What Matters Most

Whether business owner, CEO, employee, butcher, baker or candlestick maker – when we peel away the trappings of modern life, and contemplate what matters most –– the answer is likely “health and family.”   Health and family matter. 

These days, when we talk about family, it may be our family of origin, or the friends and other relationships that we have by choice.  Many of us consider our workplace a type of family.  We may spend more of our waking hours with our workplace family than the family with whom we share a home.

As we enter the season of Thanksgiving, with so many other holidays on the horizon, we are reminded of these core values of family and health.  When someone in any of our families is experiencing a health hardship, we feel it, too.  Evidence abounds of our interconnectedness.  It’s obvious in the sick time pools at many workplaces.  Not to mention the volunteers who visit homebound elderly, bringing meals and companionship.

When the need for extended long term care hits, it impacts not just the person, but a family.  It’s difficult enough to juggle the many important priorities that claim our time.  Adults who once thought their schedules were difficult before the responsibilities of caregiving now reminisce about those ‘good old days’ – when there were enough hours in the day.

Every day, caring family members sacrifice their own wellbeing, and financial security, for the sake of an ailing loved one.  A parent quits a job to care for a handicapped child.  A spouse goes from full-time to part-time work in order to care for a parent with Alzheimer’s.

What’s remarkable is that it’s not.  It’s the power of love, and family…and what changes everything overnight is a change in health.

Of course we can’t eliminate changes in health, but we can take smart steps to help us provide long term care more easily if and when it’s needed.  By looking into long term care insurance while we still have our health, we are taking an important step to protecting all of our families.  And, if we truly value family and health, doesn’t it make sense to protect against the consequence of what can be not only an expensive, but heartbreaking and life-changing turn of events: extended long term care?