CJ Fox: So, disability insurance is one of those things that I absolutely believe in. I am very passionate about it. I believe that if you have a paycheck and you live off of it, then you probably need to protect that.
When I was 23 years old, I was still in college at Mississippi State. I had been married for five years at that point. I had three little girls all under the age of three. I was working full time. Also, taking a massive amount of hours in college. My husband at the time was very sick. He was in and out of the hospital. He had experienced cancer at that point and another disease, ulcerative colitis, that just kept him in and out of the hospital.
Life was very stressful to say the least at that point and one day I got a call from the hospital out of Jackson and they said that, “Your dad is being released today and he has nowhere to go.” I didn’t even know anything was wrong with him. He, as far as I knew, was very healthy. He walked to and from work every day. He didn’t have the perfect lifestyle as none of us do, but the fact that my dad who was 50 something years old at that time, was all of a sudden sick and could not get back to work.
So, the medicine they gave him kept him alive, but it didn’t get him back to work. He ended up going and living with my grandfather for a little while. Then he eventually came to live with us.
Not only did I have all of that other stuff going on with my life and taking care of my husband. I was driving back and forth from UAB to Starkville and then taking care of my dad and three children all under the age of three. I mean it was just … It was insane. I look back on that, and I think if he had had a disability policy or a long term care policy, that life could have looked very different for our family.
I could have been able to get him the help that he really needed. To be able to give him a bath or clip his nails. All of those things that we don’t think about when someone loses their income. The need for disability insurance is absolutely imperative and paramount to a financial plan.