Disability Insurance for Young Adults

About Disability Insurance

Disability insurance for young adults provides valuable financial protection by replacing a portion of your income if you are unable to work due to illness or injury. It offers a safety net for covering essential expenses like rent, utilities, and bills, helping you to maintain your financial stability and long-term goals. Disability insurance is income protection insurance—it replaces your income if an injury or illness keeps you out of work for both a short and extended period.

Disability insurance covers a range of short- and long-term disabling conditions, like pregnancies, musculoskeletal disorders, fractures, sprains, mental health issues, cancers, and other serious illnesses.

Many expect older people to become disabled or ill at one point or another. What about people in their twenties? Do young people also need disability insurance? The data makes a strong case for both old and young people having, at minimum, short-term disability insurance. Remember, you must have short-term disability before you become pregnant, get injured, or become ill. The benefits of disability insurance include:

Financial Stability:

  • Income Replacement: Disability insurance can provide a regular income replacement if you become disabled, helping you to cover essential expenses like rent, utilities, and bills.
  • Debt Management: It can be a crucial tool for managing student loan debt, which many young adults have.
  • Maintaining Your Standard of Living: It can help you maintain your current standard of living, especially if you are paying for a home, college, or have other dependents.

Long-Term Financial Goals:

  • Disability insurance helps ensure that retirement savings are not depleted due to a sudden loss of income.
  • It helps protect long-term financial plans, such as buying a home or paying for children’s education.

Security:

  • Having disability insurance can provide a sense of security and can allow young people to focus on their careers and personal lives without the worry of financial burden if they become disabled.

Why Young People Need Disability Insurance

Young people generally don’t think of themselves as becoming disabled, but accidents, illnesses, and injuries don’t discriminate by age. Anyone can suffer a long-term or short-term disability at any time, which is why having disability insurance is so important. Many young adults are injured playing sports, for instance. More disabilities occur outside of work. If you are no longer able to work, how will you support yourself? If you are married or have children, how will you support them?

Not worried? The time to worry about how you will pay your bills if you become disabled isn’t after you become disabled. It’s now. To put it simply, if you have a job, you most likely need disability insurance. Consider this:

  • 61 million Americans are disabled.1
  • The average Social Security benefit for a disabled worker as of February 2021 was $1,279 a month.2
  • More than one in four of today’s 20-year-olds will be out of work for at least a year due to a disability before they reach retirement age.3

How can a Long-Term Disability plan help?

A Long-Term Disability plan is designed to help you financially. If you suddenly become disabled and are no longer able to work for six (6) months or longer and support yourself or family, your Long-Term Disability coverage can help. The plan can help you pay medical co-pays, mortgage, rent, credit card bills, utilities, loans, and other everyday expenses.

Most common Long-Term Disability claims

  • Musculoskeletal disorders affecting the bones, joints muscles and connective tissues
  • Cancer
  • Injuries such as fractures, sprains, and strains of muscles and ligaments
  • Mental health issues
  • Circulatory issues such as a heart attack or a stroke

Hopefully, you will never have to reap the benefits of a long-term disability plan, but if you do, you’ll be glad you have one. Your life can change forever in the blink of an eye. Being prepared can make all the difference in the world.

How can a Short-Term Disability plan help?

Short-Term Disability insurance provides coverage from the effective date of the policy for injuries, illnesses, and pregnancy. This insurance provides you with a weekly cash benefit to help pay for expenses (such as mortgage/rent, utilities, childcare, or groceries) without relying solely on vacation days, sick pay, or your savings to stay on track with your expenses. Medical expenses and job loss are the two most common reasons individuals file for bankruptcy.4

The most common Short-Term Disability claims

  • Pregnancies
  • Musculoskeletal disorders affecting the back and spine, knees, hips, shoulders, and other parts of the body
  • Injuries such as fractures, sprains, and strains of muscles and ligaments, as well as digestive disorders, and mental health issues including depression and anxiety

What is the Right Age to Buy Disability Insurance?

While everyone’s situation is different, there are three (3) things to take into consideration to make the best purchasing decision. It usually comes down to the following three (3) factors:

  1. Earning potential
  2. Risk factors
  3. Impact of lost income

“I’m Young and Healthy. Why Would I Need Disability Insurance?”

You can always strive to stay young at heart, but you won’t always be young in years. That’s why it’s important to think about disability insurance now. Accidents and illness happen regardless of your age. You should buy disability insurance when you’re first eligible because as you age and as health issues arise, you would be subject to medical underwriting review.

“What Are the Chances I Have an Accident?”

Statistics show that 1 in 4 of today’s 20-year-old workers will experience disability within their career. In fact, the majority of disabilities are caused by illness rather than accidents. With the average long-term disability claim lasting a little under three years.5

“Why don’t I carry disability insurance?”

  • “It’s not worth the money it costs.”
  • “I don’t need it because I work in a low-risk job.”

Working in an office or other low-risk environment doesn’t make you safe from injury. Less than 5% of disabling accidents and illnesses are work-related, according to the Council for Disability Awareness, meaning it’s more likely that something could happen to you outside of work.6 There are certain things in life that we can’t predict. We can’t predict if we’re going to get hit by a car; we can’t predict if we’re going to have some unforeseen illness such as gallbladder disease or appendicitis.

The fact is that disabling injuries occur in the United States at a rate of every one second (Source: National Safety Council Injury Facts).7 The health impacts alone can be devastating, but so too can the financial effects of a disability. Did you know that more people lose their homes due to disability than fire or death, and that over half of all personal bankruptcies stem from individuals who are unable to pay their medical bills? If you wait until you’re prompted by something urgent, such as a diagnosis, your coverage could be declined.

Regardless of your age, disability insurance is a vital protection that is needed.

Key Features of Sun Life Short-Term Disability Insurance Key Features of Sun Life Long-Term Disability Insurance

Footnotes, Additional Details & Disclaimers

1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ‘Disability Impacts All Of Us,’ October 2022.
2 Social Security Administration, Monthly Statistical Snapshot August 2021 Table 2
3 Council for Disability Awareness, Disability Statistics, September, 2021
4 Top 10 Reasons People File for Bankruptcy [2025 Update]
5 How long do long-term disability insurance benefits last?,” Policygenius, November 3, 2022.
6Council for Disability Awareness, Disability Statistics, September, 2021
7National Safety Council Injury Facts

Group disability insurance policies are underwritten by Sun Life and Health Insurance Company (U.S.) (Lansing, MI) under Policy Form Series 12-DI-C-01, 16-DI-C-01, 15-GP-01, 13-GP-LH-01, 13-LTD-C-01, 13-STD-C-01, 06P-NY-DBL, 12-GPPort-01, and 12-STDPort-C-01.

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