All of this just makes me think how ridiculous it is that our tax system incentivizes my employer to partly pay me in insurance premiums
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So is the advice of the health/life bunch that we should get things like AD&D simply because they’re cheap? My first actuarial role was in A&H and my big takeaway was that the frequency of AD&D is basically 0, hence why it’s so cheap. Not sure it being cheap implies it should be bought.
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Well thank FDR for the employer incentive to offer health insurance and Obama for the employer mandate to offer health insurance.
(And these days it’s not just a tax incentive… they’re required to at least offer it.)
Yeah I always say take whatever AD&D is free, but politely decline the rest. AD&D is usually a group insurer’s most profitable product. People buy it because it’s cheap. It’s cheap because the claims costs are incredibly low.
It should be obvious to a group of actuaries that appropriately priced insurance has a negative EV.
So buy insurance that is inappropriately priced, or subsidized enough to be positive EV, or legally required, or is covering a loss that you can’t afford.
AD&D is none of those things. When you die, even if you’re young and healthy, it will probably not be in an accident, so if you have people financially dependent on you then you need LIFE insurance to cover their needs. And you need disability insurance to cover your lost income in the event that you are unable to work (which is rarely due to a dismemberment… dismemberment claims are extremely rare).
AD&D insurance is essentially buying a lottery ticket except an insurance company rather than the state gets to keep the excess cash raised.
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To this end, Vision insurance is one where you might even want to double dip. Before going out on my own, hubs covered us both on his employer’s plan and I covered myself on my employer’s plan too.
I’d use one plan to buy glasses and the other plan to buy contacts. And when my Rx didn’t change much I used one of the vision plans to buy Rx sunglasses… which are really nice to have IMO. The subsidized premium is WAY less than the plan-paid portion of whatever I was buying. Especially since the premium is pre-tax.
That’s a no from me. Just load up on term life to where you are comfortable.
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I work in health insurance. Health carriers do not provide any benefit that costs them money unless they absolutely have to. They do not provide employee discounts on anything.
But I love playing the death lottery! I have enough life benefit outside of my work benefit. But every year as I’m signing up for my benefits I get a couple of minutes of thinking about what my family would do if I died. They be instant millionaires! Sure, they might be sad for a day or two but then Disney trips and fancy cars. Heck, they might go nuts and buy new socks and underwear! And then maybe I’ll get the funeral of my dreams with a casket that looks just like Spock’s in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and a headstone with the Rebel Alliance symbol on it or something. If I got to go, I can fantasize that it is on the company dime.
Lol
Hmmm, when I worked for an employer that sold individual life they offered a (modest) employee discount to employees who purchased an individual policy from them. Even for employees whose jobs had not one thing to do with individual life. 
With group coverage it gets muddier: are they offering an employee discount or are they subsidizing more of the premium or something else? When I worked for an employer that sold, among other things, group disability, the employer-paid LTD was not that great. Employees complained: we are a disability insurer. Why don’t we have better disability coverage??? They listened and sweetened the coverage.
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Yeah I find vision amusing for this reason. Feels a bit like George from Seinfeld… for once in my life I’m ahead!
I mean if you like playing the death lottery then go nuts! (Think of the premium as entertainment, not a prudent financial investment though.)
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it’s a lottery ticket, sure. payoff not up to the actual odds. if in the event of an accidental death my surviving family is paid more, then that’s a win for me. it also includes AD&D coverage for dependents and for the younger family members, accident is the leading cause of their (untimely) death. so if that awfulness happened at least I wouldn’t have to write a check from actual savings to bury them.
open enrollment started so easier to find the life rate now… my employer group rate looks to be $0.588 per thousand coverage
AD&D looks to be 0.121 per thousand