Over the weekend, a friend of ours had an accident. He works construction, and he was working on a side-job with my brother-in-law, and he fell when a piece of scaffolding broke beneath him and he broke both bones in his leg. He has already had two surgeries. He'll be in the hospital at least a week, and can't bear weight until Christmas. Obviously this is going to put a huge financial strain on his family.
If any of you have been through something similar, and have suggestions as to how we can help out his family, I'd love to hear them.
Anyway, it got me thinking about insurance. Insurance is one of those things they really should teach in high school - but don't. I'm well into my 30s, and I'm still not entirely sure how all of it works.
I do know that BJ and I have short-term disability insurance that covers BJ if he can't work. It'll pay 80% of his salary for like 2 years. I also know that AFLAC has an accident policy that, thank goodness, will cover some of my friend's family's expenses.
If you own a home, you simply must have homeowner's insurance. Hopefully the policy of the homeowner that my friend was working for will come through and help with their expenses, also. If you rent, renter's insurance is extremely affordable and could be invaluable if there's a fire and you lose everything you own.
In light of what happened to my friend, I hope each of you will check with an insurance agent and make sure that you have some kind of coverage for accidents and lost wages. I know it's frustrating to pay for so many kinds of insurance - we have homeowner's, car, health, disability, life... - but the peace of mind that you'll get from having everything in place, just in case, is well worth the money.
And again, if you have any suggestions for how we can help this family (they live in Grammaland) please let me know.
3 comments:
Due to a tragedy that hit way to close to home, it got my husband and I more organized insurance-wise. One thing I made sure of was having my name on the homeowner's policy as well--if something happens to me the house is taken care of at least, plus a small policy for funeral expenses. It sucks talking about it, but better now than later. Also, I put all our policies in a folder in the file cabinet and even showed my best friend where they are, since Hubby can never find anything!
Very upsetting... especially since we were on scaffolding for the past couple weekends with our new bathroom project... I think you understand just fine and hopefully the homeowners insurance will kick in but with friends like you around, plenty more will avail themselves to help... keep us posted.
Connie
And please, please, please have life insurance if you have children, especially small children. I know between diapers and daycare, it's hard to find the money. But this point was driven home when a woman at my work was diagnosed with cancer. Stage 4. 34 years old. And a six month old baby. No life insurance. The situation is tragic beyond all comprehension.
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