Last year, my wife and I made the mistake of taking our puppy to the dog park.
He’s a large dog so, even as a pup, he was 40 lbs at maybe 4-6 months old.
Anyway, the long and short of it was he was attacked by a pitbull and a bunch of other hugemongous adult dogs.
Me, not wanting my poor little pooch to be eaten alive, dove into an entire pack of dogs to yank him out of there.
And… I got bit in the process.
Had to get rabies shots which… are not fun.
How not fun are they?
I’m glad you asked.
The doctor has to inject the vaccine directly into the open bite wound which… is as painful as it sounds.
But wait… there’s more!
When a strange dog bites you, and you cannot verify the vaccine status of the dog, you basically have 2 choices:
A) You can pretend the dog doesn’t have rabies and go about your business.
2) You can go get your full rabies vaccination series.
If you choose NOT to get your rabies vaccination, you’ll probably be fine.
Probably.
Most domesticated dogs in the U.S. don’t have rabies… even if they’ve never been vaccinated.
But… if they attack a squirrel or something in the back yard that DOES have rabies well… that’s a problem.
And, this was a Pit so…
Assuming the dog does not have the sickness, I’d have lived out my life and presumably died an old man.
But, the doctor said something to me that stuck in my mind.
I just couldn’t shake it.
“On the off-chance you do have rabies Mr. Lewis, we won’t know it until you start showing symptoms. And, by that time, it’s too late to do anything. You’re dead.”
Your old pal Uncle Gluten wasn’t about to take those odds so… I got the vaccine and dealt with the excruciating (but momentary) pain.
Why does any of this matter?
Probably it doesn’t.
If you’re 100% sure your financial plan will “stick” and you’re not going to run into any problems later on in life, then… don’t listen to anything I have to say about life insurance.
But… most of the time, problems in your financial plan don’t show up until a “black swan” event. By definition, no one can predict those.
And, by the time it happens, it’s too late to do anything about it.
For example, people who planned on retiring or cutting back on full time work in 2008-2009… their savings was destroyed.
People who had already retired, still fully invested, and were drawing income… they can’t recover now (the withdrawals for income + investment losses make it near-impossible to recover).
Does shifting some of your money into a safety net hurt a little?
It can.
Maybe you miss out on near-term gains in something else.
But… the pain is momentary.
Of course, I totally understand someone not wanting to go through that.
At the same time, the alternative is sudden and catastrophic death of savings.
So, you have a choice.
Ignore the risk or… take the medicine.
If you want the vaccine, then join my email list… now.