Covered Ground

Welcome to the first issue of Covered Ground: a newsletter about protection planning done right. No jargon, no product pitches. Just plain talk about the decisions that quietly determine whether your income, your family, and your legacy hold up under pressure.

I’m Collin Studemeyer, founder of Studemeyer Risk Advisory & Planning. I’ve spent nearly a decade helping clients think through life insurance, disability income, and long-term care planning. This newsletter is my attempt to say plainly what the industry too often buries in fine print.

The Coverage Gap Nobody Talks About

Most people who have life insurance think they have enough. They got it through work, or they picked up a term policy years ago, and they haven’t thought about it since. That’s understandable. Insurance isn’t exactly the kind of thing you look forward to revisiting.

But here’s what happens quietly in the background: your income grows. Your mortgage gets bigger. You have kids. Your lifestyle expands along with everything your family depends on. And your coverage stays exactly where it was the day you bought it.

The result is a gap. Sometimes a small one. Often not.

“Life insurance isn’t a product you buy once. It’s a plan you maintain, because your life keeps moving whether the policy does or not.”
Collin Studemeyer, CLTC

The most common version of this I see: a professional in their mid-30s with a $500,000 term policy bought in their late 20s. At the time, it felt substantial. Today, with a mortgage, two kids, and a household income that’s doubled, it barely covers two years of expenses.

This isn’t a failure of planning. It’s a failure of revisiting the plan. And it’s one of the most straightforward problems to fix, when you catch it in time.

Three Questions Every Coverage Review Should Answer

Whether you haven’t reviewed your policies in years or you’re starting from scratch, these are the questions that matter most. They apply to life insurance, disability income, and long-term care. These are the three areas where a gap creates the most damage.

• Does the coverage reflect your actual income? Group life through an employer typically pays 1 to 2x your base salary. If your total compensation is substantially higher, through commissions, bonuses, or business income, your policy may cover a fraction of what your family depends on. Disability coverage often has the same problem, capped at 60% of base salary and excluding variable comp entirely.
• Does the beneficiary designation still make sense? Life changes. People get married, divorced, have children, lose parents. The beneficiary on a policy you bought a decade ago may no longer reflect your intentions, or may create unintended legal complications. This is one of the most overlooked issues in protection planning, and one of the simplest to fix.
• Is there a plan for long-term care? The odds of needing some form of extended care after age 65 exceed 70%. The average annual cost of a private nursing home room exceeds $100,000. Most people don’t have a plan for this. By the time it becomes urgent, the options narrow quickly. The earlier this gets addressed, the more choices remain.

If any of this resonates, or surfaces questions you’d like to talk through, I’m easy to reach. That’s the purpose of Covered Ground: to make these conversations easier to have before they become necessary.

Next issue: a deeper look at disability income planning. Specifically, why the definition of disability matters more than the benefit amount, and how most group policies leave high earners significantly underprotected.