J. Money, a.k.a. Budgets Are Sexy, posted a rather saddening story which took the form of a comment from one of his readers, Joe. I invite you to check it out, but here's the gist of it:
- Joe is a healthy guy in his twenties, who just dug himself out of debt.
- Six months later, he gets terribly sick and is diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes plus a whole list of other bad stuff. At the time he goes to the doctor he's knocking on death's door and needs to get on a diet and medicine regimen to have a chance.
- Gets depressed, and super-spends his way into $85k of debt after cashing out his 401(k), figuring he'd better enjoy it while he can.
- Now, Joe's disease is managed, and he's digging himself out of debt again. He has about $63k to go.
- He blogs about his Type 2 Diabetes over at Sweet Urine. (No, really.) He has a Donate button that heads straight to the ADA.
What happened to him is pretty harsh, and it's nothing more than genetics. He's educating people about the disease. He's handling it very well and very candidly. (And he's responding to comments in J Money's post, so you can read more over there.)
What about what looked like to be a last-hurrah spending spree? I honestly have no clue what it would feel like to be in his shoes. It's probably very scary and all sorts of unproductive thoughts would be running through my head at that point.
It's fair to say that I wouldn't make the best decisions of any kind in that state, financial or otherwise, on my own.
But that statement also has the key. If you've made the decision for what you'd do should you face a serious illness before you get to that point, then you can execute that plan if a sudden illness happens, without thinking about it too much in the heat of the moment. At that point, if you've decided beforehand that there's something you want to splurge on, then you can have some comfort in that decision and not second guess yourself.
If you have anything more than a trivial amount of money, or people who depend on you, or both, then decide now how you'd handle that money if a life-threatening illness comes out of nowhere. It's one less thing to worry about, and you can concentrate on more important things.
One should strive to *save* as though there is no tomorrow! 🙂
We went through something similar a year ago. My mom got EXTREMELY sick out of no where. Heart attack at 42. She already has Lupus and Fibromyalgia. She obviously couldn’t go to work for a few months. I had to take off days at a time at my part time job. Ended up racking up credit card debt, etc. The point is definitely to save. Emergency funds sound cliche but they really do come in handy.
Glad the post sparked some thoughts my good sir, I thought it was rather interesting myself! Crazy how different each day can be…
Expect the unexpected, and save, save, save….and save some more. And plan for what could happen if something really bad happened. Based on probabilities, it’s not like it’s a 1 in 1,000,000 chance, either. Wish I could be more uplifting, but the bright side is that I appreciate the post and agree:)