My advice is for every person to get a good disability policy with their first real job, and make sure that you keep it all your life. Go to the food pantry for help if it is a choice of disability insurance or food. Increase the coverage as your expenses increase.

The optimist is often so full of expectation and unrealistic thoughts–not to mention outright denial– that they are really and truly shocked and unprepared for what could happen because they never seriously dwelt on the way things can change in real life: Lose job, become chronically ill, have a stroke, get wiped out in your savings, etc.

My biggest issue with so-called optimists is that many of these folks are the ones who then expect everyone else to bail them out. Over the years, they never listen to others who caution them to prepare for certain things. Their attitude? Someone else will deal with this. (this is very common in families, especially dysfunctional ones)

It’s hardly pessimistic to do as much as you can to prepare for the future, when your options may be more limited and your resources (physical, mental, emotional, financial, etc.) are also more limited.

And by the way, tough stuff can happen at any period of life. Ask a 20-something widow with young children whose life is ruined because her husband had no life insurance, she never worked and has no skills because she made a life choice–supported by her husband’s income–to stay home and work in the home (without compensation). Even if she gets some SS for those kids, it won’t be enough.

Or the 50-something spouse/life partner who is dumped and left financially handicapped, regardless of whether they work or not.

And people can get seriously ill at any time in life and be unable to work, and yet still not be eligible for SS disability.

You do the best you can with what you have, but not everyone is going to have enough to save to cover all the possibilities. Not with the low incomes most people have, even with frugal living.

and the other thing: Some of the stuff that will happen in the future is literally beyond our imagination of the worst-case scenarios. That is the nature of life. You cannot anticipate everything.

Did I just realize that I am a “realist”???

I love that line. Much of personal finance is about preparing for the worst.

As a lawyer, I help clients enter into business relationships with each other. When the start the relationship, they love each other, otherwise they would not be partnering. But, my job is to help them to plan for the worse. You have to plan for the worse.

I foucs on the things that I can control and let God take care of the rest.

This may be a little naive, but a much less stressful way of thinking.

We’ve been married long enough now that we’ve been in lots of different financial situations and we’ve learned a lot along the way.
I have to say when we were newly married we made too much money and didn’t appreciate it, we expected it based on our education, training and our location.
We then owned an (eventually) successful business which we sold and then we were unemployed for a long time. Neither of us had ever been unemployed in our lives! Eye opener.
Now we both have new, awesome jobs and I’m feeling very optimistic, tempered by realism. Full circle :)

We are now savings 45% of our monthly income. I can sleep again at night. Priceless.

As a younger person, my plans and dreams for the future seem to change very frequenly, so it can be hard to plan ahead financially.

“God bless the pessimists, for they have provided us with back-up systems.”