Day Zero. The day when Cape Town would run out of water. The first city in the world to do so. Expected consequences would be panic, water collection lines, and general unruliness turning into chaos. The Save Water campaign achieved what it meant to; people stopped washing their cars, started recycling water from washing machines to flush their loos and day zero was pushed back to May, then June, and then it disappeared.
So things have gone quiet. Not because Cape Town is in the clear, but because the flow of money slowed dramatically. You see, the unintended consequence of frightening the good citizens was that it also frightened the good tourists and we have not yet calculated the loss on tourism.
Moving on, we all live with our own day zero looming. If you stopped working today when would your day zero be, the day when you’d run out of money? We each live with the idea of a day zero in the very distant future when we may retire, but day zero can be walloped upon us unexpectedly in the event of a disability or death.
Life cover then is a discussion and plan about ‘Day Zero’s, and a life insurance policy can easily push ‘Day Zero’ back twenty years into the future. Same with disability cover. Same with dread disease cover. It serves to settle debts, secure a property, and provide monthly consistent income to a certain future date. For a business, insurance policies can provide funds to settle loan accounts, employ key individuals, and keep people employed and businesses running.
Once the risks are covered and ugly debts settled we can move on to saving and investing money. Have a look at your saved money now and do a quick calculation to a date that would be day zero for you if you stopped working today. Consider realistic action items that you can take to further push that day back. Some items may include; setting up a 7 day account with your bank to allocate funds each month; increasing your retirement annuity premiums; re-looking at your monthly budget and trimming a few things like your internet provider, your entertainment channel, your cell phone bill, the ‘add on’ to your phone bill that you rarely use, your food bill (eating healthy can be cheap (food is fuel not treat)) taking the money saved and allocating to investment.
I recently spotted an Instagram post that said, “It’s my job to ask about your life cover, don’t make it my job to tell your family that you didn’t have any.”
And so it is that I invite you to a meeting where we consider debts, assets, all investments, and all life insurance and calculate ‘day zeros’ making necessary changes where appropriate.
What you do today can change all the tomorrows of your life (Mr. Z Ziglar)
Best regards,
Brod Von Brughan
