CLAIM SOME PEACE of MIND
Unemployment insurance could plug gaps for those who are canned
Unemployment was on my mind recently when I ran across a bit of economic good news. According to the Department of Labor, the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits for the week ending Nov. 12 was a scant 235,000, a decrease of 19,000 from the previous week.
This is good news, the department noted, because it was the lowest level for initial claims since Nov. 24, 1973. Unless you’re one of those 235,000 jobless men and women.
The standard personal finance advice is that everyone should maintain an emergency fund that can cover three to eight months of their expenses. If you earn the median household income of about $50,000 a year, you need to sock away $7,500 in your rainy day fund. But just this past May, the Federal Reserve reported that 46 percent of U.S. households would struggle to meet emergency expenses of just $400.
Which means that a big chuck of those folks filing new unemployment claims are in trouble. Beyond their unemployment checks, many have nearly no money to fall back on.
The maximum unemployment benefits and the amount of time they can be paid out may come as a shock to many.
The maximum weekly unemployment benefit in Alabama, for instance, is $265 for up to 26 weeks. In Illinois, it’s $426 (individual) to $580 (with dependents) for up to 26 weeks. And in New York, it’s $430 for up to 26 weeks. In North Carolina, the benefits can last as little as five weeks. In Florida, the maximum period for benefits is 12 weeks.
Enter David Sterling, CEO of Sterling Risk Insurance, who has introduced something called IncomeAssure, private unemployment insurance you can buy for yourself.
The policy works like this: You pay a premium for one year of coverage, choosing a benefit amount that matches your salary, and IncomeAssure promises to pay the difference between your state unemployment benefit and 50 percent of your salary for up to 26 weeks (minus a two-week deductible), regardless of how long your state benefits run.
Let’s say you earn $75,000 a year in Michigan. A policy would cost $91 a month, for total premiums of $1,096.
Then, in the event that you’re suddenly and unceremoniously kicked to the curb, IncomeAssure would pay out about $10,700 over and above the roughly $7,200 you’d collect in state benefits. Those total benefits of about $18,000 would cover about four months of your lost take-home pay.
IncomeAssure also offers a cheaper alternative for people with incomes of less than $50,000 that pays out a lumpsum payment if you lose your job.
This being insurance, there are several large caveats.
For your claim to qualify, you have to first qualify for state unemployment benefits, which may not happen if your employer fights your claim or the state denies it. You also have to vest in the policy for six months before filing a claim, meaning you can’t get a layoff notice one day and hop online to buy coverage the next day. If you do get laid off during the initial six months, IncomeAssure returns your premium.
“That’s our protection against fraud — if the state pays you, we’ll pay you,” Sterling says. “Unless we find out you’ve lied about a pending layoff on your application.”
Yvette Owens, a Detroit-area IT manager for an automaker, bought a policy after depleting her own savings to help out a relative.
Owens, 36, says she pays about $108 a month for $120,000 in coverage while she works on rebuilding her cash cushion. “I’m not there yet,” she says. “I’m relying on this policy if anything happens.”