By: Joseph Vanacore, Brokerage Manager
I am sure everyone reading this is aware of the crowd funding site GoFundMe and have seen multiple campaigns to raise money for tragedies to family, loved ones, or colleagues. According to GoFundMe’s website, over 125,000 campaigns are started per year pertaining to campaigns for memorials.
In 2016, before I came into the industry, I started one of these campaigns for a colleague whose daughter was tragically killed while she was in college. I never met my colleague’s daughter, but I knew as a fellow waiter and bartender at the time, my co-worker would need all the help he could get. I successfully raised $30,821 through GoFundMe and approximately $10,000 in cash from reoccurring customers at the bar. The money was for him to use for either time off, final expenses, and/or ultimately a scholarship fund in his daughter’s name. Everyone praised me for raising the funds, but I always thought to myself, was it enough?
Fast forward to April of 2018. I came into the Insurance and Advisory business with my goal to never let something like that happen to someone I know. Then New Year’s Day 2019 came. On that day I lost a fraternity brother from my hometown with whom I went to college. He was a bright college senior at the time with a small landscaping business and great sense of humor. With our Fraternity’s Chapter lead, I again assisted in a GoFundMe campaign for his parents to help raise $24,665. Don’t get me wrong GoFundMe pages are great, but it is no substitute for proper planning.
Ask yourself this, how long will that sum of about $55,000 last for those families? Maybe a year or two at most depending on their lifestyles. Then what happens? Granted the two personal examples I gave were parents losing their child, and no amount of money could bear that loss, but what if that were a household’s main income earner? Would the house need to be sold? Would the spouse be able to maintain the same lifestyle? Can enough money be raised through GoFundMe to prevent that?
The Fortis Agency’s philosophy when it comes to planning is PROTECTION FIRST. We want to make sure our clients have all the proper protections in place so that in the event of a sudden illness, injury, or death, their family can maintain the lifestyle without drastic sacrifices. Our goal is to ensure that if a parent or spouse is no longer there or no longer able to provide for their family they can still living in their house, send their children to college, go on vacations and build memories. They can honor those they lost instead of just trying to survive financial devastation. GoFundMe Campaigns are a small bandage on a wound that needs emergency surgery. Proper planning delivers financial support at the worst time in a family’s life. Let us guide you through our process to ensure a GoFundMe is never needed to replace the income of you or someone you love.
