If that happens, then even being relatively rich won’t help you.
Let’s say I have 2 million dollars, but my three kids are born with genetic heart defects requiring 1.5 million in surgery each. Well, since I have the money, I will eventually be forced to spend it as insurance is limited, and government assistance prioritizes those with less resources.
Being rich won’t save you from disaster leading to poverty, it only makes things easier in normal life.
There is always the possibility of a wipeout event, but being relatively poor means than much smaller problems can have the same effect. For a recent personal example, I had a relative reach out to me, unable to make their mortgage because of a few thousands of dollars in unexpected hardship. I never lost sleep over it, but if I was fixated on my burn rate like this article suggests, that could have ballooned into a much larger problem of bankruptcy and/or homelessness quickly.
It's a matter of degree. This advice forces you to treat potentially minor unplanned hardships on the order of thousands of dollars the same way as 1.5 million dollar wipeout problems. My point is, if you have a great safety net and nobody else is depending on you, sure, fixate on your burn rate. But if not, this advice seems bad.
Ah, disagree, poor argument. That would only apply to the absolute far end of medical circumstances. The vast majority of medical needs cannot bankrupt a millionaire with insurance and using those rare cases to imply that having money doesn't make much difference is disingenuous.
The vast majority of normal circumstances are covered by having a job with medical insurance. And those normal circumstances can ruin people without insurance (e.g. a diabetic without insulin.)
As you say, the vast majority of normal circumstances won’t bankrupt normal people either.
It’s only an out of scope disaster that brings suffering.
Forgive me on the insurance bit, I was speaking from the context of a country which provides some healthcare to its citizens, regardless of income. Not many people, millionaires included think to have insurance that would pay out millions for rare circumstances.
Let’s say I have 2 million dollars, but my three kids are born with genetic heart defects requiring 1.5 million in surgery each. Well, since I have the money, I will eventually be forced to spend it as insurance is limited, and government assistance prioritizes those with less resources.
Being rich won’t save you from disaster leading to poverty, it only makes things easier in normal life.