Your biggest asset is the income you haven't earned yet

Almost everything you own is income in one form or another. Your car is income spent, your portfolio is income invested, and your retirement annuity is income deferred. It all started as a payslip. So, if your income fuels everything you're building, have you thought about what the income itself is worth, and how protected it is if life interrupts your ability to earn?

Let’s say you’re 27 and take home R32,000 a month after tax and other deductions. That means you have 38 years of payslips ahead of you before you reach a typical retirement age. Even if your income never increases, those payslips add up to more than R14 million over your career. In reality, the career you're working towards is likely to be worth much more.

Yet most of that wealth hasn't arrived yet, making your ability to earn, in the short and long term, one of your most valuable financial assets.

Death is rare in your 20s and 30s. Interruption isn't.

Our research shows you are eight times more likely to suffer a temporary disability than to die during your working years.  Yet South Africans remain significantly underinsured for income-related risks.

ASISA's latest Insurance Gap Study estimates a R29.2 trillion disability cover gap, compared to the R21.1 trillion life cover gap. Behavioural economists call it present bias: the further away a payoff sits, the less real it feels.

Ironically, the country's most investment-conscious generation may also be the least likely to protect the income that drives those investments. It's time to fix that.

A few months off work can cost years of momentum

An interruption, whether it's a serious illness or an injury, doesn't only stop your salary once your sick leave runs out. It pauses every debit order that builds your future. The investment contributions stop compounding. The deposit stalls. And if the interruption lasts long enough, you start selling what you've built to cover what you've lost.

Interest compounds over time, but so does loss. 

Why now, not later?

You will never have more future income to protect than you do today. And consider what built that income in the first place: the hands that learned to operate in theatre, the rigour that carried you through board exams and articles, years of investing in yourself that haven't yet paid their full return. Income protection is how you make sure they get the chance to.

Life insurance isn't a premium that competes with your wealth plan. When it's planned correctly, it's what keeps your wealth growing. Uninterrupted.