We’re all susceptible to unexpected life events that can turn our world upside-down. Whether it’s your credit card not working during a purchase or a tragic medical emergency, unexpected events can change your life’s course when you least expect them. You can suddenly be exposed to a life-altering event where you lose everything you worked for such as losing your job or facing unplanned travel expenses.
Luckily, there are many practical ways that can help you protect yourself from the unexpected. Preparing for uncertainty will bring you peace of mind as you protect your life from sudden tragedies. If you want to know more about how you can prepare for the uncertainty, you started in the right place. Here are the top practical ways of protecting oneself from unexpected life events.
Prepare for All Different Scenarios
Most of us find it difficult to not be in control of the situations we are put in or to not be able to plan the course of our actions. After all, you can’t tell what you’re going to do if you don’t know what’s going to happen. We always need assurance to help us plan our reactions and responses. If you know the threat you’re about to face, you know how you’re going to dodge it or deal with it.
However, in all cases, you need to accept that you’re not always going to be in control. So you need to be flexible and prepare for all different scenarios and possibilities. Have a plan in mind for what happens if you’re faced with different threatening events and life-changing obstacles. Train your mind to be flexible and ready for a change in plan in many different possibilities and unexpected events.
Learn to Have Plans Instead of Expectations
You can’t always live up to your far-fetched expectations and control the outcome of your future opportunities. If you depend on future expectations, you’re only setting yourself up for a let-down.
On the other hand, if you expect the worst, your mindset will be too negative to exploit valuable opportunities that can bring you success in the future. If you’re trying to protect your life assets and financial plans, you need to tackle a middle plan where you’re prepared for disappointment but positive enough to find a way out. Learn to find a balance between your expectations and plans, you can’t control the outcome of specific events but you can plan how you’re going to react to such events.
Protect Your Assets
Protecting your assets includes preparing for many forms of unexpected situations. You may need to update your beneficiary information, for instance, to protect your heirs in the occurrence of a tragic event. You need to make sure you pass on your life assets to the right people if anything happens to you. You also need to insure your assets so that you can have peace of mind knowing they are recoverable if anything was to be damaged or lost.
There are many companies offering life insurance in Canada that can give you policies covering other family members as well. Especially if you have children, you would also want to make sure your belongings and life assets are insured and safeguarded by your revocable living trust so that you can protect these assets and pass them on to the right people.
Create an Emergency Fund
If you’re faced with an unexpected life event, you want to be able to pay for its expenses. However, how are you going to do that without an emergency fund? Think about all the other poor options you may have if you’re faced with a situation where you receive significant unexpected expenses or lose your income temporarily.
You can be forced to take out a high-interest loan to pay for your emergency or you may even ruin your entire financial future plan without an emergency fund. An emergency fund is very important for these reasons; you should aim to have enough to cover at least six months’ worth of expenses in case of emergencies. Establishing this emergency plan will help you focus on reversing the losses without damaging your financial future.
Preparing for all unexpected situations is impossible but what’s possible is practicing flexibility of plans and knowing how you can get yourself out of tough conditions.
Try to think of all the different possibilities that you can be put through and train your mind to avoid expectations. It’s also essential to establish an emergency fund that can cover unexpected expenses rather than having to take out high-interest loans and ending up with heavy debts.