My Biggest Financial Fear

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financial fearSometimes fear can motivate us and other times, it can paralyze us or dictate our decisions. I have plenty of fears, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Of all the fears I have, my biggest one of all is a financial fear.

Not that we’ll be poor or crazy rich and end up changing who we are, but something that’s for the most part completely avoidable. We might have (finally) an emergency fund, but that is nowhere near enough to cover my financial fear.

So what is this financial fear I speak of? I’m am scared to death that something will happen and I’ll end up hurting my back and need surgery. Did I mention we don’t have any health insurance?

I cannot even fathom how much spinal surgery would cost without health insurance…$20,000 or more is my guess. All those little things necessary along with the surgery itself can really add up. We would be so financially screwed if that happened.

Every single day, this is what I worry about. If I lift something too heavy, sit for too long, or if I move wrong, if I’m not careful doing this or that. It really makes it difficult to get great workouts in when you know just how easily things can go wrong. This fear, has made my life miserable. The things I want to do get brushed aside, just to be on the safe side.

It all started about 4 1/2 years ago, I was putting on my cute little Adidas socks to get ready for a trip to the gym. Just a simple stretch like that and BAM! It was amazing how much pain I felt, I couldn’t even move…I was paralyzed from the pain.

Each time I tried to move, pain shot down my leg. So I took it easy for a week or two, then I made an appointment with my doctor (I still had health insurance back then).

I hate how when you go to the doctor for pain and they have to assess the situation. The poking and prodding, the various ways they want you to move when you know how bad each thing is going to hurt, it’s really awful.

He decided that I should have muscle relaxers and Vicodin and come back in a week if it wasn’t better. It wasn’t better. So the next time, he had me do 3 weeks of physical therapy, three times a week. Nope, still not better. I tried to wait another week and see if that would help. Nope.

Back to the doctor I went, now he had me go get an MRI. Thankfully I’m not claustrophobic or anything, but it still kind of creeped me out.

The next week, I had to go back in to the doctor to discuss the results of the MRI. Not good at all. He had me make an appointment with the neurology people at the hospital. I just kept getting more and more freaked out, have I mentioned I’m scared of doctors?

At the neurology appointment, the doctor (he was actually a brain surgeon) was really nice. Even though he told me that I had a very, very, very bad bulging disk and that it was doing all sorts of crazy stuff to the nerves.

That would explain the immense pain I was in, seriously, I had a kid—and compare to this, that was nothing. Apparently, whatever was happening in my back so bad that I had to come back in a few days for surgery. He said that if I didn’t, I could lose the use of my legs. Okay, that sold me.

So I had the surgery and everything went great. I was supposed to take it easy for a bit and then begin physical therapy. I still had to be careful and make sure to do all the physical therapy because most of the people who have this surgery done end up having to come back for another.

Unfortunately, my insurance ran out and I couldn’t do anything to continue it, so I didn’t end up getting to do the physical therapy. Which makes it even more likely that something will happen to my back again. I had gotten laid off, and was grateful enough that my insurance lasted as long as it did; at least I didn’t have to pay for the surgery.

So that’s why I’m so worried that something will happen before we get health insurance again. I cannot deal with that much financial distress, I definitely don’t want to accumulate debt. I just need to really careful until we are able to afford health insurance again and save up money to cover those crazy deductible things.

I keep trying to figure out a way to make money, but end up at a loss. I can’t get a job, so I have to get creative. Yes, even if we quit smoking, we couldn’t afford health insurance—if it was only 200 bucks a month, I’d have gotten it already.

I just wanted to share one of my biggest financial fears with you guys since it pretty much affects everything in my life right now. I am going to be so relieved the day we are finally able to get health insurance.

I think if I start a business, then that would be a good way to make enough money to cover it. I just get stuck on what kind of business since I don’t have any focused talents or skills. Feel free to chime in if you have any ideas. :-)

 

Do you have any financial fears?
Do they affect your life at all?

About Jen Perkins

Likes: saving money, being debt free (aside from our house), zombies, travel, getting money, blogging and dogs. Dislikes: debt, being broke, bunnies, wasting money, not having enough money to travel the world and paying interest. Facebook  ♥  Twitter  ♥  Google+  ♥  RSS

Comments

My Biggest Financial Fear — 14 Comments

  1. Wow, I can’t even begin to imagine what you are going through; I am so sorry :( Hang in there!!
    I think my biggest financial fear is just all encompassing; that we’ll never get out of consumer debt. That it will just hang over us like a cloud, forever. We are working on getting rid of the cloud, but its hard!

    • I know that feeling, I’ve had 4 encounters with debt. This last one is by far the smallest (thank goodness) and it should be paid off in the next couple of months. Good luck getting out of debt, I know how hard it can be, but you’ll feel amazing when it’s done with. :-)

  2. I’m sorry to hear what your going through and I can relate. I don’t have health insurance either – I recently paid out of pocket for two doctors visits and yet i’m still having symptoms of my problem. My BF has a shoulder injury – he’s gone to the chiropractor but it may be more serious than that. We’re applying for state assistance, but I think we both make too much money (barely) and yet all our income goes to bills as soon as it comes in. Good luck!

    • Doctor visits can get really expensive. I hope you get better and don’t have to go for a third visit. Yeah, we seem to be in the same place, make too much for state health but after taxes there just isn’t enough to pay for health insurance. :-( Hopefully we’ll both figure out a way to get it. :-)

  3. I hurt my back 25 years ago, right before getting married. It flares up from time to time. The worst time I was unable to stand or lay down for 3 weeks. I had had a career change due to a family need, and though we had insurance, it was high deductible. I was self-employed at the time. I hate going to doctors, so I didn’t go, but finally did go to a chiropractor to get relief from that pain. After 3 trips over 6 days I was feeling on the mend. I don’t go regularly to the chiropractor like some friend do, but when my back won’t get better I go.

    If you run in to medical situations, I can suggest you check out Kare360. I work for this company (not why I am writing this) and we have 15 years experience negotiating medical bills after they are incurred (Kare360 is new, the company has been around for 15 years). Have a look.

    As for my back pain? It has been diagnosed as a bulging disc, along with degenerative disk disease (my lower back is a wreck). But I stay active, try always to remember to bend my knees to lift even the lightest thing.

    Thanks for sharing your fears.

    • Thanks for sharing your story, ThadP. Those discs can cause so much pain, it’s just insane. I tried out the chiropractor thing too, but the pain only went away for 10 minutes tops; those few minutes were amazing though. I actually had to pull over every couple of minutes when driving and get out and stand up for a while.

      When we do get health insurance, I’ll ty to steer clear of the high deductibles. I’ve never heard of Kare360, but if something happens before I get insurance, I’ll definitely check them out. :-)

  4. Hi Jen, first of all I want to say “hello”-it’s my first time here, I was on Daily Money Shot where I found link to that post. It attracted my attention beacuse I remember when I was living without health insurance and I’m so sorry to hear what you’re going through: about physical pain and about this lack of sense of security if something happened before getting next insurance.

    I remember when I didn’t have my own, you know “I’m young and so healthy, nothing bad can happen to me”, and one day everything changed. Without my parents and right medical care I wouldn’t be able to get out of that. After all, even with that, I had some health complications so I can’t imagine what would happen if I’d wait some more time. It was a story with “happy end” but one of my friends wasn’t so lucky like I was.

    When we were 19 and getting our first exams to start studying at univeristy, her mother went somewhere abroad not realising her health insurance expired. She had an accident there and she died. Costs of bringing her body into to the country without insurance, costs of funeral and so on, were so enormous they put her and her father in some serious debts which they were paying off next few years. She started her studies but only these she could afford, not these she really wanted and she was working in the same time, concentrating on earning money, not getting experience and knowledge of a company she wanted to work for. She was given tough lesson and she passed with A+ but last time when we met she told me she paid for extra health insurance. I asked her why. And then she said: “health insurance it’s not only your own business but it’s for people you love and you care. It’s just another way of being responsible for them, not only for yourself.” It kicked my ass and when I was back at home that evening I went through my insurance documents.

    I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. I wish you all the best and I hope you’ll feel better soon. And I’ll come back here regulary to see how things are going :) Good luck!

    • Thanks for sharing your experience as well as your friend’s. That must have been really hard for her, and I can totally understand her wanting to be completely covered like that. It’s crazy how many things we can take for granted until we no longer have them.

  5. Wow, great story! I could not even begin to imagine my life without life insurance. Honestly, I get those statements in the mail and cringe about how each and every tip to the doctor “would have” cost us. I swear having a baby would have easily been north of $30K! I really hope you can find the income to get insurance. Maybe this blog could be your ticket? Other financial blogs seem to be doing really well!

    • Thanks MyMoneyDesign. :-) I don’t think I get enough traffic to actually money from this blog. It’s amazing how much money some of the other PF bloggers make, I wish I knew how to do that.

  6. Thanks for submitting this post to this week’s Festival of Frugality. My girlfriend faced a similar dilemma when she started a new job that didn’t provide health insurance.

    What I told her was that I would definitely say that buying your own health insurance is a perfectly valid use of your emergency fund.

    Personally, I would go ahead and use that to pay the monthly premiums so that you have coverage. If you get hurt, you could be $80,000 in debt from from the health expenses – a very valid worry.

    Great post! Thanks for sharing!

    • Thanks Jacob. :-)

      Our emergency fund is only at $1,000, so I would only be able to afford about 2 months worth of health insurance coverage. I wouldn’t be able to continue paying for it after that, which is why we don’t currently have health insurance.