A “kidney cake” awarded to me from my roommates following my hospitalization.
[Editor’s Note: This is an adaption of a post I wrote in 2017. I’ve updated it with a different angle, which I hope will be beneficial to you.]
On a warm summer morning in June 2009, I awoke to a slight ache in my right kidney. This didn’t alarm me too much. I had felt kidney aches before, and this just seemed like another small episode, easily resolved with my usual remedies. Besides, I was a first year MBA student and had earned a great internship. It was time to work and impress!
Before starting my costly MBA program, I was looking to save money anywhere I could. Given my pre-existing health condition, I had applied for health insurance, but was denied coverage (this was pre-Affordable Care Act), so I made the decision to push through my MBA without health insurance, and get insured again through my employer as quickly as possible upon graduation.
What could go wrong?
But as the days progressed since that morning kidney ache, my health became worse. The typical remedies I used to “solve” a problem like this weren’t working. I was getting sicker.
But instead of going to the hospital, I foolishly pushed on. In my uninsured status, I didn’t feel like I could afford the price of a hospital visit, not to mention the tests that they would put me through, all of which would have to be paid out-of-pocket. And imagine the cost of being hospitalized or operated on! I just couldn’t do it.
My condition became worse and worse, to where I was missing class and recklessly not seeking treatment. My roommate, realizing the urgency of the situation and my own stubbornness, literally dragged me to his car and drove me to the hospital. I passed out just before entering the ER.
Several days in the ICU and remarkable critical care given by a highly-skilled medical staff resulted in my life saved, and death narrowly missed.
I’ve related this experience before in another post, discussing the importance of ALWAYS carrying some form of health insurance. But when this happened, my financial life was more cut and dry. I was single with few debts, so there wasn’t a huge need for life or disability insurance. I didn’t have dependents reliant on my income if I died. My retirement account could have been liquidated to cover my funeral expenses, and my federal student loans would have been discharged.
But things have changed now, 11 years later. Not only do I have a wife and children who rely on my income, but I’m a homeowner (well, I “own a mortgage” as they say). How would this liability be paid for if I died? How would my family receive the income they need to go on living? How will my assets transfer to my wife and children as effortlessly as possible?
These are questions most of us need to be ready to answer. I know it’s a morbid thought, but it freaks me out a bit to think about dying and not having these things in place. The thought of losing one’s spouse is painful enough, not to mention the emotional torment of settling a deceased spouse’s financial affairs and planning for a much, much different future.
Star Valley recently lost a well-known member of our community in a terrible accident. He was relatively young, with a wife and children. He worked hard and was well-respected. I wouldn’t dare comment on what the family should or shouldn’t have done from a financial standpoint, because I know nothing of their situation. I only bring it up to say that while some of us have brushes with death, others feel death’s full brute force prematurely. It could have just as easily been me 11 years ago. And while I personally acknowledge an all-knowing, loving Supreme Being, sometimes death feels indiscriminate.
I won’t wrap up this post with a “What if you die” financial checklist or any such thing. I’ll only invite you to give yourself a little room to think about how to make your family a little bit better off--on a little sturdier of ground--should the unthinkable happen.
If you’re like me, it will give you more peace and confidence to face some of life’s “brushes” and “brute forces.”