Amy was on top of the world, living her dreamt life. A life well balanced between her career and her beloved adventures. She was a successful young professional in her early thirties. A life full of aspirations ahead of her.
Sickness did not delay. Amy had no warning. It started simply with feeling of unwell. She coped as best she could, until she found herself more and more occupied with her health and medical appointments.
Amy had set aside contingencies for her mortgage repayments, her savings account for “rainy days.” Since the day she fell ill, it helped to cover the on-going repayments. Amy was proud of her wise decision to save.
She had some days of paid sick leave but it was insufficient to cover her on-going treatments. She started to run dry financially. Her financial uncertainty amplified and her anxieties mounted. She knew she could have made better decisions, been better prepared for that “if” event. She did not believe sickness would have chosen her so soon.
As every month passed, Amy become more and more desperate. She needed the insurance payment made at the beginning of the month. The insurance amount was a fraction of her usual earnings. She lived from one payment to the other, which was entirely opposite to her pre-sickness stage. She fell from being financial independent to dependent.
As the person who was behind the scene approving insurance payment every month, I listened to Amy’s sorrows and agonies. Her parents used their retirement savings to fund the on-going expenses so she could focus on getting better, an act of their unconditional love. She had never felt so financially inadequate. Amy had broken. She cried, shared, lamented her life sudden challenges. How could she had done better? Why didn’t she believe she needed financial protection? How she wished she could reverse the time and gave her the opportunity to fix it before it happened.
