Financial Planning For Illness

Last Updated on September 4, 2020 by Ellen Christian

This financial planning for illness post has been brought to you by Aflac. All opinions are mine and mine alone.

Ten years ago, we were a typical two income family.  My husband worked full time in maintenance and I worked full time in an office. We were young and hadn’t really given much thought to financial planning for illness or anything else.  One day, my husband injured his back moving wood.  It was a nagging pain that never went away despite physical therapy and medication. Since we needed that weekly paycheck, my husband continued to work and went to physical therapy with the hope it would improve. After a car accident one winter, his back got worse. He couldn’t continue to work and used up sick days and vacation days in pain in bed.  After another visit to the doctor, they tried steroid injections in his back to help the pain. He had some slight improvement but not enough to stand on his feet all day at work.  The doctor recommended surgery on his back and he found himself without a job after his short term disability ran out and he couldn’t go back to work.

Financial Planning For Illness

Not only did we have bills from his surgery, doctor’s visits, and prescriptions that his insurance would not cover, we found ourselves trying to live on my income alone. I started taking work online at night to bring in extra money while trying to juggle all of the housework and taking care of my husband who was not able to do much after his surgery.  His back never healed and after more injections and another surgery, he is now officially disabled.  During this process, I asked myself many times “Why didn’t you plan for emergencies?”  You never think a sudden illness or emergency will happen to you especially when you’re young. But it can. Thinking about financial planning for illness now may save you in the future.

If you’re hit with a long term illness or injury, your normal household expenses won’t stop being due.  You will still have a mortgage or rent to pay. You’ll still need to pay for electricity and your telephone and heat. Since we never used our major medical insurance, I had no idea that there were expenses that my insurance didn’t cover.  After all, I had no co-pay for a doctor’s visit for a sore throat. Who knew I would have thousands of dollars to deal with that insurance wouldn’t handle. Do you know how much it really costs if you get injured?

Aflac has a real cost calculator that will show you how much it really costs to get sick or injured. You can enter information about your age and gender and then select different types of illnesses and injuries – from a broken leg to cancer – and see what the real cost would be for medical expenses, household expenses, and out of pocket expenses. You can make adjustments based on the type of insurance you have, your monthly expenses and income and your family size. Then you can see how some of Aflac’s policies can help you in the event you find yourself in this situation. As our health insurance coverage and costs change, it will be even more important to make sure that you’ve thought of financial planning for illness. It’s a free calculator and it only takes a minute of our time to use.  Take a look today just to see what types of costs you’d have to deal with. You might be surprised how financial planning for illness can help.

I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for Aflac. I received a promotional item as a thank you for participating.

Ellen Christian

Ellen is a busy mom of a 24-year-old son and 29-year-old daughter. She owns six blogs and is addicted to social media. She believes that it doesn’t have to be difficult to lead a healthy life. She shares simple healthy living tips to show busy women how to lead fulfilling lives. If you’d like to work together, email info@confessionsofanover-workedmom.com to chat.