depending on the extent of the injuries, I’d have to leave my current project. If I was able to work remotely, the current client accepts that as a matter of routine. In fact, one of my managers is WFH; he’s traveled to a several-days meeting but otherwise he’s on Skype. My skills are rare enough that this might actually be considered. I should be traveling to the site around April, which should be doable unless we’re talking permanent disability.
If I can keep the job, I can keep the rental flat, which also handles storing the stuff that’s there. If I can’t, then it still makes economic sense to keep it so long as the expected recovery time is under six months or so.
Medical expenses would be limited to any medication I get that’s not from the hospital itself, and a small amount on any prescriptions I get once out of the hospital. Even if I end up going “home” by ambulance that would be covered, but I think it’s more likely that they wouldn’t want to move me until I can travel by train; if I’m using a chair the train company has an assistance service that’s free. “Home” is defined here as the town where my mother and brothers live.
I wouldn’t be buying another car. I’m planning on purchasing a house in the Barcelona metro area, where you don’t really need a car day to day: when and if I happened to need one I’d rent.
I had an accident six weeks ago which could have done that (dude thought he could exit the central lane of a roundabout through my car; I was able to turn just enough to make the hit less on the side where I was and more towards the front, but my poor car still spent a month in the body shop waiting for a part). At the time I didn’t have the WFH client, so the situation was actually worse.
How can you tell that a Spaniard has lived in the US?
He’s the one who, when others grouch about Seguridad Social*, pipes up with “nah, believe you me, Seguridad Social is the best invention since matches. Yeah yeah it could work better, but you know what? It works!”
I expect the shibboleth works in any other UHC country.
I’ve already had my “bad break” when I woke up on May 16, 2015, in excruciating pain and unable to walk. After 19 months I’m still in constant pain, still can’t walk much and am unable to work. If it weren’t for my husband I’d be SOL. Not just the money, but the constant depression and feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. We’re fighting this together.
I recently finished a bad break where I was earning negligible income for three years. Since then, I’ve been saving up, and am now at the point where I could probably weather another two years or so.
The article in the OP talks about opioid addiction and suicide as the factors leading to the six weeks or so that life expectancy has dropped on average. I am not particularly at risk for either of those.
I’d be okay, I think. My wife works and we have enough savings to survive for a year or so, and I can work from home as long as I can think/type/talk on the phone.
If I could never work again, it would be difficult but also survivable. I am still a few years away from retirement, but we could manage.
Rest assured my question was rhetorical. I know exactly who and what to blame. Good thing they also own all the [del]media[/del] organs of propaganda. :eek:
I just weathered an extremely bad break, both literally and figuratively. I snapped my wrist bone off, couldn’t work for a year, and then it took me two more years to find permanent full-time work.
I’m in the UK so medical bills would be zero, including medication.
There’s statutory sick pay worth around 112 at current (really awful) £/ exchange rates. If it’s lifelong, then there’s Disability Living Allowance which varies depending how much care you need.
My wife earns enough to cover food, bills and mortgage if we had to.
If I have the use of my right arm I could do some freelance design work from home.
In my case, it likely wouldn’t affect me financially at all. I’m in Canada, so no medical bills, major or otherwise. Nor would my income be affected, because last time I checked, I had enough sick days accumulated at my workplace to cover half a year. I would continue to be paid my regular amount for those six months.
I have health insurance and currently have 122 days of banked sick leave with annual leave I could add to that if needed.
So, unlike many, I’m sitting pretty as far as physical injury is concerned. There are a bunch of other bad breaks that could sink me pretty quickly though. For example, I’m past 50 now, so if anything happened that led to me losing my job I’m not sure there is anything I could do to recover.
Personally I wouldn’t last more than a month or so, but if I grudgingly asked friends or family I think I have enough people that would come through for me.
I think I’d probably be ok. I have health insurance, long term and short term disability through work, as well as a job that’s pretty amenable to working from home in those situations if need be.
Plus, I have a savings account that’s probably good for a couple of months of expenditures at the current rate (which would almost certainly drop, FWIW). Then there’s my retirement account which would be enough to go for a good while, if it became really necessary to cash that one out.
That’s not even including cashing out other investments and help from parents and in-laws, which could be substantial in extremis.
I’m in the US and this happened to me in 2002. I was out a total of 7 months. Luckily, I’m not one to abuse my sick time, so I had a bunch accrued, same with vacation and comp. At the 6 moth mark, my work provided long term disability kicked in. I was single at the time, but had rent and a car payment and was able to make both without trouble.
When month 6 hit, my employer notified me that I was no longer employed and I had to pay COBRA to stay on the insurance. I was fairly nervous at that point, but I still managed to pay all the bills. Even though long term disability only paid 66% of my salary, I was still OK. Since I wasn’t working and was mostly home bound, there wasn’t much going out for fuel, meals out, etc.
It was also fortunate that the person they hired to replace me didn’t work out and quit about the same time I was getting better. Rather than go through the hiring process all over again, they called me and I managed to go back as if I never left.
To this day, I still cringe when I hear someone calling off sick because “it was just too pretty outside to work”.
In the Netherlands, and for the short run it wouldn’t hurt me that much. I actually checked for this thread, always good to know the situation (so thanks to the OP!).
After the 385 deductible all other costs will be covered (including physio).
Salary wise I’ll keep my full salary for year while being out of the running and at 70% of my salary for the second year. If it is deemed likely that I could still make a return to work, another 6 months of 70% pay can be given. After that I’ll get disability from the government (which would probably change my life style quite a bit, but if I’d been unable to work for 30 months I wouldn’t be in a great state in any case).
So that is one year at full pay and potentially another year and a half at 70%. For what it’s worth, I’ve seen quite a few colleagues make use of these provisions (usually because of a burn out). They are out for a year or more and then slowly come back (starting only 1 or 2 days a week). I’m not sure how long it takes for your situation to “reset” itself, if you fall ill again.
If we suffered a bad break now we’d be screwed. Mostly because we just are recovering from a bad break and haven’t built back our reserves yet.
My wife lost her job in October and got pregnant in December then I got laid off in January. This occurred while I was trying to start a new business and had my 401K tied up. So we couldn’t move to find work and slowly had to sell off our assets to stay afloat while trying to get the business off the ground. After 14 months we had nothing left and I had to turn the business over to someone else to run while we moved for work.
Now we’re paying down the debt we accrued and both have been at news jobs for less then 6 months and my business failed after 6 months of someone else running it so our retirements savings are gone. My wife will at least qualify for unemployment in another month but we moved away from most of our support network. Of course we have health insurance so we could survive a medical issue as long as we kept our jobs.
MrsB’s company shut down several years ago. She was earning half again my five-figure salary, and we’ve got two kids and a mortgage.
It was coming up on time to renew our mortgage, so we chose to lock it in for 7 years (had been on variable, but with a long period of fiscal uncertainty coming up, the risk of dramatically increasing payments was unreasonable).
She applied to and was accepted to med school, and starts her residency next year. Her starting pay will be about twice minimum wage.
So… since we became a single-income family we have minimized the use of the car, which at 14 years old is now its last legs.
We’ve still been flush enough for me and the elder Barbarianette to go downhill skiing several times a winter, the kids are still spending thousands a year on their twice or thrice-weekly sporting activities, and we eat the same as we always do.
What helped:
We bought much less house than the bank/financial advisers said we could afford. We set our (sizeable) savings as a 25% down payment, then based our mortgage application on that. The Bank was willing to double our mortgage, but we refused.
If we had accepted and bought to the full extent of our mortgage, we would have lost our house several years ago.
We live in an area with excellent public transit. Access to transit was one reason we share walls with neighbours. It Paid off in spades with my wife using it to go to school, and me using it frequently to go to work. Without it, we would have had to sink money into another car or two.
No large medical bills, and no worry about them either. That just doesn’t happen with a single-payer medical system.
Family is nearby. This really helps for the kids on summer vacation and the days the school is closed. Without it, we’d have had to drop their sporting activities in order to pay for daycare.
At my last employer, sick leave didn’t accrue. If you didn’t use your annual 40 hours of sick leave by the end of the year, it vanished. So yes, it was pretty common for healthy folks to use a day or two of sick leave when they weren’t actually sick, especially towards the latter part of the year.