve my desired monthly retirement income of $2000.

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Just How Expected Is Unexpected, Question Is – Are You Prepared Today?

After working as a Financial Planner for the last two and a half years and being able to come across many real life situations with regards to insurance death claims – I have recently witnessed two death claims whereby

  • a guy in his late 40s whom lost his dearest wife and is in a total loss and 
  • another case whereby the family is with mentally handicapped children and the wife is left with no insurance monies as the hubby has never done up any insurance coverage before…

I just have this sudden feeling to blog about this…

And I will be talking about something that most of you will not be interested to talk about – Death! Death is something that is so expected and one fine day you or I will just forget how to breathe. It’s just a matter of time as well but we do not know when is that time – that’s all.

That’s why my blogging topic is with regards to something that is so expected (it will come eventually) but yet so unexpected (you do not know when it will come), and the big question is how prepared are you today? Yesterday is gone and we are still alive and this is something good and tomorrow is still something worth looking forward to.

So should really anything happen today, how prepared are you and your family?

Read More »Just How Expected Is Unexpected, Question Is – Are You Prepared Today?

Understanding Your Private Health/Medical Insurance Scheme

For the last few days, there have been quite a few Clients who have been asking me about the idea of getting a Private Health Insurance Plan and if it’s feasible to do so.

I appreciate their interest in getting a health insurance plan and as I have shared in my previous post on the basic fundamentals of Financial Planning – getting a health insurance plan is a must-must to take care of huge medical bills, on top of a Critical Illness Protection Plan.

Why Is A Health/Medical Insurance Scheme So Important?

To put in simple terms to understand, if there’s a hospital bill of $100,000 today right in front of you, would you

  • Want to take care of this bill 100% on your own accord or
  • Split this bill among your family members (in equal shares and hurt each other feelings…) or
  • Have a Health Insurance Plan that require you to pay out only $12,700 (assuming $3,000 deductible and 10% co-insurance) and have the rest of $87,300 taken care of by the Plan?

If I am you, I would rather have a Health Insurance Plan to take care and even if I do have to split the $12,700 among my family members, it’s easier to do so now!

But Hey Hold On… Does This Medical Bill Of $100,000 Really Exist?

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Questions To Discuss For Your Critical Illness Protection

In my field of doing financial planning with clients, one of my duties is to have a discussion with me asking questions (on the emotional side) and have the clients realized the importance of doing a financial planning.

One of the area that you need to look into is on your Critical Illness Protection.

Many people may be just relying on their Medisave and Medishield Schemes to pay the costs of their medical treatment (the number #1 killer in Singapore is Cancer). However, you should know that Medisave and Medishield have their daily limits and the available quantum may just be not enough to pay for the cost of prolonged hospital treatment or a major surgery.

If you are curious to know what is Medisave and Medishield all about, here is a list of useful links:

As such, you may need to have other source of funds to help pay for this kind of medical expenses – both for you and your immediate family members.

Another reason is that unlike death, being stricken with a Critical Illness may present to you a long-term financial strain. Think of this, beside being have to endure a significant initial and ongoing costs of treatment, you (as an income earner) will need to have some form of protection against the issue of a loss of income as you will probably by unable to work during this prolonged period of recuperation.

Therefore are you ready to understand more of yourself in terms of Critical Illness Protection, to really see if you need to start planning or to enhance?

Read More »Questions To Discuss For Your Critical Illness Protection