Six Stones – 2. “To Be Disabled”

But what money does do is provide you with options.

Options about treatment, work, recovery, equipment and the kind of life you’re able to lead now.

And not having funds reduces your options, it closes doors – at a time when you really don’t want to have any more limitations forced on you.

Is It Worth Paying for a Financial Adviser?

The glib response is to say ‘wait till you see the real cost of bad advice’.

Which is easy to say if you ignore all of the negativity surrounding financial advice in Australia.

In such an environment, glibness doesn’t help people with real complexity in their financial lives, but who still view financial advisers with real trepidation.

Six Stones – 2. Quantifying the Horrible

Of course, the Likelihood is not something we can examine here, but knowing the Impact is incredibly valuable.

Knowing this, we can:

• Examine some of our assumptions – for instance, does Louise still want to provide that level of assistance on the school fees? Will $200,000 be enough to help her Mum when the time comes?

• Work out the ‘next steps’ in the event of Louise’s death – who should what money, and when?

• Add these specifics to Louise’s Risk Management Plan.

Six Stones – 2. Louise is Back!

These fears sit in the back of Louise’s mind, prodded back to life whenever she thinks about the horrible idea of not being here for her kids.

Thankfully, she’s taken the time to articulate them in detail, so she can fully recognise why they’re important, why they worry her and – inadvertently – some ways she might be able to deal with them.

Six Stones – 2. Let’s Talk About Death

Now we’re going to get personal. Bear with me.

Imagine, if you can, that you went to sleep tonight and didn’t wake up in the morning.

Push past the emotional weight of this idea (it’s hypothetical and, I hope, not too resonant of something in your past) and focus on the relatively banal issue of the financial impact.

Six Stones – 2. The Worst Case Scenario

But I would argue that taking a little bit of time to think about it now means you don’t have to worry about them anymore.

The consequences, that is.

You can still worry about the actual scenarios.

Six Stones – 2. Speaking Financially…

The first big financial risk– investment risk – is a big topic and is covered in more depth in Part 4 of the series, Grow.

The second – personal risk – is also a big topic, which we’ll cover off in as much detail as we can for the rest of this book.

Six Stones – 2. “Risk Management Plan”…Yawn

But by taking a few moments to think about these things now – hypothetically and at a distance – you can start getting a grasp on what you might want to happen in those situations.

And while it may not mean the risk doesn’t happen, it can prevent you from making things worse.

Six Stones – 2. The Framework

All of which translates tidily into an easy matrix to help us put some structure around looking at these pesky risks, which makes it a lot easier to see which ones you should worry about.

Six Stones – 2. Risky Business

Of course, not all risks are equally important or serious.

There are the minor risks – missing your bus – and the major ones – cancer – and all the ones in between.

It’s worth spending some time exploring the different types of risk we face in life, and how you can start categorising them