GoFundMe is a crowdfunding platform consisting of personal fund raising websites. It allows individuals to raise money for a variety of events, but a significant portion appears to be raising money for tragedies, either illnesses or accidents.
I bring this up because a client recently forwarded a request to me. It was a physician raising money for himself because he was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and inexplicably, he has no life or disability insurance.
As horrible as it is for anyone to receive such a diagnosis, I for one cannot overlook the personal responsibility factor. He said in his plea that he was too busy administering his patients to take care of his own affairs. Really?
At the risk of sounding like a heartless ogre, am I supposed to believe that he was such a dedicated doctor that tending to his personal affairs took a backseat to his patients? I don’t know for sure, but I’d be willing to bet that he wasn’t too busy with his patients to find the time to buy a house. Or take at least one vacation in the last 30 years.
In reading the comments on his web page, he appears to be a mighty fine physician, as his patients love him. Which is great, but I didn’t read any comments that indicated that he didn’t charge for his services. So now his more compassionate patients are paying twice; his fee that he charged them for services rendered, and an additional amount that they chose to contribute to help pay his day to day expenses while he can’t work.
I suppose it’s possible, although I think it’s extremely improbable, that he was never contacted by an insurance agent in all the time since he graduated medical school. Not that a lack of such contact would absolve his irresponsibility in not addressing his personal affairs.
The quote that stands out to me is “I never thought I would need disability or life insurance and one always thinks they have more time.” The sad thing is he is not alone; there are plenty of people who feel the same way. Believe me, I know!
The website indicates that there have been 369 donations totaling $50,280. That doesn’t seem like anywhere near the amount of money he will need.
Everybody has a plan, whether they take the time to design it or not. The ones we design and implement are invariably better than the default plan. His plan, the default plan, is woefully inadequate, all because he didn’t take the time to design and implement one himself.
Charlie Munger, the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, said that successful people learn from the mistakes of others. This sad story presents a golden opportunity to learn from someone else’s mistake.