Blessed by the Potato

This post was drafted a while ago, when Wayfare was trying to get insurance in the spring. I was sitting on it partly because I was waiting for her to try another avenue (or just again with another year of stable post-mat-leave income) to get disability insurance and have a happier outcome. With recent events, it seems like just an extra kick in the pants.

“Insure all the things!” Wayfare was exclaiming after her two-hour meeting with the insurance saleslady. Considering she had gone in on a surgical strike mission to acquire some disability insurance, and came back loaded with pamphlets on all manner of insurance products yet lacking a quote on disability insurance, I have to commend the saleslady’s skill.

I have a very stoic view of insurance: if there’s a chance that some event will ruin us, we need to try to insure against it (and take reasonable precautions to prevent it from happening in the first place — note that in reconciling my philosophy and my actions, diet and exercise are not classified as reasonable precautions). Insurance is not something to buy to get a windfall in case of tragedy, and so we aim to self-insure wherever we can.

It’s also important to understand that we are in no way normal parents of a young child. Financially speaking, losing one parent or the other will not ruin us. We both have advanced degrees, we both work, and we have financial resources sufficient to cover over a year of cash burn if we had to take a prolonged leave of absence — plus as renters, we have the flexibility to reduce that cash burn with just a few months’ notice¹. We are, as Miss Sunlife put it, “like a family of happy little squirrels, burying [our] nuts all over the yard in anticipation of winter.”

So my main fear is prolonged disability — because living our current extravagant lifestyle of having grass on both sides of our house (a detached house!) in Toronto requires two incomes, and one of us becoming disabled doesn’t free up the other to move on and move out in the tidy (if morbid) way that death would. Thus, disability was the one kind of insurance I did want to pay for, and we finally got off our butts to get a quote and make that happen.

But Wayfare came back full of weepy scenarios that appealed to emotion. What if something happened to little Blueberry? What would we do? Wouldn’t we want to be able to take some time off work to care for her or grieve? Yes — but doing so would not ruin us. We would survive and so we don’t need to insure against such a low-probability event. And if she died, I would not expect to long survive her.

“What if she got some childhood illness and then couldn’t get insurance of her own when she was an adult? If we get insurance on her now, then she can be automatically insured when she’s older and won’t have to go through this process.” Insuring the ability to get insurance is taking things too far for me. That’s second-order insurance. The fact that Miss Sunlife was able to make this argument stick firmly enough in Wayfare’s head for her to try to enthusiastically convince me of the need to insure our daughter demonstrates her level 8 insurance warlock sales skills. There were also pitches for critical illness insurance (which, reading the materials in hindsight, would not have covered this particular critical illness) and life insurance for us.

This crazy process started from a trip to the insurance saleslady looking for disability insurance for Wayfare, a self-employed person. She did not come back from that initial 2-hour meeting with a quote for disability to consider, so I told her to give up on Miss Sunlife and go talk to one of the nice people who stop by the blog who’re tuned in to the insurance world to figure things out and get a quote (or tell us what route we should really be taking to get one). But she’d already started with Miss Sunlife, and Miss Sunlife was nice, so she persevered. It took several more visits and lots of documentation archaeology (including lots of making Wayfare wait on hold to try to get the right documentation out of her doctors’ offices) to finally get a quote to decide on, and even then it was a quote, not a matrix of choices — each refinement to what we might want would require another visit. After many visits in person (because this can’t be done over the phone or online, obviously), we chose the options we wanted and needed, and put it through to the underwriters. Finally, Wayfare heard back: her application was denied. So she wasted hours of time and a few subway tokens, and the rejection letter doesn’t even give a reason (because her self-employment income history is variable with a recent mat leave, so she should try again in a year or two after that falls off? Because of pre-existing health issues and she shouldn’t waste her time again? Because something at the insurer got accidentally shredded and they didn’t want to ask for it again?).

It was a disappointing result, and a discouraging process: even if we were successful in getting insurance, it’s hard to believe that people who may not be fully sold on the need for disability insurance would put themselves through that massive time-sink. I didn’t even go through it myself (I am part of a group plan at work), but watching how much time it took, it will be hard for me to push freelancers I meet who really are under-insured to go take care of it.

1. This is because we live in way more space than is needed by a single-parent family — a 3-bedroom house with two freelancer office spaces. A (tragically) single-parent subset of our family could readily down-size to a 2-bdrm apartment. We also live in a massively expensive city in part to solve the two-body problem. One of us being out of the picture would free the other to move anywhere else, with a lower cost of living.

Someone taking the course asked this question, and I’ve seen it in multiple other forums lately: how would a Trump win in the election affect my investments? (Or similar ones like should I sell or should I delay investing until after the election?)

This is the sort of question that is very natural to ask, especially if you read the news or watch TV — the business entertainment channels are full of talking heads discussing these sorts of events and what effect they may have on markets. But remember, there is always a Trump (or Brexit, or sequestration, or imminent recession, or rate hike, etc., etc.).

It’s very easy to see some cause of uncertainty and doubt and let that translate into fear of investing (or staying invested). But there are some much better questions to ask yourself before selling in fear over a certain event:

• Do I believe the evidence that short term events are extremely difficult and/or impossible to successfully trade?
• Is the risk already “priced in”?
• What happens if I’m wrong? For the 2016 US election example, the S&P500 is down about 3.5% on the month as I write this. How big of an effect would a Trump win be? What’s the likelihood of that? It may be partly priced in already – and then if Clinton wins, the market may snap back up. It may even snap up if Trump wins.
• What happens if I’m right?
• Do I want to open that door? This is perhaps the most important question of them all. Trading on short-term fears is a behavioural finance mistake – you have a long-term plan that involves expecting events like this and riding through them. Even if this time you have correctly read the situation and have insight others in the market lack and you are positioned to make money (or avoid a loss) from your brilliance, do you want to open the door to this kind of activity?

Remember, most of the time most people get these kinds of moves wrong and will end up doing worse than if they had just held on. And getting one move right and making money at it can paradoxically be bad for your long-term plan, because it’s very hard to believe after that fact that you were either just lucky, or that this was that one time when your intuition/analysis was superior to everyone else’s. So the next time some short-term event comes along, you’ll be more likely to make a hypothesis and react, rather than sticking to your long-term plan. Even if you lose more money on the next three events than you saved on the first short-term trade, if you’re like most humans you’ll still be tempted to act on your feelings for the fourth event, because that first success convinced you that this was a smart thing to do.

This philosophy and investing approach means that there will be a time when you “just knew” that some terrible thing was going to happen before it did. You may kick yourself for not acting… but try to remember all that other things you “just knew” were going to happen but didn’t. So maybe you will lose some money next week because of fear surrounding the election (or maybe not – who knows!). But by sticking to your long-term plan anyway you’ll also save yourself from that time when the talking heads said you had to stay in cash after selling out in 2008 until the March 2009 bottom was “re-tested” or that other time when the bad jobs report surely signalled the start of a new recession.

Wow, it looks like my desktop is back from the dead! It’s a Halloween zombie miracle!

If you’re just joining us, last night my computer gave me quite the fright when it refused to turn on (no power to the keyboard, nothing on the screen, not even POST error beeps) — it looked like I had a dead motherboard. At the moment cashflow is a bit tight, and I also don’t have time to try a million fixes, and I need my computer working well so I can work from home, so there was no clear choice on whether to try to replace the motherboard/other components and rebuild the system (or a new system from parts, minimizing cost but maximizing effort), or to just order a new PC (which would cost more).

As I was searching for information on which motherboards could replace this one (a Dell XPS 8500), I came across a forum post about troubleshooting motherboard issues on this system. One poster (thank you anonymous poster whose link I lost!) suggested the most insane possible fix, which I will repeat here both for how unbelievable it is that this should actually fix things, and in case others have similar issues in the future and come across this post in their search: unplug the computer. Press and hold the power button. Pull the CMOS battery (a little CR2032 coin battery on the motherboard, just above the graphics card). Plug the computer in, attempt to start it. Unplug the computer. Press and hold the power button. Put in a new CMOS battery. Plug in the computer and attempt to start it.

I have no idea what in the CMOS/BIOS could have been so badly broken that it wouldn’t even return an error, but I’m so glad that random internet post saved me from buying a new computer (or a new motherboard and all the time needed to unmount and remount all the components).

It reset my BIOS settings (which took some attempts to get back to make all the other stuff work) and threw some weird errors, but hey, I am back online now! Weirdest damned fix I’ve ever done (but not quite to the level of “more magic“).

I still have one super weird and unsettling symptom: my computer doesn’t boot up right away when I press power. The lights come on, the fans spin up for about 5 seconds… then the lights go off, the fans turn off… then the fans spin up again and the monitors and peripherals come on and it boots. No idea why it has a false start there, but I’m just grateful it’s up and running now.

Speaking of random fixes, here’s another recent one that might make more sense:

I keep my phone in my pocket. That means it will pick up lint, including in the headphone jack.

My headphones haven’t been working lately, and it’s been very frustrating. They weren’t working at all with my phone, and occasionally would cut out on my computer. So I got new headphones. They work fine on my computer, but still cut out on my phone, and that just kept getting worse, until three weeks ago they wouldn’t work at all. I tried jamming them in as hard as I could, and they’d work for a minute or so.

Finally a tip on the internet said to clean out the lint. So I have the little floss pick things in my desk here, and they’re actually perfect for cleaning that out. Took out a fair bit of lint packed down at the bottom, and now the headphone plug goes all the way into the jack and clicks into place. Huh, it’s supposed to click — I had forgotten that.

So if your headphones start becoming funky, check for lint in your jack.

Because I obviously need more crap in my life right now, my desktop died last night. I have a laptop so I’m not completely cut off from the world, but it is still a massive pile of suck. I’m pretty sure all the important stuff on the computer was backed up (and the drives should still be working anyway), but it’ll take time to get going again.

So on top of the other reasons for me to be bad about replying to stuff, there’s this.

Update: It’s alive!

Wayfare just got home after 14 consecutive days in the hospital (plus 3 of the 5 before that). It’s a serious disease and she’s doing much better than she was two weeks ago, but that’s mostly a reflection of how sick she was — there’s still a long way to go to full health and stamina. As an illustrative example, she can walk a few steps unaided now, but still feels the need for someone to support her going up and down the stairs.

Though it was a long stay in the hospital, she’s glad to be back just in time for the trick-or-treaters. She couldn’t get up and walk to the door each time, and didn’t want to catch anything with a suppressed immune system, so she bundled up under about a hundred layers, added a stethoscope to her face mask and gown to look like a doctor, and planted herself on a chair at the door to hand out treats. Priorities, you know. She’s also amazed that fall waited for her — here in Toronto I still haven’t had to rake yet as most of the leaves are still on the trees, some still green even.

But enough about her. I’m exhausted. Everyone has been great at offering support, especially her parents, who have been there in the hospital with us every day, and picking Blueberry up from school regularly. While we spent hours waiting at the pharmacy before getting to leave the hospital, her mom came over and cleaned everything, and then went out to help restock groceries and hand sanitizer, etc. But there are some things you just can’t outsource — Wayfare really didn’t want other visitors, especially when she was barely lucid and had tubes coming out every which-way. So I went downtown every day, tried to get an hour or two of work done to keep my job, and tried to hold it all together. Near the end of the hospital stay, Wayfare was thanking me for doing all the things, and said that perhaps the worst part of it all was that I had to commute down on the weekends too. And I think that is definitely part of why I feel so worn out right now — at least with big projects that lead to 80+ hour weeks, I get to work from home on the weekends.

Anyway, we’re not quite out of the woods yet. Fortunately, I should be able to work from home for the next little while to be here while not getting fired, and her parents continue to be awesome. We’re going to have to spend a day every week in the hospital for follow-ups to monitor her recovery. Unfortunately (and touching wood, spitting and turning around three times, etc. as I say this), this disease has a staggeringly high recurrence/exacerbation/relapse rate. So almost any instance of Wayfare not feeling well will be a trip to emerg to check things out, just in case. Though she finished her plasmapheresis, her central line will stay in for a few more weeks because of this danger. And that is itself a pain to manage (not to mention the creepiness factor — though in the right light it’s good progress to a rockin’ Borg costume).

And with her energy levels so low she’ll need someone here basically all the time, and it will be a while before she’ll be able to pick up Blueberry from school.

Blueberry has been just amazing through all of this. She’s written/drawn so many little get well soon notes and cards for mommy, and she’s been quite good with me (and fairly understanding when daddy’s patience is a little shorter than normal). And she’s been so good being gentle and helpful and considerate with her mom. One good thing out of all of this has been all the time I’ve gotten to spend with her. I’ve been walking her to school almost every day since she started kindergarten (for other somewhat related reasons), and now I got to pick her up most days too — and will continue to have that for a while yet. Though as much fun as all the daddy-daughter days have been, she’s awful glad to have her mommy home again.

Every now and then my mind wanders to what will happen long-term (particularly through the PF blogger lens). We have a good emergency fund, so I know at this point I’m just borrowing trouble, and there’s enough to deal with now. I’m glad money doesn’t really have to be a big concern, and that we’ve had so much support from family, which gives us the freedom to push these kinds of thoughts off until after the medical stuff is resolved. But still — we are not one of those PF uber couples that can live off just one salary. It’s been a while since I’ve done a detailed budget, but for the sake of argument let’s say that we need about $1.5-2.5k/mo (depending on how much we cut lifestyle spending, and not counting savings) from the 2nd person’s salary to live here. A friend recently moved, so on Facebook I saw the posts about her house and I was like “yeah, we should move to London!” — lower costs of living (nearly to the point of fully living on one salary), and instead of being an hour+ away at work, I’d only ever be at most 10 minutes away (20 if there’s a fucking train crossing) if something happened, and I’d get that much more time with Blueberry on all the days when nothing happened. Of course, then the thoughts spiral to how much help we got from family through this, and they probably wouldn’t follow us out (though Blueberry is the only grandchild on both sides, so maybe??). Anyway, we can put that crazy thought process on ice for a few months at least — and while it may take a few months, Wayfare should eventually be able to return to work.

Asides:

It was tough trying to keep everyone in the loop. Social media is good for that sort of broadcasting thing, but Wayfare didn’t want me broadcasting too much to too many people online at first. She wanted to write something herself, but was too foggy to be able to write. So many people knew she was “sick” (esp. with cancelled events and the like), but didn’t know she was in the hospital with a serious condition. We were getting messages like “should I bring over soup?” Finally I asked her how much murdering she would do to her friends if one of them disappeared into the hospital for days and didn’t update her, and she let me send a message out on her account.

Other than that I didn’t really provide much detail to too many people — lots asked, and I gave brief answers (or pointed to posts), as keeping other people in the loop much beyond “this is a thing and it is happening, chat later” was not very high on my priorities. The old-fashioned social network also worked well — I told my mom what was going on, who told my aunts, who told my cousins, and on through the phone tree.

I alluded to being short-tempered above with Blueberry (only a tiny bit, but I’m usually super patient with her) — I was much more so with other people. One text message exchange went like this: “Happy birthday!” “OMG FUCK OFF right now.” [exaggerated] Imagine driving to the hospital and your phone pings. Is something wrong? Do you have to stop and pick something up on the way? Is there a safe place to pull over and read it? Is it worth the safety and ticket to try to read it while driving? Maybe just risk the ticket at a red light… Oh great, a birthday wish, like I care about that now.