7 Special Things YOU can do for your Parents – along with Buying Health Insurance
POSTED BY ON April 28, 2014 COMMENTS (55)
Today’s article is not about which health insurance you should buy for your parents or how much health cover you should buy, the intention of this article is to help you to do something special for your parents health than just buying health cover for them. This is something that no insurance company or website ever taught you or told you about.
Health Insurance is Important, but …
Health cover for parents is important – but a lot of people miss out on something very important, which I am going to address in today’s article. After your parents reach a particular age, do they really need health cover or is it something else? Do they need your money for paying premiums or is it something else? If you buy health cover for your parents – Is the job done or something more needs to be done?
I was thinking about these questions and they really made me think hard. I and Manish invite each one of you to add this new dimension to your financial life.
7 Special Things you can do for your parents apart from buying health cover
In my view buying health cover for your parents is just 30% job done. The rest 70% is where you can do something special for your parent’s health and we want all our readers to focus on that 70%. Now lets see each of those 7 points below.
1. First Give Them Total Assurance
Your parents need assurance (some kind of confidence) from YOU and nothing else. And so go and have conversation with them that makes them feel confident. Tell them, with or without health insurance – you will take care of them. Make a promise that you will provide them with the best medical facilities no matter what, if required put 2-5 lakh aside and dedicate the corpus/fund for your parents health.
This will build your parents confidence and may be this assurance and confidence will add a few years to their life. Assurance is one of the best gifts you can give to your parents. They got to see, experience and feel your rock solid stand that you hold for their well being.
2. Having Loving Conversation
Parents want one simple thing from you and that is LOVE. Love is the best policy you can cover your parent’s whole life with. I invite you to block some uninterrupted time for your parents every day or every week. Loving conversation will act like therapy to your parents. We all reach at a point in life where money and financial products takes a back seat and all you want to receive is love and nothing else.
I know life is hectic and we are loaded with different kinds of responsibilities and it is difficult to take out time, but see that you do something in this area and have loving conversation with your parents. It can be a small thing like calling them from your office and asking them if everything is fine or not? Caring is 1000 times more powerful than any health cover or policy.
3. Help your parents to connect with their friends
This is one of the most special things you can do for your parents. Do something so that they stay connected with their friends or with people they love to spend time with. When they are surrounded by their friends it means they are surrounded by energy and enthusiasm. Friends are the best support structure for your parents. It helps them to keep their old days and memories alive.
Make list of people your parents would love to meet but they have not been able to see or meet them from a long time. And arrange a meeting for them. Old friends do one thing very nicely and that is they will bring a smile on your parents face.
4. Go on a walk with them
How many of you go on walk with your parents or grandparents regularly? It is important to understand your parent’s inner world. What are they thinking, what are their concerns and worries or what is it that they want to share but are afraid to share. When you go on a walk with them you get a chance to understand their world better. You get a chance to be with them fully and you are able to understand them.
Giving such quite time to your parents is worth millions. Your parent’s health will start improving with this simple step of yours. After all health is a conversation that one indulges into and you have to empower them with respect to their health.
5. Help them engage with some light physical activity
My parents go for evening walk every single day. They go to a nearby club for their evening walk and they have been doing this from last many years now. Evening walk has become like a ritual to them. I think any kind of such light physical activity is extremely important. It can be going for walk, or doing light yoga or some simple kind of simple activity.
Help your parents in this area if they are currently not engaged with any kind of physical activity. Body, mind and spirit is all connected and for sound health of your parents see that some light physical activity is part of their routine.
6. Keep a Check on their diet
It is our responsibility to take care of our parent’s diet. Sometimes our parents are not very particular about their diet or about their food intake. For 3-4 days observe your parents diet, are they drinking enough glasses of water or not? Are they having raw vegetables and fruits in their diet or not? If possible get a dietitian to design their diet plan and help them to stick to their diet plan.
7. Yearly full body check-up
This is extremely important task. If possible place this task on your calendar. After crossing 50 ask your parents to undergo full body check-up every year. One of my close friends mother is detected with last stage cancer which is now hard to cure. Body is the most complicated vehicle god has ever created and such regular check-ups are a must to keep this vehicle running.
Sharing from my life, my father gets his yearly check-ups done but my mother is scared of going through such check-ups. After writing this article I am going to enroll my mother for the same.
Some Final Words
It’s high time you think beyond parents health insurance cover and do something special for your parents. It’s not like you have not been taking care of your parents health, I am sure you must be doing your level best in this area. Your time, care and respect are three greatest gifts you can give to your parents. Your parents need YOU more than health cover and always keep that in mind.
Please note that we are not stopping you from buying health insurance for your parents (It can be of great support to you financially). The words put into this article are not new, but still a lot of people are not able to think beyond buying health cover for parents and think that once they buy it, their job is 100% done.
Do share with us in this week or month what special you are going to do for your parent’s well being or health?. Also do share your thoughts with us on this and please share this article with all your loved ones.
This article is written by Nandish Desai
Great practical everyday , simple but very effective hints for caring the elders !
Nandish , I see a special person in you , not the routine Insurance marketing Executive , the article is 99% about care rather than selling the policy . Many thanks for spreading across the invaluable caring thoughts .
AtanuGupta’s suggestion of taking along the elders for an outing/vacation is one imp. add to the – list of care .
Thanks for your appreciation and great comment !
One more gem from jago investor. Came here thinking something else turned out to be a surprise.
Joel
Thanks Joel !
Nandish, this is truly a fantastic article! Hope a lot of people can read this and try and follow all the pointers given by you to the hilt. I do that for my mother and it gives me the greatest satisfaction, which beats everything else.
Thanks a lot Shalu for appreciation
Thanks shalu madam for sharing your experience with us. Happy Mothers day in advance to you.
good one
On seeing the title, I thought you are going to suggest to buy some addon/additional cover from health insurance. But this post is all about caring…!!
Haha 🙂 .. yea .. most of people still are into products world !
I am preparing to return home to be with my Father.
That is a great move Rishi.
Thanks, Nandish, first for motivating me and now for supporting me.
Hi,
This is a nice article, but I have a question to ask on this. You mentioned about the complete health check up or full body check up. Can you please give me the information about this full body check up. Where I can get this done what is the enrollment or I would say total cost of this check up. To what extent they do health checkups like do they also check your heart conditions and all that.
I am trying to find out more about this. I believe looking at the current life style it’s really good to not only your parents but you should also go through a complete body scan once in an year. I know that for teeths its every 6 months that you should go for scaling and cleaning. That will help us to keep our self away from any tooth problems and it cost only 400-500 bucks. Similarly do we have any package or product which helps you to get complete body scan.
Nakul,
You are right everyone should undergo yearly health check-up. For health check-up different hospitals like apollo or any local good hospital offers different packages (depending on your age and medical history). You can visit any nearest hospital and you will get your answer
nandish
Hi Nandish
Nice article..
Expecting next article probably on
Number of Special Things YOU can do for your Parents in context of Income Tax laws
No I do not intend to write anything around the subject as of now.
Good one
really a heart touching post and comments for other side , i.e. parents. however , in real life , very difficult to preach ,at least for some persons, particularly after marriage , as rightly pointed by Anjan. no,it is not a problem of kid’ s changed attitude,or not understanding values but, sometimes, of , understanding , attitude , pre marriage upbringing etc. of his spouse.
Thanks for sharing that Bharat !
Super article Nandish. I am lucky that my parents are very health conscious themselves and don’t need to be told to do most of these things. I also happen to have a great relationship with them and share healthy talks daily.
I think most people have good relationship with their parents before marriage. What’s important is to maintain that even after marriage because that’s when most of the neglect starts. We should never forget the sacrifices our parents made for us in their lifetime and most of us can never repay the debts we owe to them. The least we can do is be there for them in their twilight years.
Great thought Anjan !
Thank you very much sir, very good article….how can i express to my feeling… i don’t know…..
Raja
Makkah
Raja, Just express your feelings. There is now “how to” just let it flow, give language to your thoughts and speak from your heart
Nandish
This is what differentiates this blog from other financial planning websites….
Thanks Rachit !
Very nice article, thnx
Thanks Abhijit !
Great article Nandish,
Have sent this as this weeks newsletter to my 250 clients.
Hi Dinesh
Thanks for sharing it with more and more people . I hope you have included the source link also incase they want read it directly on blog .
Manish
Yes, at the start i write i write a small summary of the article and then i give the link so that if someone in interested can read it in details..
Great !
Thats a nice article Nandish.
I understand that the article is not about health insurance, but my question is on that. You can ignore if you feel its not the right place to write. Is there any age limit to get the health insurance? Rather, is there any insurance company providing the health insurance for the senior citizens?
Appreciate any information.
Yes there are health insurance policies given to senior citizens, but then at the same time it gets really tough to get it for them. Especially if they have already contact lot of illness and have issues . So a 70 yr old person having no illness or minor issues has better chances of getting health insurance then a 62 yr old person having major problems .
Manish
Hi sai,
Further to what Manish has said, most of the mediclaim companies has an entry age limit of 65 yrs.
But there are companies like Religare and Maxbupa where one can take the policies at any age.
Out of Religare and Maxbupa i would recommend go for sum assured of either of 2 lacs or 3 lacs or 4 lacs from Religare bcz in these three sum assured there is no co-payment. If you opt for the cover equal to 5 lacs or more than that, then co-payment clause will come into play.
Thanks Manish and Dinesh for your info….
Welcome !
Sai, just one more info I would like to add if that, by any means beneficial to you.
My company gives health insurance option irrespective of age to my parents and my grandparent as well. The only thing is that I have to pay the premium myself, but it is comparatively much lesser than the market premium. Also, there is no waiting period for any preexisting decease as well.
So if, by any chance you or your children working for any company who provide that facility, please make use of it.
Thanks Chinthub….really appreciate that..unfortunately my company is not providing any health insurance…So not lucky enough to opt for that….Ofcourse thanks for sharing the info….
Such a loving and caring post.To many people, it is simple to understand and difficult to implement these practices however these practices should start from today only in all families. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for appreciation Samir !
Thank you Nandish!
We reap what we sow.
We learned from our parents how lovingly they took care of our grandparents. The same message will be passed to our children as well by learning from us. That’s how social lives of human beings are designed.
Once again thanks for sharing such nice thoughts.
Thanks for sharing that Chinthub !
Agreed.
Its important to accept that you exists because of your parents; your parents doesn’t exist because of you. So it’s always recommended to live close to your roots.
I have seen lot of people going out for vacations with their spouse and children leaving their parents behind. This is something which our parents won’t complain but this actions of ours works as a slow poisoning and destroys their confidence and moral. They started to feel lonely and ignored but will accept the fact just to see your smile.
So next time you go for an outing take them along with you. Yes it would add some extra bucks to your budget but the outcome will be magical and long lasting. Try it out! I did it myself. It’s divine.
Thats a right point Atanu ! .. thanks for sharing that viewpoint !
One more interesting article from JAGO…
Eery time they are coming with new articles with Deeper insights.
Thanks for Nandish… for reminding all the 7 Special things…. They are looking very small..but when you do all these small things to the Parents.. But they will feel that those are the best things for them.
Thanks once again…
Allavali
Thanks Allavali .. spread this to more and more people !
Nice Article. thanks Nandish.
Glad you liked it Lakshmipathy G.
Thaks for such kind of Messages and motivation of our Parent Health concern
Great Jaspreet
Hi Nandish,
Thanks for this very nice article.
I am trying all this things. I wish everybody should follow this.
Good to know you are serving your parents well.
Nandish
Hi Nandish,
Good article. Cover of love and care is more important for them than money cover.
Absolutely Abhishek, Do share the article with your loved ones.