Bret A. Barger, DDS
My name is Dr. Bret Anthony Barger and I graduated from Georgetown University School of Dentistry in 1989. I immediately moved to Colorado where I started my own dental practice. An insurance agent contacted me within a few months of graduation and shared with me the importance of having good disability insurance in place in case the unforeseen should ever happen. Although I never dreamed that I would ever utilize my disability income policy it did make sense to me to be properly covered after all of the time and money that I had invested into my education. I did not realize how often disabilities happen to our fellow colleagues. I was surprised to learn that 1 in 3 will be disabled for 90 days or more and that 1 in 5 will be disabled for more than 5 years! I can tell you from my personal experience that an unexpected disability can ruin your financial health if you do not have proper coverage in place. Think about your financial obligations for a moment: your student loans, your mortgage, your car payments, your education goals for your children, your retirement plans, etc. How would you reach your financial goals if you were not able to practice dentistry?
After about five years of practicing dentistry I started having problems with my back and my right hand. I had to reduce the number of hours that I was working by over 50% and this is when I learned what a good investment I had made in getting a high quality disability income policy. This policy saved me from financial ruin and allowed me to recover physically over a period of more than a year and most important keep the doors to my practice open. After this period of disability, I was able to return to work full-time and was able to grow my practice to almost one million dollars of production per year. Fortunately for me, I had purchased future increase options in my original disability income policy, which allowed me to more than double my monthly benefits despite the fact that I would have never been able to qualify for them medically. In 1999, I had to sell my practice due to a recurrence of my back and hand problems and permanently retire from the profession I love.
Once again, my disability income policy helped to prevent a "fire sale" of my practice and helped to keep my financial house in order. It was after these events that I decided to make it my personal mission to help my fellow colleagues to make sure that they have the best possible coverage in place should they ever find themselves in the same position that I was in.
You can purchase your disability income policy from anyone who is properly licensed but very few people have the personal experience of both being a dentist and having personally been through the disability claims process. There are lots of companies out there with lots of confusing definitions that take an expert to decipher. I encourage you to consult with us BEFORE you purchase your policy from anyone! It could be the best financial planning decision you've ever made.
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