Rahul, with God’s grace, is back home today.

Rahul, 38 years, Rachana’s only sibling was fighting for life for 21 days! Satish spent sleepless nights for his brother-in-law. Rahul is an investment advisor by profession. Being self-employed, he had no employee benefit! He has two daughters of 4 and 2 years and a home maker wife. Rachana’s elderly parents live in a tier 2 city nearby. One of them is a heart patient and the other is suffering from chronic arthritis.

Satish could manage a hospital ventilator on emergency when they needed to transfer Rahul from the tier 2 city hospital. Next day they put him to ECMO. Then it was only prayer and fight for life for next 12 days! One must say Rahul himself had a lot of courage!

The estimated cost of treatment was too high! Satish himself, even his father both were ready to liquidate all their assets to save the family from this distress. Rahul’s wife handed over a decent file to Satish. She didn’t seem to open it before, neither she could make out anything at that hour of emergency.

Satish found a phone number, handwritten in bold letters on top of the file – ‘emergency contact’. Inside the file there were Rahul’s health insurance documents and cash less card nicely stored. A post it was stuck on the document, written ‘32L’. The family’s latest CAS statements were also filed there. But the health insurance itself served the purpose. Rahul spent around 25K as premium of his family floater health insurance policy, and he never missed a deadline.

While returning home today, Rahul asked Satish – “Were you scared?”

“We all prayed to God and he listened to our prayers!” replied Satish.

Rahul promptly said, “God had saved my family even if I wasn’t there today! Bro! It didn’t make a difference.”

“What do you mean? Are you crazy?”

“Not at all! My family might have missed me emotionally, they survived the way they survive today. My wife had her expenses till her lifetime, inflation adjusted, and my daughters till their marriage. They had never been a burden on you or anyone! Don’t mind!”

“But how do you say that?”

“I only told my wife to check my file, in case I am not there. You understood, if you went through the file.”

“Yes. I saw your health insurance papers. I didn’t require to go beyond that.”

“If I died, you had found my term insurance as well. It covers my human life value.”

Satish remembers today, the discussion he had with his brother-in-law during good times. Rahul hinted him to have adequate term insurance in place. He had said, “I own a money back, that gives me a lumpsum every 3 years. I also have a policy that will give me a lumpsum after 10 years. Even I have an insurance for your sister. How many covers shall I have more!”

Are you aware, how much life cover do you have?  

Did you ever calculated how much will your family require, inflation adjusted, in case you are not able to earn for them?