This morning I walk on the beach but I am not on vacation. I am here to say goodbye to a place I have known and loved since childhood which within three months will be sold and gone forever. I can not say I am happy about this, it is just one more loss on an astounding pile of losses.
As the surf pounds the shore and miles disappear under my sneakers I think and I think a lot. Sometimes about loss, sometimes about how everything has changed. My before cancer life is truly gone. The people and places I knew, it seems that every single stability I counted on has systematically disappeared…but I digress.
Today I am thinking about post cancer finances. A couple nights ago my husband called (having no particular attachment to this place he did not come with me) and said that he had been offered a good deal on an investment condo and he thought we should buy it. I was shocked that he would even consider such a thing, after all, I have been struggling to cover bills for months. On a good month I make 2/3 of what I made pre-cancer, on a bad month, less than a quarter. I am treading water at best relying on several part time jobs that allow for self-care but the income is month to month and by no means guaranteed. I doubt individually I would qualify for financing. I have some savings which I have had to dip into mostly to pay taxes or my medical malpractice insurance premiums. My savings is the result of a decade’s worth of careful money management and when it’s gone, in my current position, there is no guarantee I can replace it.
Still, twice recently my husband has asked me to consider dipping into this savings, once to install a solar power system on the house and once for this investment condo. In my pre-cancer days both of these long term investments would have been something I would jump at. They are “no brainers”. Independence from the power company would insulate us from rising energy costs and rental rates are through the roof locally so in this current market investment properties often make reliable profits. And yet…now, the thought of either of these investments leaves me with a feeling of dread.
What he doesn’t realize is he’s asking me to invest in a future I don’t really feel I will be around for. Before I consider dipping into my precious savings for a long term investment, I need to get to the point where I actually believe I am going to be alive to reap it’s benefits.
I am only nine months from my initial cancer diagnosis and right now I just don’t have the luxury of believing in an unlimited future. For a healthy 39 year old both of these investments would make a great deal of sense. With a long term outlook you would almost certainly come out on top. But that’s assuming you have a long term in your future and for me, at least for now, that is certainly not guaranteed.
I am a physician and no amount of external assurance is going to erase what I know to be true about my life expectancy. The chances that I will be alive to collect my retirement benefits at age 65 are small. That is the truth. I am 39. I have survived a lightning strike cancer. Trying to sell a long term investment to me is like trying to sell a retirement policy to someone on death row. Good for the person selling, bad for the person buying.
These investments will not bring me happiness and in the short term they will destabilize me financially. The thought of further destabilization is terrifying. It has been truly scary not knowing if I can pay my bills month to month. Isn’t that ironic? A “rich” doctor (that is of course not the truth but what everyone sees on the outside) who has had to give up eating out and other minor luxuries. I worry about affording gas for my car. I worry about being able to pay my medical licensure fees. I worry about being able to pay for the myriad insurances I have to carry to be able to work.
To purchase the investments would require a large chunk of my savings, make my current financial situation much more precarious, and add a large amount of stress to my day to day. Between cancer and ten years of critical care two as a front line provider in a pandemic, I’ve had enough stress for three lifetimes. And destabilizing my now for a more stable someday doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when someday may never come.
I haven’t completely given up on the possibility that I will live a full life and so I continue my monthly deposits into my retirement policy. I suppose that shows that I am maintaining some hope that my current state of mind will fade and I will live to draw from the account.
I am also not entirely against dipping into my hard earned savings but if I do, I want it to be for something that brings me joy. It needs to be something that enriches my life and makes whatever time I have left more meaningful…in other words, I am playing a short term game and need short term rewards.
Counterintuitively, a good investment for me would be a boat or a beach house…these are things I have dreamed of and would enjoy immensely. It is generally understood that things like boats and beach houses are not investments at all and are in fact liabilities, and for the most part I agree. But in my state of mind I need to be investing in myself and my happiness not in a financially acceptable yet hypothetical future that may or may not be mine.
At the same time, I don’t want to live for the now only to survive into old age having passed up financial opportunities.
So what is the answer here? Do I invest in my now with things that bring me happiness or joy? Or do I take a risk and invest in a hypothetical future making my now more stressful and unstable? I guess only time will tell.
