Disability Income Insurance

Your lifestyle: Something to think about.

When you're healthy and working, it's hard to imagine being disabled by illness or injury. But it can happen. In fact:

• The odds are that one in three working Americans will become disabled for 90 days or more before age 65.*

Ratio of Chance of Disability Before Age 65 to Chance of Death Before Age 65*

What would happen if your paychecks suddenly stopped because you were sick or injured and unable to work? What if you couldn't work for months — or years?

You'd still have to pay all your monthly bills, including food, utilities, house and car payments. Add in things like tuition and retirement funding, and it's easy to see how savings could quickly disappear.

Unfortunately, you may not be able to rely on other income sources like Social Security to protect you. In many cases, they don't apply -- or aren't enough. For more information on other income sources, see below Think you're already protected?

Plan ahead to help protect your lifestyle. Then relax.

MetLife has flexible Disability Income Insurance policies that:

• Provide monthly income to help maintain your standard of living
• Can be customized to fit your particular situation
• Help keep your financial dreams and goals for the future intact.

Think you're already protected?

Think about this:

• Social Security disability payments are limited to disabilities expected to last at least 12 months or end in death. To qualify, you must be unable to engage in any type of work.
• Personal Savings can best be used to build a comfortable future. Add up your monthly bills, then multiply by 12 and you can see how fast even substantial savings can be depleted by unexpected illness or injury.
• Long-Term Disability Insurance offered through your employer is a start. But workplace disability benefits often times cover only about 50% of your income. Can your family survive on half of a paycheck?

Here are some other reasons why Group Long-Term Disability (LTD) may not be enough:

• Group LTD usually covers only a portion of an employee's compensation
• LTD benefits are generally taxable if the employer pays the premiums
• Many plans don't cover bonus or incentive compensation
• There is often a maximum monthly cap and, as a result, an employee's monthly after-tax income during a disability may drop by 50% or more!

* Weighted averages based on MetLife disability insurance sales applied to calculations from Milliman, Inc. on disability experience results for 1990 - 1999 from the Individual Disability Experience Committee of the Society of Actuaries.

Like most disability income insurance policies, MetLife's policies contain certain exclusions, waiting periods, reductions, limitations and terms for keeping them in force. Ask your representative about costs and complete details. For policies issued in New York: These policies provide disability income insurance only. They do NOT provide basic hospital, basic medical or major medical insurance as defined by the New York State Insurance Department. The expected benefit ratio for these policies is at least 50%. The ratio is the portion of future premiums that MetLife expects to return as benefits when averaged over all people with the applicable policy.

Disability Income Insurance is issued and distributed by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.