Your income protection has a waiting period. Who pays the bills during it?

Most income protection claims do not pay out on the day you stop working. That is not a flaw. It is the fine print doing exactly what it said it would.

Most people picture income protection as a vending machine. Something goes wrong, you press the button, money drops out.

It does not work like that. There is a waiting period first. And almost nobody remembers choosing one.

When cover is taken out, you decide how long you must be unable to work before payments start. It could be a month, three months, six months, sometimes longer. The longer the wait, the lower the monthly cost.

So far, very sensible. The part we skip is the question hiding underneath it: who pays the bond, the school fees and the Woolies account during the wait?

Because the debit orders do not know you are on a waiting period. The bank does not send a get well card and pause your bond. Debit orders have no sense of humour.

This is why the waiting period and your emergency savings are really one conversation, not two. A short wait costs more each month but needs a smaller cushion. A long wait costs less but needs a bigger one. Either way, the two have to be built to match.

Here is a simple way to look at it. Take your monthly commitments and multiply them by the number of months in the waiting period. That number is the gap your own pocket has to cover before the policy lifts a finger.

Many people have one without the other. A policy with no cushion, or a cushion with no policy. It is like owning a braai with no gas, or gas with no braai. Either way, someone ends up standing outside hungry.

Neither is a crime. The only real problem is not knowing which one you have.

If you have never checked how long your waiting period is, or whether your savings could actually carry you through it, feel free to reach out. It is a ten minute conversation, and it is cheaper than a cold braai.