FI Step by Step: Step 5, Insuring Against Catastrophe

Step 5: Insuring Against Catastrophe

Greetings from Saint Petersburg, Russia. I am attending the EuroSpine conference in a couple of days in Helsinki, Finland so we decided to visit Saint Petersburg on the way. We arrived late last night and I finished this post while traveling, so please forgive any typos. I was able take the above picture just outside of our hotel.

Let’s get back to FI Step by Step, which are the steps I recommend as you work towards financial independence.

Let’s review our progress so far.  In Step 1, we defined why you want to pursue financial independence.

In Step 2 you calculated your net worth to get a better understanding of where you are now.  

In Step 3 you began tracking your income and expenses to better understand how you got to where you are today.  This will help in identifying areas you may need to start making some changes.  

In Step 4 we talked about creating a financial plan.  Remember, your plan needs to be specific, you need to refer to it often, and it must be fluid, meaning it will change and evolve with time.

Now that you have the basics of a financial plan, let’s start getting to work on some of the specifics.  The next 4 steps in my recommended path for pursuing financial independence (FI) can all be done simultaneously. 

However, I have listed them in what I feel is order of importance.  Thus, this next step is Insuring Against Catastrophe.

Nothing could derail your financial plans faster or more completely than a catastrophe. Specifically this means things like death, disability, an accident, or a major medical illness.

That is why I think one of the first steps you must take on the path to FI is to make sure that you have adequate insurance against any of these financial disasters.   Failure to complete this step could completely destroy any and all progress you have made towards FI if catastrophe strikes.  I recommend you start with this because you can never predict when something catastrophic like this can happen.  And once it does, if you aren’t properly insured, it is too late.

The key to insurance is buying enough to protect yourself from catastrophe/financial disaster, but not to purchase more insurance than you need.  The entire insurance industry is built on fear.  They want you to be afraid so you’ll buy more insurance.  The more insurance you buy, the more money they make.  While the wise will make sure they are properly insured, it would be unwise to spend more than you have to.

Let’s take life insurance for example.  If you made $100,000 per year, have no outstanding debts, and your family could live comfortably on $60,000 per year of expenses, then you probably don’t need a $10 million life insurance policy.  In this scenario you would be over-insured and would be wasting money on insurance premiums every month.  But you probably need more than a $250,000 policy.  Don’t worry, we’ll talk more below about accurately estimating what the right amount for you might be.

I’m not going to write about every type of insurance there is, because for pretty much every bad thing that can happen in life, someone or some company has created some type of insurance to protect you against it.   Here I’m going to discuss 5 types of insurance you should strongly consider purchasing if you haven’t already.  I’m also going to assume everyone already has auto insurance since nearly every state requires you have at least liability coverage to drive legally.  I’m not going to write in significant depth about each of these types of insurance, more on that to come, but here is a summary of the five types of insurance I think you should have in addition to auto insurance.  

Health Insurance

Among the different types of insurance on this list, health insurance is probably the most important.  Health insurance helps you cover the costs of medical and/or surgical expenses when you are sick or injured, or to prevent you from becoming sick or injured.

If you don’t currently have health insurance, you are certainly tempting fate.  You could unexpectedly develop a serious illness or be in an accident at any time and be left with an astronomical medical bill.  Hospital bills for prolonged stays that involve complex medical or surgical care can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, even eclipsing the $1 million mark.  Not surprisingly, medical debt has been cited as a key factor in more than 2/3 of all bankruptcies, making it the #1 cause of bankruptcy.

Hopefully you can see how the lack of health insurance can destroy your plans for financial independence.  Many cite the high cost of health insurance as the reason they can’t afford it.  I would argue that you can’t afford to be without it.  If you fall into this category, rearranging your finances so you can purchase health insurance should be one of your top priorities.  If cost is an issue, you may also qualify for federal assistance to help you afford health insurance.  Check out HealthCare.gov to further explore this.

Health insurance and its associated terms can be quite confusing.  I will be posting a list of the top ten terms you need to know about health insurance in the near future to help you better understand this area of personal finance.  This will help you understand the jargon, as well as decipher the types of health insurance plans that are available to you.

So how do you get health insurance?  For most people this is an employer benefit.  Many employers offer group health insurance as part of their employment package.  The employer chooses the coverage options from an insurance provider and typically allows you to choose a specific plan from among these options.  The employer then subsidizes the cost of the health insurance by paying a substantial portion of your monthly premiums. If your employer offers this benefit and you aren’t currently taking advantage of it, look into this ASAP because there is usually only one time of the year you can join a plan, or change plans, and that is called open enrollment.  For most insurance plans, this period is towards the end of the year and is coming up soon.

If you aren’t happy with the group health insurance package your employer offers, or your employer does not provide group health insurance, or if you are self-employed, you will need to shop for and purchase individual health insurance.  You can shop for individual health insurance through your state or federal marketplace (HealthCare.gov), directly from an insurance company (Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, United Healthcare, etc.), or through an insurance broker (eHealth, Bright Health, First Quote Health, etc.).

Some people lose their health insurance when they lose their job or change jobs.  Oftentimes they don’t get new health insurance until they get a new job.  This could be weeks, or even months, without coverage.  As stated above this is very risky and could be financially devastating.  In these situations there is an option called COBRA, which stands for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.  COBRA is a health insurance program that allows an eligible employee and their dependents to continue health insurance coverage during this period.  Although it is expensive, hopefully it is only for a brief period of time and protects you from a health and financial catastrophe.

Look for another post I will be publishing soon on Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).  An HSA is one of the best accounts you can have in your portfolio.  You are only eligible for it if you have a high deductible health plan for your health insurance, so that may be something to consider during this year’s open enrollment period.

Life Insurance

Life insurance pays a certain amount of money (death benefit) to a person you designate (a beneficiary) if you die.  The higher the death benefit, the more the policy costs.  Those are the basics.

So who needs life insurance?  Well, in my opinion it’s not a bad idea for everyone to have some amount of life insurance, and I’ll explain why.  But keep in mind that for some it is definitely more important to have life insurance than others.

If you are the primary income earner for your household and others depend on the income you provide, then it is extremely important for you to have life insurance.  If you were to die, and your family had no means to support themselves, all of your savings toward financial independence would be depleted in a short amount of time.  How would your family pay the mortgage? Kid’s college expenses? Save for retirement?  This is how the lack of life insurance can be financially devastating.  Life insurance provides a means of support for those you leave behind.

If your spouse provides income for the family, then they should have enough life insurance to fill that gap should they die, at least for some time until you can adjust expenses and income.  Even if your spouse does not work outside the home, and perhaps takes care of the kids, you should consider having enough life insurance on him or her to pay for child care needs until the kids can take care of themselves or leave home.

What about kids?  I think it’s even beneficial to have a small amount of life insurance for each of your children while they live at home to cover any funeral expenses should there be an illness or tragedy resulting in their death.  A basic funeral and coffin can cost $10,000 or more.  Heaven forbid anything like this would happen, but if it did, you don’t want to have to worry about how you will pay for these expenses or have it derail your financial future.  We have insurance on each of our four kids through work and it costs about $2.50 per month per child.

How much life insurance do you need?  Well, let’s address this question assuming you are the primary income earner in your household.  There are some general guidelines people go by.  One rule of thumb is 10-12 times your annual income, but this may be too much or too little based on your financial circumstances.  Another is the DIME formula, that takes into account your current Debts plus funeral expenses, Income and for how many years your family will need support, Mortgage on your home, and Education for your kids’ college expenses.

Here is how I have estimated my life insurance needs.  I’ve calculated how much more we need to pay off our home mortgage and to pay for our kid’s college expenses.  Next, I’ve estimated annual expenses for my family to live a comfortable life.  Based on this and using the 4% rule, I can estimate how much more money is needed to meet this amount, subtracting the amount we currently have invested.  This gives me an approximate total amount of life insurance I should have.

What kind of life insurance should you purchase?  This is always a hotly debated topic in personal finance and insurance forums.  Life insurance basically falls into two categories: term and permanent (aka cash value of which whole life, universal life, and variable universal life are all types).  As the names imply, a term life insurance policy is held for a specific term, and a permanent policy is held permanently or for your whole life.  Let’s review some key differences.

There are two key components to term life insurance: the term and the amount.  The term means how long you hold the policy for.  The amount is how much the death benefit is, which is how much your beneficiary would receive if you died.  A common example might be a $1 million dollar policy for a 20 year term.  This means you pay the monthly premium for 20 years, and if you died during that time, your beneficiary would receive the $1,000,000.  It doesn’t matter if you died the first month or the last month, the policy would pay out $1,000,000.  However, at the end of the 20 year term, the policy is over and you receive nothing.  There is no built up cash value.

Unlike term life insurance, permanent life insurance (such as whole life, universal life, and variable universal life) lasts for your whole life, not a fixed term.   The premiums for permanent life insurance are usually significantly higher than term insurance.  Why?  In addition to paying a death benefit should you die, permanent life insurance policies have an investment component called the cash value of the policy.   This additional cash in the policy is invested and grows over time.  As this cash value of the policy grows, it offers some benefits.  First, you can borrow against this cash value for various needs, such as a down payment on a home or to purchase a vehicle. Keep in mind you still have to pay the amount you borrow back with interest or it is deducted from your total cash value in the policy or the death benefit.  Second, as the cash value grows it can pay dividends you can use to decrease or eventually even replace your monthly premium payments.  Finally, at the end of your life your family will receive the death benefit because there is no fixed term.  Keep in mind that they don’t receive both the cash value and the death benefit when you die.  Any remaining cash value above the death benefit goes back to the insurance company.

Which one should you pick?  It really depends on who you ask.  If you ask most financial experts, planners, and bloggers, the answer is almost always term life insurance.  If you ask people in the insurance industry, the answer is almost always some form of permanent life insurance.  Keep in mind that they want to sell you a product for which they will receive a commission.  And they are some of the slickest salesmen around.

I am not going to make a firm recommendation for you.  I strongly believe you should research this yourself and make your own decision.  Most people will come to the conclusion that term life insurance is right for them.  However, there is a small minority of people that may decide a permanent policy makes more sense.  These are the types of issues to discuss with your financial advisor and/or accountant.

Which did I choose?  After having done extensive research on this subject, and having been pitched various forms of permanent life insurance, I have chosen term life insurance.  There are many reasons for this decision, but here is the main one.  The primary purpose of life insurance is to replace your income if you die.  Once you reach financial independence, you are no longer dependent on your income to cover your expenses.  Thus, you don’t need life insurance at that point.  I am not many years away from financial independence, so only having insurance for this shorter term made much more sense for me, rather than making higher premium payments for a much longer period of time on a policy that would unnecessarily last my whole life.

In the near future I will write a post detailing more of the reasons why I chose term life insurance over some form of permanent life insurance.  I started to write about it here, but as I kept listing the many reasons for my choice, the post was getting way too long.  So we’ll save that conversation for another day.

Like health insurance, life insurance can also be very confusing, with so many different terms, types of policies, riders, etc.  To help with this, I will also be posting a top ten series post on life insurance in the near future to help increase your financial literacy in this area, so look for that as well.

Disability Insurance

The purpose of disability insurance is to replace your income, or at least a portion of it, if you were to become disabled and could no longer work.  This type of insurance is commonly overlooked, but extremely important.  Life insurance seems to get most of the attention when talking about insurance.  So once people have life insurance, they feel they have taken care of their family should disaster strike.  However, it is actually much more likely statistically that you will become disabled due to an accident or illness than it is you will die early during your working years.  According to the most recent actuarial tables from the Social Security Administration, there is about a 1 in 4 chance of becoming disabled during your working years.  So if you played the odds, it would probably be smarter to get disability insurance before life insurance (but I strongly recommend both!).

Disability insurance typically comes in two forms: short-term disability insurance and long-term disability insurance.  The definitions of short-term vs long-term vary, but generally short-term is 3-6 months and long-term is beyond 6 months.  You typically have to purchase separate policies for short-term and long-term disability insurance, but some policies will combine them into one. 

For the purposes of this post (insuring against catastrophe), long-term disability insurance is more important than short-term.  For most people on the path to FI, you should be able to self-insure against short-term disability, meaning a 3-6 month period that you are unable to work.  This is done by paying off your debts, keeping your fixed expenses low, having a sufficient emergency fund, and keeping some of your investment portfolio in more liquid assets that you can easily access without penalty.  If you have done these things, or are in the process of doing these things, you should be able to weather the storm of 3- 6 months of short-term disability and can skip buying this type of policy, which will save you from having to make those monthly premium payments.

Long-term disability, on the other hand, can be financially devastating, especially if you are early in your career.  Your income is your best wealth generating asset.  If you lose the ability to work and cannot replace your income, it will become extremely difficult to make ends meet, let alone reach financial independence.  Most of us think, “It won’t happen to me.”  Well, the numbers tell us that it actually will happen to 1 in 4 of us, so the chances are really pretty high it could happen to you, or to me.  To make sure you aren’t left in financial ruin should you develop a long-term disability, you need to have long-term disability insurance.

How much do you need?  Most disability insurance policies won’t replace 100% of your income.  On average, most long-term disability policies replace about half of your income, maybe a little more.  If you are a very high income earner it may be even a lower percentage of your income since most insurance companies cap the maximum monthly benefit a policy can pay out.  Of course, the higher the benefit of the policy, the higher the monthly premium you will have to pay.  I recommend you do an analysis of what your fixed expenses are and how much your family would need to survive.  Based on that amount you have a starting point for determining the amount of coverage you want to purchase.  Then, you can weigh the cost of the monthly premiums for more coverage vs. the lower premiums for less coverage and make an educated decision.  Remember, disability replaces your income which would normally stop at age 65 for retirement.  As a result, disability benefits are also typically only until age 65, not for your entire life, so you will still need to think about how to save for retirement, which may weigh into your decision on the amount of coverage you want to purchase.

What other parts of the policy are important?  There are a large number of factors to consider when purchasing a policy.  One of the first key points to consider is if it is an “own-occupation” or an “any-occupation” disability policy.  “Own-occupation” policies will define disability as a condition that prevents you from doing the duties of your previous or own occupation.  “Any-occupation” policies define total disability as a condition that prevents you from doing any occupation.  For example, if you are a surgeon and you lose one of your hands, you can no longer effectively be a surgeon.  If you had an “own-occupation” disability policy, you would qualify for the disability benefit.  However, if you had an “any-occupation” policy, you could still do many other occupations with one hand and may not be considered disabled under the terms of the policy.    Another important thing to look for is if the policy is non-cancellable and guaranteed renewable.  This means that the insurance company cannot cancel your policy or increase your rates so long as you continue to pay your premium, no matter what happens with your overall health or what market conditions are.  Other options (or riders, which are adjustments or add-ons to the basic policy) to consider are a future purchase/increase option rider (which gives you the ability to increase your potential benefit as your income increases) and a cost of living adjustment rider (which helps your benefits keep up with the rate of inflation).

Like the types of insurance listed above, there are too many specifics to go further in depth here in this post.  So, I will also plan to write a top ten terms you should know about disability insurance in the future as well.  If you are shopping for disability insurance in the near future, make sure you are familiar with the terms in that post.  

How do you get disability insurance?  There are two main ways to get disability insurance:  through your employer or on your own.  In general, group policies through an employer tend to be less expensive and don’t require you to qualify based on your health status, but they usually have more restrictive definitions of disability and don’t follow you when you leave the employer.  On the other hand, individual policies are more expensive and require a detailed physical exam and health history, but they typically have stronger/broader definitions of disability and follow you from job to job so long as you pay the premiums.  If you don’t already have disability insurance through your employer, I recommend checking with your human resources department to see what is available.  If you are interested in purchasing your own individual policy, I recommend using an independent insurance agent that is not affiliated with any major insurance company so they can give you an unbiased opinion and multiple offers from different companies.  

Which is right for you?  That will take some research on your part.  The important thing is that you at least get some disability insurance.  Many people will actually have both a group policy through their employer AND an individual policy for some time.  This is what I did.  When I was a resident I purchased an individual disability insurance policy.  I didn’t have a lot of extra income and couldn’t afford a large benefit, so I purchased a small policy with a future purchase option to increase the benefit down the road.  Which I did.  In the meantime, I started my job as a neurosurgeon with the Mayo Clinic Health System, which has a great group disability insurance policy benefit.  Despite this great benefit, I still kept my individual policy while I made sure my family was happy in the area and I liked my job, just in case things didn’t work out.  Remember, if you leave your job, your individual policy follows you, but not the group policy.  And you never know if you will develop a medical condition that will prevent you from qualifying for a new individual policy down the road.

As time progressed, I realized I really loved my job here and my family was happy with the area.  So I knew I would be staying long term.  In 2018, when I was making financial changes in my life, I decided to cancel my individual policy since we had decided to stay.  I felt that my group disability policy through my employer was quite good and offered me what I needed.  It is an “own-occupation” policy, it replaces 84% of my income, and my employer pays the full premium.  Given this great policy combined with my plans to stay at Mayo, I no longer needed the security of having that individual policy to take with me.  

Homeowners/Renters Insurance

If you own a home, then you need homeowners insurance.  In fact, if you still have a mortgage, your lender most likely requires you to have homeowners insurance.  But even if your home is paid off, it is still wise to have insurance coverage on your home.  Renters insurance is analogous to homeowners insurance, but is for those who are renting where they live.  It insures your possessions but not the property itself, whereas homeowners insurance covers both.  I will focus this section primarily on homeowners insurance because it is more common and applies to more of my readers.

Why do you need homeowners insurance?  For most people, their home is the single largest purchase they will ever make, often costing more than 1-3 years of their entire salary.  Furthermore, most people, at least early in their working career still have a mortgage, meaning they have borrowed money to purchase where they live and it is not yet paid off.  Now imagine if your home was to burn down and you didn’t have homeowners insurance.  Not only are you left without a place to live and lost all of your possessions, but you still owe the entire mortgage on a property that is no longer there.  This would be financially devastating for most people.

Here’s another scenario.  Imagine someone is walking up to your front door and trips and falls on a toy one of your kids left outside.  They break a hip and sustain a head injury and decide to sue you.  Not only do you have to pay the legal fees for your defense, which would likely costs thousands of dollars, but let’s say they won and were awarded $500,000 in damages.  You would have to pay that yourself if you didn’t have homeowners insurance.  Again, financially devastating for most people.  

This is why homeowners insurance is so important.  There are 2 basic things that homeowners insurance covers: liability and property.  If someone is injured on your property, they may file a lawsuit against you.  If this happens, your homeowners insurance would pay for your defense as well as any damages awarded if they won the lawsuit.  It is important to know that there is usually a limit on the amount of liability coverage in the policy, typically ranging from $100,000 to $500,000.  Of course, the more coverage you have, the higher the premiums.  Some umbrella insurance policies (see below) require you to have a certain amount of baseline liability coverage to qualify for their liability coverage, so be sure to take that into account.

Property coverage pays for damages to both your home as well as your possessions, but varies based on the policy.  As you’d expect, there are varying levels of coverage for property damage.  At the most basic level of homeowners insurance policy your home is protected against a defined list of perils, such as a fire or tornado.  A broader policy would include all perils except for a list excluded by the policy.  More premium policies would give you more coverage for more valuable possessions.  

There are generally 3 options for the amount of coverage you can purchase within each of these types of policies.  The first is cash value coverage or market value coverage.  This pays to repair or replace your property or possessions based on what they are currently worth (not what you originally paid for them).  This is the least expensive option, but also pays the least and likely would not give you enough to rebuild your home if it was destroyed or replace your lost items with brand new ones.  The next option is called replacement cost coverage which pays to repair or replace your property or possessions without subtracting the amount the items have depreciated, as does the cash value coverage option.  This costs more but would likely give you the option to rebuild or replace whatever was lost in a disaster.  The final option is guaranteed or extended replacement cost coverage.  It costs the most but gives you the highest protection.  The first two options are limited in the amount they will pay out by the policy limits.  Guaranteed or extended replacement cost coverage pays the cost to replace your home as it was before the damage even if it’s higher than your policy limit, usually up to 20-25% above the limit.  

Another important point to understand about homeowners insurance is that it does NOT cover all disasters.  I learned this firsthand in Rochester when our basement flooded.  We had to rip out the carpet and drywall and replace it ourselves because floods were not covered in our policy.  Floods are usually excluded in a typical homeowner’s insurance policy.  Flood insurance is not the same as water backup protection.  If you live in a flood zone, then you need to make sure you purchase separate flood insurance through either the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) or a private insurer. Earthquakes are another common natural disaster excluded from many homeowners insurance policies.  

When purchasing homeowners insurance it is wise to compare the rates of multiple different companies.  Also carefully consider how much coverage you need, which option listed above best fits your needs, and if you need any additional insurance such as flood insurance.  Make sure you have adequate coverage but be careful not to overpay.  You also have some flexibility when choosing your deductible.  Higher deductibles mean lower premiums, and vice versa.  You can also often bundle your homeowners insurance with other policies from the same company, such as your auto insurance and save money on both, so be sure to look at that option as well.  

Umbrella Insurance

Umbrella insurance, otherwise known as excess liability insurance, protects you above and beyond the policy limits of your auto insurance, homeowners insurance, and some other types of insurance (such as motorcycle or watercraft insurance).  It adds an extra layer of security for those at risk of being held liable for damages to the property of others or injuries caused by an accident. If you do not have umbrella insurance and you are sued for an amount of money beyond what your regular insurance policies would cover, you would be responsible to pay out of pocket for whatever is above your policy limits.  

Let’s look at an example to see how it may be used.  Let’s say you were driving longer than you should of, fell asleep at the wheel, and caused an accident with three other cars involving six people.  Fortunately, no one was killed, but all three of the other vehicles were totaled and there were serious injuries to four of the people in the accident.  The total cost of the vehicles is $150,000.  The medical bills of the four people total $350,000.  One of the passengers is an orthopedic surgeon and is unable to return to work for six months.  She sues you for $400,000 in lost earnings and wins.  This totals $900,000.  Your auto liability coverage maxes out at $300,000.  Fortunately you have umbrella insurance with $1 million of coverage, which covers the $600,000 above your $300,000 auto insurance limit.   If you did not have the umbrella insurance, you would be responsible for this $600,000.  You can see how this could leave you in financial ruin and derail your plans for financial independence.  

Who needs umbrella insurance?  Well, hopefully from the above example you can see how it might be useful for everyone.  But there are two categories of people that could especially benefit: those that are at a higher risk of being sued and those who own a lot of assets.  If you own property, are a landlord, have a pool, have a trampoline, have a dog, or own some type of high speed recreational vehicle (the list could go on), you are at a higher risk of being sued.  If you have a significant net worth, your assets above the limits of your insurance policies are at risk if you are sued.  In these situations, umbrella insurance makes even more sense.  

How much do you need?  Umbrella insurance is actually quite cheap, so I wouldn’t recommend skimping here.  Policies are typically sold in $1 million dollar increments.  While it depends on your risk of being sued and how much you have in assets, most people should be fine with a $1-2 million policy.  Higher net worth individuals should consider $3-5 million in coverage.  If in doubt, since it is very affordable and has tremendous upside, I would recommend rounding up.  

It is important to know that you usually need to have some required baseline level of liability coverage in both your auto insurance and homeowners insurance to qualify for umbrella insurance.  This varies by policy, so make sure to know what these amounts are when shopping for an umbrella policy.

Where do you get it?  Umbrella insurance is most commonly purchased from the company you have your auto and/or homeowners insurance policies with.  However, you may want to shop around to make sure you get the best rate.  I had umbrella insurance through the same company as my other policies.  When I added my 16 year old son as a driver to our auto insurance, I was told the premiums on both my auto insurance and my umbrella insurance would go up.  I expected the increase in the auto insurance premium, but was a little surprised by the increase in the umbrella insurance premium.  So, I began to look around to see if I could get a better rate.  I discovered there was an umbrella insurance policy I could buy through my employer that not only gave me more coverage, but also had a lower premium that wouldn’t change based on the number or ages of drivers in my family.  So I switched and haven’t looked back.  

Conclusion

I hope this post has helped you better understand the importance of being properly insured.  Here are some take home points to consider:

• Being properly insured is one of the most important facets of a sound financial plan.  

• A lack of insurance or an inadequate amount of insurance can be a financial catastrophe and ruin your plans for financial independence should disaster strike.  

• Make sure that you have an adequate amount of insurance in each of the areas listed above, but don’t pay for more than you need.

Even if you already own some or all of these policies, this may be a good time to evaluate your policies in terms of the amount of coverage and how much your premiums cost.  Do you need to make any changes or shop around for a better deal?  Are some of these policies bundled to save you money?

Thanks for reading.  I hope you are doing well in your progress towards reaching FI.  If you have any questions or comments that might help other readers, please list them below.  In the meantime, keeping working towards Freedom Through FI!

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