Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Feb 26, 2020 11:00:45 GMT -5
If/When Covid19 hits your community (or circle of friends/relatives) let's assume everyone survives AND it's just like a really bad flu that effects alot of people all at once in your community. On the your community level: What financial fall out will there be from lots of people in your community/circle of friends/relatives being hospitalized or staying home with pneumonia?
You know, not being able to go to work for a week or two because of illness and any loss of paychecks and then medical debt. What about the family caretaker who needs time off to take care of kids/family members maybe for more than a week?
And finally on your household level: how will your finances be effected if you are sick in bed for a week (or hospitalized) and then maybe if some of your immediate family (those you live with) are also sick - maybe not in tandem but serially - so several weeks or a month of having to deal with a sick person in your house?
For me: It's just me - I'm salaried, have sick time, and have really good healthcare thru my employer. I don't have much support where someone could help me (take care of cats, do some lite house keeping, make sure I eat and drink) so, I will have some challenges with being sick. Financially I don't expect it to be an issue. (two years ago I had surgery and didn't work for six weeks - and it made no difference to my financial life... I have a generous employer and good healthcare).
For my community: I expect the majority of people to "lose" income while they are home sick and that they will accrue medical debt if they/family members are hospitalized. It's not gonna be pretty. Especially since I saw that the average American household is carrying 8K in CC debt and that auto loan numbers and amounts are at their all time highest.
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giramomma
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Post by giramomma on Feb 26, 2020 11:19:14 GMT -5
I dunno, I'm more of a cross that bridge when we come to it sort of girl. What ever we get handed, personally, it can't be worse compare to my household's financial bloodbath of 2015, where we ended up negative 15-18K in about 18 months. Actually, it should have been closer to 20K, if not 20K. But, my ils took care of tax bills for two of the kids for us. It can't be worse than all the juggling we have to do to make our budget work now, with having an extra kid that we didn't plan on... We're talking four years of making things work.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2020 11:54:36 GMT -5
I'm also planning to deal with things as they happen. A forward-thinking friend I talked to last night said she anticipated shortages of things. Right now, for example. you can't find surgical masks, which is especially bad if you're buying for a hospital where they, ummm...perform surgery. I could also see scarcities of small electronics- e.g., phone chargers. This will probably hit lower-income people harder as all the cheap shoes, clothes, toys, etc. disappear from Wal-Mart.
I've said repeatedly on these Boards that I try to avoid Made in China and buy American when I can. I think that when/if shortages occur, companies are finally going to have to look at their supply chains and see the risks posed by having everything made in China.
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bean29
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Post by bean29 on Feb 26, 2020 12:10:11 GMT -5
We have a HDHP with a $5600 family deductible and $2800 individual. So if someone gets sick we will be paying for care out of pocket. I do have more than the deductible saved in an HSA account though.
We eat most meals at home, but are somewhat free spenders. DH's future income might be reduced if he takes a month or so off, but because he gets commission on renewals, if he is closed down, he will still have income coming in. I also am old enough to withdraw $$ from my 401K although I don't want to - I am in investing mode until FRA.
My in-laws are our doggie day care rn, if we are exposed - we will not want to expose them, but our dogs hate being home alone. This might be a big problem. DH has taken the dogs to the office for short periods of time, but one of our dogs is a barker, so he could not have them in office all day on a regular basis.
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jerseygirl
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Post by jerseygirl on Feb 26, 2020 12:32:14 GMT -5
Places and hourly wage workers that rely on larger numbers of people paying probably will take a financial hit - restaurants movie theaters malls department stores ( Target Macy’s Walmart all get lots of items from China so they might be already anticipating lower inventories)
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wvugurl26
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Post by wvugurl26 on Feb 26, 2020 12:39:33 GMT -5
Hourly workers with no/limited benefits would be hit the hardest.
My DH and I can both work from home. I have 13.5 weeks of sick leave accrued.
Max OOP on my health insurance is $2500.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2020 12:53:14 GMT -5
On an individual level it won't be worse than the flu for most. It's the mass quantities of people dealing with it at once that would be the real kicker. What good is having great health insurance if there are no hospital beds or enough healthy healthcare workers to treat you? In Wuhan, the stores are all closed, nobody can buy groceries, nobody is going to their jobs, the schools are shut down. The people that are asymptomatic or not infected are hiding out in their homes to avoid catching it. So you can weather a couple weeks with no pay, but what if your entire company is down and not just those two weeks but weeks before and after as well?
Hopefully the lower population density in the US means we don't have a situation like China is dealing with.
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haapai
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Post by haapai on Feb 26, 2020 13:21:36 GMT -5
My household of two persons in their fifties is in pretty good shape to survive the scenario that you described. This kinda shocks me. I know darn well that most of our coworkers don't have the savings or the health insurance that we have and typically lean on family when things get tough. That's not a good strategy to use when everyone gets sick, loses income, and incurs debt at the same time.
I could go on a bit about how much we have saved (at least two months without any income), why we are insulated from medical debt (one of us has medicaid and a work hours exemption, the other has a fat HSA), and how neither of us has any family in the immediate area who we will be expected to care for or assist. We are also lucky with regard to our employers, I'm fairly certain that my own large employer will survive a sustained downturn. My partner's company may go bust but his income is not necessary to keep the household running and even if his employer disappears, another employer doing pretty much the same thing will replace it.
Despite being relatively well-positioned to get through the scenario that you hypothesize without going tits-up financially, I worry about what might happen after we get out of our sickbeds. We can keep the lights and heat on while we are sick but six months of reduced income afterwards might be devastating.
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Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Feb 26, 2020 13:46:44 GMT -5
On an individual level it won't be worse than the flu for most. It's the mass quantities of people dealing with it at once that would be the real kicker. What good is having great health insurance if there are no hospital beds or enough healthy healthcare workers to treat you? In Wuhan, the stores are all closed, nobody can buy groceries, nobody is going to their jobs, the schools are shut down. The people that are asymptomatic or not infected are hiding out in their homes to avoid catching it. So you can weather a couple weeks with no pay, but what if your entire company is down and not just those two weeks but weeks before and after as well?
Hopefully the lower population density in the US means we don't have a situation like China is dealing with.
Yep. I suspect my employer will continue functioning and my job will require being worked (My employer's got offices across the US and Internationally) and my position is to support those offices - and I can do my job from my home. The globe isn't gonna shut down all at once - it's gonna be a "rolling" kind of thing (probably like the 1812 1918 Influenza pandemic added: and the other "flu" pandemics since then.). The fact that not everyone in my family or community has that kind of 'potential' job security/pay security worries me. Especially since the "bad times" won't come and go within a couple of weeks. I suspect from start to finish it will be six months - and then a lull and then a resurgence/2nd wave for another 6 months... Kind a like how the 1812 1918 pandemic happened - over the course of 2 "flu seasons". Even if we all don't get Covid19 I fear it's effects aren't going to go away quickly. We're only 6 weeks into it...
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haapai
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Post by haapai on Feb 26, 2020 13:50:16 GMT -5
1912.
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gs11rmb
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Post by gs11rmb on Feb 26, 2020 13:58:35 GMT -5
1918
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2020 14:06:32 GMT -5
I found out today I got health insurance here in Oregon, so that's a huge relief. I don't spend a ton of time around people, so that's a bonus. I will do a bit of extra grocery shopping over the next week or two, but part of that is my trying to build-up a pantry post-move. And, even though I live near stores now, I still prefer to stock up so I don't have to shop all the time. The economic issues could had a negative effect on my small business, but I (thankfully) still have about 8 years worth of living expenses liquid in the bank. It's amazingly different to ponder this situation when money/income isn't a real issue vs. times when it would have been a major crisis.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2020 20:47:30 GMT -5
Most of my neighbors are self-employed or hourly pay folks with no health insurance. In case of a real pandemic, they are screwed financially. Many are of questionable immigration status which will further complicate things. False rumors and fears are already hitting our Asian corridor hard with many businesses losing 50% or more of their customers. We're fighting hard to suppress the lies and support our local businesses. When a restaurant doesn't have customers, the busboy doesn't get paid, his landlord doesn't get rent and the beat goes on.
DH and I will be okay financially although we lost a crap ton over the last week in the market. I am truly concerned about us surviving if we contract it because we are seniors, 72 and 80. We're both in pretty good health although DH takes a lot of cardio drugs. He's got the proverbial constitution of a horse-never ever getting allergies or a cold.
I'm going to treat this like hurricane season. We'll stock up on non-perishable groceries including bottled water and toilet paper. Keep the cars fueled to the max, lots of cash in small bills on hand. I think I'll snag some over-the-counter remedies like fever reducers and expectorants.
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NastyWoman
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Post by NastyWoman on Feb 26, 2020 20:51:22 GMT -5
1918 That one mostly killed the younger people
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sesfw
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Post by sesfw on Feb 26, 2020 21:37:36 GMT -5
Both of us are retired so we'll be ok financially.
The small company I work for part time might be in real trouble. It's a small electronic assembly company and we already know the touch screens that we build is in short supply. The workers in China can't get to their manufacturing facility to build for the rest of the world.
Even if the virus runs it's course very quickly, it will take a while for the supply channels to fill up again.
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teen persuasion
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Post by teen persuasion on Feb 26, 2020 22:50:23 GMT -5
Monetarily we should be ok. We've been leaving the HSA to grow, so we could tap it if we get into medical bills we don't want to do OOP. Right now I'm pushing 80% of my pay to a SIMPLE IRA, there's not much left after FICA, so no work wouldn't be much different. DH should have better sick leave than my zero, so he'd continue to get some pay, and we could push his 403b rate down later if we needed to replenish accounts. Just retirement savings would be hit this year, but we'd manage. NY has a paid Family Leave plan, now, too, if one of us needed to cut work to care for a family member. Partial, but every bit helps.
The mortality rates I saw earlier were definitely higher for the elderly, maybe 14% for my parents' age, maybe 1.x % for DH and me, .5% for younger generations. My parents are the ones I'd worry most about, just based on age.
As for community - well, our remaining local hospital is pretty poor and declining rapidly as departments close (no more maternity, etc.) so I wouldn't want to rely on it. Which means everyone shunted to the big metro area's medical corridor to the south. Why is it a good idea to cram all the hospitals in a downtown block against the waterfront, while outlying communities' hospitals are gutted? So travelling to the medical corridor is a problem for extended hospital stays for loved ones.
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cronewitch
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Post by cronewitch on Feb 27, 2020 1:37:25 GMT -5
Most in my family are retired, I and my ISO each live alone. I plan to stay home for weeks at a time, he still plans to go to the bar for a drink.
We are both stocked up on cold medicine and I usually stay home. I came home Valentine's night then Saturday went out to play card but other than that not even out for groceries. So if it hits I will buy more pantry and freezer groceries and hole up for the duration. I don't eat much so a pot of soup last a week and a loaf of bread until moldy. I could eat less because I could stand to lose more weight.
I have only had the flu once ever and seldom catch cold, just had the first cold in over 6 years.
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cronewitch
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Post by cronewitch on Feb 27, 2020 1:39:31 GMT -5
1918 That one mostly killed the younger people My grandfather died last day of WWI from Spanish Flu.
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raeoflyte
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Post by raeoflyte on Feb 27, 2020 7:21:12 GMT -5
Dh can't work from home so that would hurt of he couldn't go in for a while but we'd be ok. I always work from home so no problems there assuming I can work.
I worry most about my parents. My mom is immune compromised and the regular flu had her in the hospital for 2 weeks. We already keep the kids home from them if we suspect theyre sick but decided last night We'll be a little over kill on it to try to keep them insulated.
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Gardening Grandma
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Post by Gardening Grandma on Feb 27, 2020 9:16:56 GMT -5
1918 That one mostly killed the younger people That one killed three of my great aunts; they were in their 30"s and early 40's and healthy.
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Cookies Galore
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Post by Cookies Galore on Feb 27, 2020 9:38:40 GMT -5
Financially, it should be a blip on the radar. I have generous time off (38 days left for the year as of today) and over two months saved in my extended leave bank. If husband was sick for more than a week then I guess he'd have to take some unpaid time off, but that's what savings is for.
I cover our insurance so we both don't have to worry about medical debt. Our max OOP is $1,000/person. Our hospitalization coverage got worse this year (IMO) but even so that is still only $100/day with a max of three copays per admission, so if I'm hospitalized a fourth day then it's like a buy 3 get 1 sale. 😁
I already work from home two days a week, so even if I needed to be quarantined I could still work. If husband needed to be quarantined then I don't know. Again, that is what savings is for.
As far as people in my community, a lot of people would be screwed.
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gs11rmb
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Post by gs11rmb on Feb 27, 2020 9:57:40 GMT -5
That one mostly killed the younger people That one killed three of my great aunts; they were in their 30"s and early 40's and healthy. I watched a fascinating documentary that said older people survived because there had been a similar (but less deadly strain) when they were younger and they had built up some immunity. That's one of the main reasons why people should get flu shots regularly even if they're sometimes not very effective. If or when a flu pandemic occurs the people who have been regularly vaccinated against multiple versions of the flu will stand a better chance.
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Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Feb 27, 2020 10:57:15 GMT -5
1918 That one mostly killed the younger people My parents were born in 1916 and 1917 in Chicago - there were about 8000 deaths in a 2 month period in 1918 Chicago. Sorry, I had to add to the "personal experience" theme. But, for the most part younger people were hit the hardest by the Spanish Flu (weather they died from it or not). And this is just to the point I was trying to use the Spanish Flu reference for - was how it spread and how it came, went and then came back for a second season. The "season" thing was important... as in what ever damage Covid19 does to the economy it will be short lived... and when it's done people will go back to consuming stuff (our economy is based on consumption of goods not so much production of goods). Any 'recession' it causes won't be like the Great Recession. The housing bubble popping took years to play out... and that effected jobs across many parts of the economy. This recession will be from people with money simply NOT buying as much stuff (or not having stuff available to buy). The demand for goods and services will most likely be there when the dust settles. I'm not saying there won't be some job loss or more foreclosures/homelessness or that some people won't go further into debt.... just that this will be different than the Great Recession.
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pooks
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Post by pooks on Feb 27, 2020 11:06:59 GMT -5
I am not sure. Health wise I am pretty confident we will be OK. DH has 5 weeks of leave and works from home, so as long as his employer is still spitting out paychecks, that should be OK.
I am more concerned for the economy in general. If people stop going out for recreation, that would seem to start a cascade of economic events that could lead to business failure and higher unemployment. I don't think most small businesses have a large slush fund to weather their customer base significantly shrinking. For example, I don't think my family will be doing any unnecessary travel or eating out for the next couple of weeks.
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Gardening Grandma
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Post by Gardening Grandma on Feb 27, 2020 11:14:35 GMT -5
I am not sure. Health wise I am pretty confident we will be OK. DH has 5 weeks of leave and works from home, so as long as his employer is still spitting out paychecks, that should be OK. I am more concerned for the economy in general. If people stop going out for recreation, that would seem to start a cascade of economic events that could lead to business failure and higher unemployment. I don't think most small businesses have a large slush fund to weather their customer base significantly shrinking. For example, I don't think my family will be doing any unnecessary travel or eating out for the next couple of weeks. People will stop going out for discretionary spending; eating out shopping etc. Probably more will shop online, but I expect supplies to be limited. (Try buying N95 or 99 masks on Amazon - "unavailable") I also think people will limit going out to buy necessities. There will be a ripple effect on the economy. It could take a very long time to recover. The market is down steeply today - 4th day in a row (or is it 5?)
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Bob Ross
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Post by Bob Ross on Feb 27, 2020 11:32:50 GMT -5
I don't know about personal finance consequences, but my plans are to breathe heavily on people more often.
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souldoubt
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Post by souldoubt on Feb 27, 2020 11:40:11 GMT -5
My wife and I both have enough PTO saved up to get us through a flu type illness. We're both in good health, exercise regularly and adamant about washing our hands so I'm not overly concerned for us but my 63 year old mother is another story. I went yesterday and bought some more nyquil/dayquil and the off brand emergenc just to have ahead of time. The county I live in declared a state of emergency yesterday so figured I'd go now before any panic sets in. The store I went to was already pretty low on some of these supplies but there wasn't anyone else really there when I went so it's not like anyone seems to be panicking just preparing. There will definitely be an economic impact but as someone else said hopefully it makes companies and people realize how being dependent on cheap labor/products from one area isn't wise.
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haapai
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Post by haapai on Feb 27, 2020 11:45:13 GMT -5
There's an interesting graph on CNBC's live blog regarding COVID-19. I'm not sure how to grab the graphic but here's the link You may have to scroll a bit to see the graphic that compares total reported cases worldwide and outside of China over the same time scale. It basically confirms what we already knew -- that the numbers that China is reporting bear little resemblance to the actual number of cases.
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NastyWoman
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Post by NastyWoman on Feb 27, 2020 15:34:05 GMT -5
My wife and I both have enough PTO saved up to get us through a flu type illness. We're both in good health, exercise regularly and adamant about washing our hands so I'm not overly concerned for us but my 63 year old mother is another story. I went yesterday and bought some more nyquil/dayquil and the off brand emergenc just to have ahead of time. The county I live in declared a state of emergency yesterday so figured I'd go now before any panic sets in. The store I went to was already pretty low on some of these supplies but there wasn't anyone else really there when I went so it's not like anyone seems to be panicking just preparing. There will definitely be an economic impact but as someone else said hopefully it makes companies and people realize how being dependent on cheap labor/products from one area isn't wise. So there! I have a few years on your mom
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Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Feb 27, 2020 16:04:56 GMT -5
So, just heard about a woman in Japan who had the virus in January, was sick, recovered and tested negative for the virus - and now has it again. There's also a supposedly a few cases like this in China. (this was on NPR this morning..)
I know that sometimes happens with the Flu (but it might also be that the person had one Flu and then got one of the other ones....)
Still that's pretty scary. What if this thing is like the common cold? You get it, build up antibodies to it, but then your immunity fades with time. Or perhaps the Corvid19 virus is mutating?
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