$5,000 or your mom’s life?
“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labour does the body.”
Hi Ninja,
My mother recently got a health scare.
The symptoms hinted at the possibility of the onset of kidney damage.
Being the typical Indian mom, she was avoiding going to the hospital in fear that we would incur an expense of lakhs of rupees in medical bill.
She gave me this argument that anyway she’s going back to India in 10 days and will get herself checked there. (for new ninjas here - yes, my mom is in Canada!)
We did have the medical insurance for her but wasn’t sure if that would be reimbursed as they had couple of clauses in the policy.
If the insurance didn’t cover the expenses, my guess is that the bill would be around $3000 - $5000.
I had 2 options…
We both stay in fear for 10 days and the possibility of her symptoms worsening to save around $5,000.
I take her to the emergency ward and face the possibility of paying $5,000 from my pocket.
That’s when I realized that money indeed can solve a lot of problems in life.
Had I been working at Tim Hortons at $16/hr, I would not have had any savings to foot the bill and would have hesitated to take her to the hospital knowing that it’s just a matter of 10 days…
But at the cost of living in fear and never forgiving myself if something serious would have happened to her.
Now imagine yourself in this scenario…
Your parents are in India/Canada. God forbid, something happens to them.
They need your support but you look at your bank account.
You feel helpless as you don’t have enough money to support them.
There’s an important lesson in this: the best way to fix things in your life
... is to make enough money so that you always have savings to put your family out of trouble.
But the bitter truth is that a minimum wage job is not going to put you in a good position to take care of your parents.
So, you owe it to yourself and your family to get out of your low-paying job and get your field job that pays you well enough to take care of your loved ones.
Keep Blooming,
Bani Singh