It’s one of those questions that’s easy to wave away.
“I’d be fine. I’d figure it out.”
And maybe you would.
But before you move on, it’s worth spending two minutes actually running the numbers — because most people who do are surprised by what they find.
Start with the basics
Take your monthly essential outgoings. Mortgage or rent. Food. Utilities. Insurance. Childcare if you have kids. Transport. Just the things that absolutely have to get paid.
Now take your savings. How many months does it cover?
For many households, the answer is three to four months. Sometimes less. The Money and Pensions Service reports that around a third of UK adults have less than £1,000 in savings. For those households, six months off work isn’t a financial stress. It’s a crisis.
"Run the numbers before you answer. Most people are surprised by what they find."
What the state actually provides
If you’re employed and you go off sick, you get Statutory Sick Pay — £116.75 per week for up to 28 weeks. After that, you may be eligible for Employment and Support Allowance, currently up to £84.80 per week in some circumstances.
Compare that to your actual monthly outgoings, and the gap is usually significant.
If you’re self-employed, it’s starker still. SSP doesn’t apply. There’s no sick pay. The state benefits you might access are means-tested and nowhere near sufficient to maintain most people’s standard of living.
Six months is more common than you think
The assumption most people make is that serious illness or injury is rare, and that if it happens, it’s short-lived. The statistics tell a different story.
Around one in four working adults in the UK will be unable to work for a month or longer due to illness or injury at some point in their career. The average long-term absence lasts considerably longer than six months. Conditions like cancer treatment, serious back problems, mental health difficulties, and heart conditions — which are among the most common causes of long-term absence — often keep people off work for a year or more.
What six months looks like in practice
Month one: You manage. SSP kicks in, you use some savings, you cut back where you can.
Month two: The savings are being used faster than you’d like. You’re dipping into the buffer you’d always meant to keep untouched.
Month three: The buffer is gone. You’re making difficult choices — which bills to prioritise, what to tell the kids, whether to call the mortgage company.
Month four: The conversations with the mortgage company have started. The credit card is filling up. The stress of the financial situation is making recovery harder.
This isn’t a dramatic scenario. It’s a realistic one. And it’s exactly the scenario income protection is designed to prevent.
What income protection changes
Income protection pays you a monthly income — typically 50 to 70% of your salary — while you can’t work. It doesn’t make the situation easy. But it makes the financial side of it manageable, which means you can focus on getting better rather than on avoiding repossession.
For many people, it’s genuinely the difference between a difficult few months and a catastrophic few months.
The conversation most people put off
Income protection is one of those things that nearly everyone acknowledges they should probably have, and very few people actually get around to. Life is busy. Other things feel more urgent. And there’s always a vague sense that it’ll be sorted “at some point.”
But the policy you buy today covers you from today. The one you plan to buy next year doesn’t.
