A personal client’s story of how her life was changed in one moment
By: Joseph Vanacore III & Christine Cox-West
Last year, I met with a Rockstar Registered Nurse (RN) who was seeking financial assistance. We attended college together and had become close friends while we were in neighboring dorms at the time. Since graduating Ramapo College’s Nursing program, she worked diligently to reach her financial goals. She impressed two of my colleagues with how driven and motivated she was working in her profession and achieving her goals. But these last few years haven’t been easy for her.
While driving home one day she was stopped at a red light. In her rear view, she watched as a truck, out of control, was swerving all over the road towards her. With a car in front of her, she put both feet on the brakes and braced for impact. Her body ricocheted backwards and forwards between the steering wheel and the seat multiple times. Injured on the side of the road and waiting for help herself, she instead treated the truck driver as anyone in a medical profession would do. Following the accident, she had whiplash and multiple injuries that required surgery. Even worse, she could not work and being on her parent’s inadequate car insurance policy at the time, it didn’t cover much in terms of medical bills and legal expenses.
As if being a recent BSN grad isn’t hard enough with student loan debt, now this new professional had bills, pain and no income. She collected disability through the state but as we know, it’s limited. Working in per diem nursing jobs, she had no group benefits as she was a 1099 subcontractor and not an employee. No one had told her to buy an individual long term disability insurance policy to protect her income. Had she personally owned a policy, she would have collected thousands more per month on a tax-free basis, giving her the cushion to focus on her health and not worry about the finances.
Going through this personally, and now able to work again, she now is covered for the insurance she needed years ago. Of course, the prior injuries made it difficult to get approval, but thanks to The Fortis Agency’s independent planning process, we were able to find her coverage. She now advocates for other nurses getting their first jobs to protect their most valuable asset, their ability to earn the income for which they worked so hard.
