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Sonia Price
Features Writer
3:00 AM 30th April 2022
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What Life Must Look Like When You Have Your Stuff Truly Sorted

 
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
In Britain today there is a clear move towards promoting self-reliance.

The Department for Work and Pensions has provision - albeit limited to a time-scale - to support those who want to strike out on their own.

The pandemic certainly re-arranged the scenery of our working lives and has stimulated a mind shift amongst some which has raised monumental questions such as: What am I doing with my time? How much money do I need to support myself and loved ones? And how do I want to spend the rest of my life? More than anything, it gave people time - lots of it - to reflect and ask themselves those thorny questions which they might never have given time to had they been kept at the wheel.

Image: Geralt on Pixabay
Image: Geralt on Pixabay
You would have to have been living in a bunker, or at least without a television, to have not noticed the swell of advertising for services for start up businesses and go-it-alone entrepreneurs from small business accounting apps to entry level website packages. There is indeed a palpable spirit of independence in the air.

But before we take flight into brave new skies it is well that we give careful thought to those issues that, if neglected in the present, will likely come up and bite us on the proverbial down the line.

The last theme I wrote about for this news site was the importance of a professional website to market your services or products in today’s digital world. But there are other important considerations and instruments to consider to ensure you get the maximum from your money and free up your head space for the challenges ahead.

Image: Pixabay
Image: Pixabay
Mastering taxes, savings and investments is an obvious one. Which reminds, me I really must get around to applying for that married couples allowance! But the point at which I know I can really call myself a proper grown up and join my freelance and small business contemporaries at the big table (all of them without exception have taken out health insurance from a variety of providers) is the day when I take out some private health insurance. After all today, as I am writing this is my 56th birthday, I am significantly nearer sixty than I am to half a century and I am as vulnerable as the next person to physical wear and tear, intermittent episodes of depression - and anything else that might trip me up.

As grateful as I am for our NHS, I am pragmatic enough to know that I cannot have the complacency to expect them to meet my treatment needs, should I ever need them, at a time which suits me. According to a lady I was at school with, who runs My Medical Cover, there is currently a backlog for NHS operations which runs to millions.

It’s true that some people don’t think about a dentist until they have toothache and lots of us don’t think about health insurance until we need it. Time waits for no man or woman and before we know it the hip-hop generation has swiftly become the hip-op generation.

Image: Pixabay
Image: Pixabay
There are numerous health insurance providers, including Bupa, Aviva and Saga, but the one which inspires me is the one which aligns its premiums with rewards in the way of reduced premiums and incentives to take responsibility for your own health and wellbeing. That’s Vitality Health Insurance. This provider boasts 5-star Defaqto rated healthcare, importantly with the assurance of a full cover promise.

In my view this is inspired health cover which has caught the imagination of a generation of independent minded professionals or ‘aspirationals’ who are accustomed to getting rewarded for doing the right thing and taking responsibility for themselves.

Of course there are a lot of things I should have done by now in my life. Big things such as written a novel, refurbished a nineteenth-century property, taken in a stray cat or trained a Derby winner - but I haven’t yet. One of the sensible things that I can do, though, is put in place a health insurance plan and once I have done that I will re-live that feeling I had when I passed my driving test. I will know that I have done something sensible. After all peace of mind in itself has physiological benefits.

Protracted working life expectancy is a spectre which haunts those who haven’t made adequate pension provision, through enjoying the present a little too much or having an interrupted employment history - something that financially penalises mothers. If I am going to be working into my late sixties I reckon I am certainly going to need some health insurance.

I see my, ahem ‘advancing’ rather than ageing body as becoming something akin to a vintage MG you are trying to keep on the road. A bit rackety at times but mainly cheerfully chugging along.

Image: AndrzejRembowski on Pixabay
Image: AndrzejRembowski on Pixabay
I like to keep all business dealings close to me. I am a stickler for getting the names of everyone I have any contract with. I wrote an earlier article for this site titled “Knowing Me - Not Knowing You” in which I vented my irritation at the era of the call centre. I like to do business with people who are prepared to give me their names and I like to keep my transactions local as far as possible. In this spirit I shall be taking out my policy with Rosie McGilvray. Rosie, like me, is an Old Riponian - a former pupil of Ripon Grammar School - known for producing some of the finest, independent thinking and community spirited individuals in the country. Those who know me personally quit sniggering!