When we think about our own future, considering our goals and dreams, we generally think of a future where things will be better; where everything works out. And so, a big part of our planning revolves around how we can achieve these goals and dreams. From the finances we need, to the qualifications we should complete, career path and connections we need to make.

We don’t plan for things to go wrong. When it comes to our personal life and financial plan, most of us focus on the good that we believe will happen. This is what we call hope, and it’s how humans have survived for thousands of years. This hope allows us to focus our resources on the future we are planning for ourselves.

However, if we look back on our lives, we can see that the path we thought we would take was never as straight or clear cut as we’d initially envisioned. Our journey always includes unplanned stops and detours – these events can be small, or monumental and change our journey entirely.

One such unplanned event is a critical illness. When diagnosed with a critical illness, we struggle to focus on anything else at the time and the feeling that we won’t be able to get through it can be overwhelming. Hardly an environment in which to thrive!

Whilst we don’t plan to get ill, we need to know that we will be covered should we (or someone we are responsible for) fall ill.

Critical Illness Cover (CI) is a type of insurance that was specifically developed to reduce this financial strain. First created in our own country in 1983, it is now sold around the world.

If you suffer a severe health setback, this cover could help with unforeseen medical and life expenses. It’s profoundly useful and not too expensive.

So why do so few people use it?

Because… we never plan to get ill! We all have a bad habit of trying to avoid unpleasantness. Anything that’s considered bad – like a brush with death or being critically ill – is put into the box of ‘happens to other people’.

This is unfortunate, because nowadays most health problems that qualify as CI are not the end of the road, and it’s more common to survive them than not. If you’re told you have breast or prostate cancer today, chances are you have a 90 percent chance of recovering from that cancer.

There are three approaches to dealing with the reality of life’s unplanned events:

  1. We can pretend they won’t happen to us
  2. We can live in fear that they may happen to us at any moment
  3. We can plan to deal with them in the strongest possible way and live our lives normally

At Wellsfaber, we help you choose number three, every time.

The real reason we need critical illness cover, that no one tells you about, is because of the way we humans view and process trauma.

Critical illness may not mean the loss of life, but it will certainly impact our lifestyle – it is the loss of life as we know it. Whether this is temporarily or permanently, it significantly increases the trauma of being critically ill. Being sick or having had our health fail us in a major way can detrimentally affect our psyche. The former extrovert may feel uncomfortable going out and meeting strangers, a chilled-out person may start to lie awake at night worrying. It’s a side effect of coming into contact with the uncontrollable in our own physical body – we long for security, peace-of-mind and safety.

What a good critical illness cover will do is ensure that life remains as close to unchanged as possible, allowing the space to process the trauma, and focus on recovery.

In the end, taking out critical illness cover is more than just a practical safety net. It’s moving into a wisdom that acknowledges that you are not, nor should be, expected to be invincible, that life is what happens when you make other plans, and that it’s possible to prepare for unpleasant possibilities without being negative.

So, do you really need Critical Illness Cover? Well… if you want the security to thrive, then we believe you do.