“Protecting your assets is just as important as trying to increase them. What should people do to keep hold of their hard-earned gains?”

Trick question Gen X: “What’s your most valuable asset?”

The standard answers are predictable – car, home, shares or super. My mate, Simon, includes his 80s superhero comic collection. Seriously.

Those answers are all wrong. (And Simon, we need another chat.)

A Gen Xer’s most valuable asset is his/her ability to work. A 35-year-old earning $80,000 now will earn $2.4 million between now and 65.

It’s your income – or expectations for it – that allows you to plan for your family, to buy a home, build a share/property portfolio or start your own business.

And to protect everything that you’ve achieved to now.

What happens if an accident means you can’t work anymore? What if you die, or are diagnosed with cancer? What if a waiter (looking mysteriously like John Cleese) offers you one more “wafer thin” mint and your guts explode all over a packed restaurant?

Yes, “personal risk” insurance is a grudge purchase. But it is critical to Gen Xers because our biggest earning years are still ahead of us. Because we are relatively young, insurance is usually cheap and can mostly be done through superannuation.

CommInsure says nearly 90 per cent of Australians insure our cars and home contents, while 77 per cent insure our homes. But the equivalent figures for personal risk insurance – life, disability, trauma and income protection – are between 2 and 15 per cent.

Them’s strange priorities. Writing off your car might cost $40,000. But if you died, or could never work again, it would cost you and your family millions, along with all your dreams.

Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and principal financial adviser of Castellan Financial Consulting. Email: bruce@debtman.com.au