I've told our story in one way or another in a few threads here, we had a Cat 5 hurricane come through Panama city Florida 8 months ago.
So many homes damaged or destroyed,
https://www.apnews.com/2cc6e4ecee694763991f6310fa87569b.
We had about 50 tents at a church just 3/4 mile from my house, for months. It became a real problem and eventually it was closed down.
My wife and I are very lucky, we had $98,000 worth of damage, but we could live in our home.
We had two vehicles trapped in our garage by a collapsed wall and debris for 4 weeks, we are lucky, we had a third vehicle.
Our mom and pop family business and source of income was destroyed, but we are lucky after 38 years of marriage we are FI.
We are lucky our insurance company was very helpful and let the money flow as needed.
We are lucky we had no mortgage, so the mortgage company wasn't in the middle holding up payments, so many in my subdivision are being pinched by their insurance companies.
So even though it was physically exhausting and I lost about 14 lbs, during clean up and rebuilding, we didn't have any financial stress.
We are lucky none of the problems we had couldn't be handle with time or money. One potential threat was, both of our hospitals were severally damaged, some of us older guys were worried about having a heart problem and needing to by helicoptered out 50 miles to another city.
Because of all the additional construction workers in town, it was 4 hours driving that 50 miles. I once drove 2.1 miles in 1 hr 6 minutes.
Many Helicopters were flying over head everyday taking patients from our hospitals to out of town hospitals.
50% of the section 8 housing was condemned not long after the hurricane and then more later on, I have no clue where the people went.
Maybe not the story you were looking for, but having savings made this ordeal so much easier to weather.
You said it, "short of a major medical disaster, we can handle any financial problem"
That's how it worked out. We are lucky! We also did a lot right in our financial journey.
