Money

After a catastropic event, you will receive money, sometimes in large sums from places like insurance companies or even legal settlements. (Just to verify, we never received a legal settlement or any money from a legal source.)  It is important that you do not start to take the reciept of these types of sums of money as normal.  They will not continue, and you need to be prepared for the fact that you are going to have to live a long time on those sums of money.

They need to be invested well and made secure so that you can depend on their payments to you for the rest of your life.

It is easy to think that these types of payments will continue to come your way, but if you are like we are, the loss of income is substantially more than those sums of money represent. Be careful with them.

Pay off your mortgage.  Pay off your debts.  The smaller income that you will be living on will go a lot further if you don't have these payments to make. In our case, we have to live on 70% of Richard's income 10 years ago.  Imagine going 10 years with no raise, and living on 70% of what you made then.   What happens in 10 more years when it has been 20 years since your full income?  Of course, you will need to take into consideration your age and life expectancy, but the financial future of your family will have been drastically changed.  Be smart with that money.  It may be all you have to live on for a very, very long time.