Gary Boyle: Financial wellbeing – as important as personal health?
My big, big worry about the future is can we actually afford it? More specifically ‘are we prepared for it?’ In my opinion we are not, as I don’t believe enough of us engage in adequate financial planning.
The unexpected
We don’t consider financial wellbeing in the same light as personal health, and yet very often the biggest impact on personal health is the stress caused by not being able to afford adequate health cover for the unexpected medical situation. Too many items we place on the long finger: “Pension? Sure that’s years away? Life Assurance? I’m only young; I’m invincible!” “And I’m sure I’m entitled to free hospital care, aren’t I?”
Being prepared
Financial wellbeing is about being prepared; it’s about taking action to be ready if certain things come to pass. It’s actually very simple to do - the hardest part is getting over the inertia to do it in the first place!
Ask yourself some basic questions about your pension investments – is the risk factor appropriate for your stage in life? Does your health care plan cater for a growing family? Do you have life cover or other insurance? Checking-in on these types of questions on annual basis will at least keep you on top of any changes you need to make.
Quite often, with flexible benefits for example, we don’t spend time reviewing what we may have chosen seven years ago. For employer financial wellbeing can be enhanced by regular, clear communication and certainly through annual employee ‘personal portraits’.
Financial wellbeing will not help predict the future but it can help us face the future with a degree of certainty.
Certainties
And there are certainties that will happen. We will grow old. We will need different types of healthcare as we continue to grow old. We will want to stop working at some point. We will see West Ham finish in the top 4 (ok, sorry, I slipped into aspiration mode there). Seriously, there are other events that are certain to happen – certainly not to everyone, but happen they will.
A personal story
I was blown away to have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2009, aged 44. Didn’t see that coming. Couldn’t believe I’d been hit by an ‘old man’s disease’ and I wasn’t even 50. No amount of financial wellness had me ready for that one.
Or did it? I am extremely grateful that my employer has an income protection plan for critical illness that has allowed me to stop working but still be paid two-thirds of my salary. As a result I’m actually quite healthy (degenerative, incurable neurological condition aside!), fit, and doing much better now compared to that day in 2009.
Certainly, not everyone is going to need critical illness cover or income protection. However, many of the things that we do need we are not paying enough attention to, or we are focused on the negatives rather than the positives. In my opinion, auto-enrolment is simple and brilliant. We just cannot blindly plod along thinking that doing nothing, or merely saving a small percentage of our salary over 30 or 40 years will be sufficient to keep us going for 25 years or more after we retire.
There is still time to take action on a broad scale to make financial wellbeing an essential part of life for everyone. Let’s face it: can we afford not to?
This article was written by Gary Boyle, formerly HR professional at Intel Corporation
