Income protection (IP) replaces a portion of your income if you can't work due to illness or injury. The standard variables are cover percentage (up to 70% of salary post-October 2021, with a temporary additional 5% to fund continued super contributions), waiting period (how long before payments start — typically 2 to 104 weeks), and benefit period (how long payments continue — 2 years, 5 years, or to age 65).

The right-sizing logic is two-step. First: your monthly benefit needs to cover your fixed expenses (mortgage / rent, utilities, groceries, minimum debt repayments) — discretionary spend can be cut during a claim period. If 70% cover doesn't reach your fixed expense floor, you need to either trim expenses or supplement IP with savings. Second: your emergency fund needs to bridge the waiting period. A 90-day wait with one month of savings is a problem; a 30-day wait with six months of savings is over-insured against waiting risk.

Premiums scale roughly inversely with waiting period — 14-day wait can cost 2-3x what 90-day wait costs. So extending the wait (with bigger emergency savings backing it) is the standard premium-reduction lever. Benefit period shorter than 'to age 65' also cuts premium materially but exposes you to long-tail conditions (cancer, mental health, musculoskeletal) that often last longer than 2-5 years.

This calculator helps you size cover before you shop quotes. For premium comparison, broker channels are usually cheaper than buying direct from insurers, and group cover via super is the cheapest option (with trade-offs around cover quality and tax treatment of benefits). For other insurance need calcs see our Life Insurance and TPD Insurance calculators.