At about 10 p.m. on Sunday, my boyfriend and I were in a hit and run car accident near our home. The whole incident was a blur—one minute we were stopped at a red light and the next we were covered in glass, watching the perpetrator veer away down a side street.
Once we established that we were both more or less okay (though the same cannot be said for my wonderful red car), my mind started racing. Is my car going to be OK? Does this person have insurance? Will the police find the driver? What am I going to do?
Planning for the Unforeseen
As I sat on the curb going through a mental list of all the next steps, I took a moment and paused. I never would have expected anything like that to happen—who would? What mattered was that we had planned ahead for the unforeseen. We wore seat belts. I drove a very safe Volvo. I obeyed the traffic laws. We had car insurance, medical coverage and AAA. We were lucky enough to be able to walk away from the accident and know that the other pieces were going to fall into place.
Managing Uncertainty
We are surrounded by uncertainty in our lives. Our resilience and success comes from our ability to focus on what is preventable and what is not. We buy life insurance to hedge against a death we never want to happen, disability insurance for the illness we hope never strikes, and personal umbrella policies for the lawsuit that we never expected to be filed. When financial markets fall, as they always do at some point, we have a financial plan that helps us stay the course and wait for the inevitable rebound.
Let’s plan around the things we can control and not lose any sleep on the things we can’t.
