March 16, 2021 • 58 mins
Darin Diehl has a long history of working in the financial services as an educator and marketer. But in late 2019, he was laid off from his job. Then, in early 2020, he had a heart attack. While being diagnosed and treated for that, doctors also found out that he had advanced lung cancer. Darin thought it would be helpful to share his story, not only from a health perspective, but from a financial and emotional perspective. From what emergency funds they had in place, benefits coverage and insurance, and how his medication for lung cancer has a price tag of $130,000 per year (and he explains how those costs are subsidized).
With a recent positive assessment, he now has another set of unique financial considerations: what is the balance to be found between spending more aggressively now in case his life expectancy is much shorter than his financial plan called for, versus what if he has more runway than the doctors originally predicted?
Darin is sharing his story because his passion for financial education hasn't dwindled. There are many lessons and thought provoking subjects we touch on in this episode.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Darin Diehl (00:00):
And I don't want to give the impression that I'm
(00:02):
constantly just thinking aboutthe financial aspect of it. It's
just that your life is so tiedto money decisions throughout it
as you know, I mean you'vededicated your life to educating
people about this. When it movesfrom the theoretical to the
(00:23):
highly, highly personal, it's avery, very different feeling.
Preet Banerjee (00:37):
In this extended episode, my good friend Darren
deal is going to explain theemotional and financial impacts
of living through thecoronavirus pandemic after
getting laid off, having a heartattack and then getting
diagnosed with lung cancer. Wehad a wide ranging conversation
about not only his health, butalso the financial implications
(01:00):
of everything he's been throughand is going through from
critical illness insurance,disability benefits, emergency
funds, and more. Darren talksopenly about the decisions he
and his family have made, andhow his perspective about the
balance between money, life andhealth have evolved. There is a
(01:21):
lot to absorb in this episode.
And I want to thank Darrin forvolunteering to tell his story.
This is mostly money, and I amyour host, Preet Banerjee. And
on the show today I'm going tobe speaking with a friend who's
(01:43):
been diagnosed with two criticalillnesses, heart attack, and
cancer. And we're going to talkabout how that completely up
ended his entire life, and ofcourse, his financial life as
well. So he's going to share hisstory about his experience, how
it all happened. We're gonnatalk about the financial
aspects, what insurance he hadin place, we're gonna talk about
(02:04):
how much the drugs cost and howthat threatened to potentially
bankrupt them. And how a wholenew suite of financial decisions
arose from everything that'shappened so far, is a dear
friend of mine. And he thoughtit would be worthwhile to tell
his story, because we both agreethat there is a lot that can be
learned from it. And he's been afinancial educator and marketer
(02:27):
for much of his career. And sohe was eager to help people
learn and think about just howeasily life can change in an
instant. Darren deal. Welcome tothe show, my friend.
Darin Diehl (02:39):
Thank you so much Preet. I was I'm interested to
hear myself talk as they sayafter.
Preet Banerjee (02:46):
Well, first question is, how are you doing
right now?
Darin Diehl (02:49):
Right now? I feel great. I mean, my heart attack
was in late May of 2020. So I'm,you know, six months plus
basically from my surgery date,where I had a quintuple bypass,
that was June 1 of last year.
And so from from from thatperspective, I'm feeling pretty
(03:10):
good. I'm doing my walking, I'mactually in a rehab program now
that got had gotten normallythat would happen within a
couple months after yoursurgery, but it was delayed from
COVID. And now they've, they'redelivering these programs online
instead of, you know, at a kindof like a medical gym type
(03:33):
place. So yeah, I feel goodabout that. And then with the
cancer, I'm, I'm in thetreatment that requires that I
take a pill every day, which isa targeted therapy drug. So I've
not had to endure chemotherapyor radiation to this point.
Radiation may happen a littlebit later this year. But so the
(03:56):
side effects of the targetedtherapy drug aren't anything
like those other two things. Soall things considered, day to
day. I feel pretty good.
Preet Banerjee (04:09):
Well, I'm glad to hear that. Of course, we met
initially, through the financialservices, but we didn't really
connect more deeply until afterI met your wife, Jeanette, and
Jeanette was actually one of thedirectors on million dollar
neighborhood on The OprahWinfrey Network of which I was
hosting season two. She took measide one day in between takes
(04:31):
and she said you know, I thinkyou know, my husband and I'm
thinking myself Jeanette,Jeanette, Jeanette, deal deal
deal, like Darrin deal. He'slike, yeah, Darren's my husband.
And, and then it was after that,that we really started to get to
know each other well, and ofcourse, working on a show
together. You know, you get youbecome very close very quickly,
(04:52):
spending so much time right. AndI had a blast working with
Jeanette. So I thought maybe youcould just talk a little bit
about your background in thefield. Like just very quickly
how you got into the service andkind of what you did. Sure.
Darin Diehl (05:05):
I started out as a journalist, and I worked for
years at standard broadcasting,which doesn't exist anymore. But
at the time, you know, it ownedsome of the biggest radio
stations in Canada, cjd andMontreal and cfrp, and Toronto,
and they had a national newsnetwork and I worked for them
for many years, then the aninteresting thing happened is
(05:29):
that the general manager of thenew service left to go to a
mutual fund company in the 90s.
And the rest of us are goingwell, you know, Ken, was making
fun of chap named KenWhitehurst. I said, Why, why are
you going to mutual fundcompanies as well, they're, you
know, at the, you know, they'refiguring out a way to
communicate with advisors,that's kind of news like, and,
(05:50):
you know, they have this slot,and this idea is in, okay, so
eventually can hired some of thereporters and journalists that
worked for him at standard andbrought them over to that at the
time was global strategy, mutualfunds, another company that no
longer exists, got bought byAGF, around 2000. But they had
an interesting marketing idea atthe time, which we would now
(06:14):
refer to as content marketing.
And essentially, it's, you know,where you provide interesting
and valuable content to yourtarget audience, in this case,
financial intermediaries, and doit on a sort of day to day
urgent basis, like news. But youknow, so there was a bunch of
(06:35):
journalists that were workingthere, that then led me down the
path to sort of stay in thatworld for a while. And I went
from there to Rogers, which hadlaunched advisors, edge
magazine, previous to me goingthere, but they, the year I went
there, they'd launched theirwebsite, advisor.ca. And so I
was running that public, thosepublications and their advisor
(07:00):
forum conference and everythingfor about five years at Rogers,
then I went to stock house calm,which was, you know, small cap
investors hub for a few years,and then ended up going to
another financial servicescompany, this time, a life
insurance company, sunlife,where I launched something
called brighter life, which wasa new service, but for the
(07:23):
general public. You know, so wewere creating content and
connecting with contentcreators, like yourself and
other people that, you know, weall know, in the financial
services education field. Andthen from there, after five
years, I ended up going totangerine bank, where I was up
(07:44):
until November of 2019. Andthere we'd also love to help
them launch and create contentfor their, for their audience.
So I've always been around sortof the, the, the education side
of it. And that's how you and Iinteracted many, many times over
the last several years.
Preet Banerjee (08:03):
Let's fast forward to 2019 November. So
this is when things reallystarted like, like, there's
these massive fork in the roadmoments for you. That all kind
of happened all around the sametime. Yeah. So do you want to
walk us through? So you know,the sad story?
Darin Diehl (08:20):
Yeah, I mean, I had of the pandemic, just by a
couple of months, I got laid offat from tangerine, you know,
some new leadership to come in.
And there was a number ofcolleagues of time that were
laid off that year, but so Iwent into 2020 in job search
mode. And, you know, veryquickly into 2020, we were all
(08:42):
hit with something no one hadpredicted, which was the
pandemic. And that really sortof turned things upside down. At
the same time, I was doingsomething that a lot of other
people did in lockdown, I wastrying to keep up my exercise by
walking and working out online.
(09:06):
And then on, on that day, inMay, was a Sunday morning, I'd
had just finished an exercisesession zoom class with you
know, five or six other of mytrainers, clients, and you know,
I went in the house and startwithin a couple hours, it didn't
start I wasn't feeling well. AndI felt sort of some discomfort
(09:29):
across my chest. But I thoughtyou know, we don't we've done a
lot of chest work that workoutand I thought I just, you know,
I never once thought the wordheart attack. And this was like
on a Sunday. And what happenedis I did sort of get sick to my
stomach and I did spend the nextfew days sort of feeling ill and
at no point did I think I had aheart attack or would anyone
(09:52):
think hey, I think you mighthave so because every there was
such a talk about COVID we werestarting to worry Well, maybe
these, you know, I've got a fewof the symptoms that they list
and I did call telehealth,Ontario. And at the end of the
call, remarkably, the nursesaid, Listen, Mr. Deal, I've
(10:13):
actually called an ambulance tocome to your house, because I
believe you've had a heartattack. Now keep in mind, the
heart attack that she believed Ihad would have happened on the
Sunday. And this is now thefollowing Friday before I
actually called so has almost
Preet Banerjee (10:25):
a full weekend, almost a
Darin Diehl (10:26):
full week. But what had happened is on the Thursday,
a different chest feeling camein, and I was feeling some
discomfort in my chest again,the ambulance came and they they
said, Well, you certainly don'tlook like you're having a heart
attack. Now I said, Well, I'mnot. But here's the story. And
they said, well, they hooked meup to the to, you know, to the
heart monitor and everything andsaid, everything looks okay, but
(10:49):
let's take you in and you know,get your COVID test. And they
can run some other tests. So Iwas in the hospital for a few
hours there. And they taken someblood. And then a doctor came by
one point and said, Listen,though, there's still a couple
more tests I want to do. But ifthey're like, the other thing,
you know, we'll pop send youhome, and we'll you'll hear
whether or not you're, you know,and give your instructions. If
(11:11):
you're positive for COVID, we'lllet you know. But after he got
the last test, he came back saton the edge of my bed looked at
me and said, Mr. Deal, you'vehad a heart attack. And I
couldn't really believe it. Butthat then led to of course,
chest x rays, and an angiogramand a couple days later, where
(11:34):
they determined that they couldsee that I had a number of
blockages, and I would have tohave surgery to basically bypass
at least you know, for I theythought it was going to be four
bypass, it ended up being five.
But the other thing thathappened during that time was a
doctor came to see me and said,Listen, you know, we took some
(11:55):
chest x rays, because we wantedto see if you'd had a pleural
effusion. And we just wanted tocheck and see what we could see
around the heart and everything.
And we did find something thatwe're not sure that we need to
investigate further. And I said,well, what's that? He said,
Well, there's a, there's acouple of lesions on, there's
one on your left lung and one onyour right lung. And I said,
(12:15):
Well, what do you mean lesionsand said, well, we're not sure
what it is, it could be a lot ofthings. But you know, including
some scary things, it could be,you know, some other things all
together. So, you know, I'mstill dealing with the fact that
within the last couple days, Iwas told I had a heart attack, I
have to go for major surgery.
And now they throw this at me.
And of course, no one said theword cancer, no one said the
(12:38):
word cancer but what the firstword you think I thought. And so
I did not have a great nightthat night in the hospital.
Turns out that I had thesurgery, the the heart surgeon
was able to find and remove oneof the lesions while I was still
at the hospital, the lastrecovering from the heart
(12:58):
surgery, he came and let me knowthat, you know, they they ran
pathology, and it is a kind oflung cancer that they
discovered. But they believethey you know that they had
extracted most of it, then thefocus was you know, recovering
from the heart surgery, becausethe first six weeks are pretty
tough because you've had yourchest bone split open. And so as
(13:21):
I was released from hospitalafter 16 days, where they
removed that one lump, you know,on my lung, around that area,
there seemed to have been somespread, including a couple of
lymph nodes. And so at firstthey were thinking if you know,
if it was just if I had just alittle single spot, it would be
stage one, potentially. But youknow, this was clearly in their
(13:44):
mind. a different situation. Andso it was like stage four. And
so what does that mean? And it'slike, the doctors that these are
tough conversations and rememberthe time of COVID these
conversations are happening overthe phone. So I wasn't sitting
in an office with these doctors.
The facts being you know, stagefour lung cancer discovery, what
(14:05):
you've got 19% chance of livingfive years,
Preet Banerjee (14:09):
you've always struck me as you know, you're a
healthy guy, like, you know, I'dfollow you on Instagram and you
know, you're working outreligiously working up a sweat.
And you know, I imagine andcorrect me if I'm wrong, but I
imagine you you have you know, afamily doctor that you've been
working with for years. Yeah,you go to your physicals.
Darin Diehl (14:28):
Well, we had those conversations preed annoying,
like for instance, my doctor,family doctor and I when I saw
him, you know, post recovery, hewas saying well, you know,
Darren, as you know, like youyou fit on the heart stuff,
you've never had highcholesterol. You know, my
cholesterol level was always incontrol. And And then secondly,
you know, I not have I am not anI've never been a smoker. So
(14:52):
lung cancer as I learned,there's different kinds and will
the kind I have is called nonsmall cell lung cancer and it is
it is not smoking related,
Preet Banerjee (15:04):
when we hear, you know, information about
probabilities of, you know,heart attack cancer and the risk
factors, even if you are doingall the right things, it doesn't
mean that Oh, you're, you'reguaranteed not to have these
ailments affect you. Right?
Yeah, the probabilities may belower, but it can still happen.
And so, you know, I think that'sone of the things whenever, you
(15:26):
know, people hear stories likethis, it makes them think a
little bit more about their ownsituation. But I, you know, I
encourage people I know so manypeople who, you know, have gone
so many years without doing thephysical, and they are not even
keeping track of those things.
Like those baseline like, youknow, what's your blood pressure
with your cholesterol level andstuff like that, that stuff you
(15:47):
got to do? But even then, youknow, it's no guarantee. So
okay, so you've now beendiagnosed with a heart attack,
they've found this particulartype of cancer in your lungs.
And so what, what time periodare we talking about?
Darin Diehl (16:03):
So but we learned, I got the surgery was June 1,
and about, and I've been in thehospitals at that point about a
week. So a week later, I was outsix weeks after that is when I
had the PET scan, so about twomonths after the surgeries,
because, you know, there's abouta week delay that I found out
(16:23):
about that. I knew I had cancer,but I found out the stage kind
of thing. And then shortly afterthat, you know, the basically on
that call the surgicaloncologists and the radiation
oncologist said, Look, we're notreally in the picture right now.
Because you've just had, youknow, major surgery, and there's
the level of this spread, youknow, there's radiation guys, I
(16:47):
can't, you know, if I were toradiate you that much, and kill
you kind of thing. So, we'rehanding you over for now to the
medical oncologist. And, youknow, we might come back into
the picture at some point, but,you know, and the medical
oncologist, we'd had one meetingwith terrific, a terrific guy,
he explained that in so yeah,it's, it's one thing you learn
about cancer is there'sspecifics to the kind of
(17:10):
mutation you have. And you know,so you have a certain kind of
cancer with a certain markers ofmutation, that means it falls
into this category, and I happento have one that fell into the
category that was, could betreated with a pill that was
pretty, pretty new, like onlyapproved 2018 kind of thing. You
(17:34):
know, he told me, we, you know,we're gonna want to start you on
this pill, but it's quiteexpensive, and how expensive and
he said, Well, for a yearsupply, because you take it
every day, it's it's like$130,000 $130,000 per
Preet Banerjee (17:51):
year.
Darin Diehl (17:51):
Yeah, it's like, we worked it out. It's like 350
bucks a pill. So, here's how itworks. In Ontario, it's an
across Canada, there's, I thinksimilar things, so it's not
covered by Oh, hip. And in manycases, it might not be covered
by your private insurance.
There's campaigns, you know,underway, lung cancer, Canada is
(18:15):
involved with to get them, youknow, covered and under both
those scenarios. But in Canadathat so when you mentioned at
the top there, why don't we getafford to pay this, first of
all, I'm not working. Secondly,and it's not that we wouldn't do
we'd find a way to do it,because it's, you know, a matter
(18:35):
of life or death, or hopefullybuying a number of years that
you might otherwise not havehad. And there's a bunch of
stuff I've learned about itsince but the doctor told us
about the Ontario Trilliumprogram, which is kind of a way
of covering catastrophic drugcosts for people that don't have
insurance. because keep in mind,like, my wife, as you know, is
freelance in the televisionworld and has been for like the
(18:59):
last 20 years or so. And I wasthe guy full time with the
benefits, but now we are bothnot, you know, we are without
our benefits. So we didn't haveour medical benefits anymore,
hadn't moved yet to sort of buy,like Blue Cross or something to
sort of fill in that gap. Youknow, it's still sort of
figuring it out. But I wascovered up till the end of May.
And when my had my heart attackdoes come we'll talk about this
(19:24):
in a minute because I know we'regoing to talk specific products
and what they did for us, but bybut now, you know, there was
nothing so he said yeah, youapply for it, you tell them the
story and the the way it now ofcourse people have different
means can apply for it. And theway they kind of equalize it is
(19:45):
what's the deductible that youpay? So they look at your tax
records from the previous year,and they calculate your
deductible. So the deductiblethat we were sponsible for over
the course of the year, youdidn't have to pay the whole
thing up front, but over thecourse of the year, would have
added up to about $12,000, Ithink the the drug manufacturer
(20:09):
of this specific bourbon drugthat I was taking, they have a
program that knocks a couple1000 off of that, and so on. So
then it was really down to, youknow, imagining that I'd be
taking it for the next year andhopefully longer, but just
looking at it in a year by yearbasis, it was about 10 grand we
had to come up with. And so wehad some, we had some options
(20:35):
for that. And however, I didn'thave to pull the trigger on any
of them because I was visited bymy former boss from my days at
Rogers media. And then I foundout two days later that he and a
few other former colleagues hadstarted a GoFundMe for me, and
which then has two or three daysbasically all ex colleagues from
(20:56):
different jobs. The 10 grand wasamazing. It which was a
wonderful, you know, just feltso uplifting, not just for the
relief of, you know, having themoney to cover it financially.
But just the gesture was sobeautiful. And it was, yeah,
terrific.
Preet Banerjee (21:18):
It's so it's so touching. I'm not surprised. I
mean, you know, you're such agreat guy. And it's no, no
surprise that you've left suchan impression on so many people
that they would do that.
(21:38):
The conversation with Darren docontinues in just a minute, I
want to give a special shout outto Northern bc for not only
leaving a rating and review onApple podcasts, but for also
completing my survey onfinancial advice. And a thank
you to Massimo Moti, foroffering to buy me a whiskey. If
we ever run into each other atperforming one me and my friend,
(22:01):
I will hold you to that. Takingjust 30 seconds out of your day.
And leaving a reading and orreview on Apple podcasts is much
appreciated. And thank you toeveryone who has already left
ratings and reviews. I do readevery single one. And now back
to the conversation with myfriend.
(22:29):
So let's talk about some of thetiming issues. I mean, like, the
timing is just horrible on somany different fronts. So, you
know, you get you get laid offCOVID hits, you have a heart
attack, you get diagnosed withlung cancer, basically straight
after that. And, you know, atwhat point did the shock shift
(22:51):
from, you know, the healthperspective to potentially the
financial perspective? Like Atwhat point? Did you know, did
you get like a sinking thingabout Okay, what does this mean
financially for me? Yeah,
Darin Diehl (23:04):
it's great question. And I don't know,
there was a specific point ofdemarcation for that, it was
more, it started to boil up aseven while I was in the
hospital, because I had beenlaid off in November of 2019.
But I had an exit package, whichyou know, preserved my salary
for a number of months. Andthen, you know, I, through a
(23:24):
lawyer got that extended a bitmore, and it preserved my salary
and some of my benefits. And soI knew that my benefits went up
to at least the end of May,which was May 31. And so the
heart attack was, like thirdweek of May. So that was sort of
covered, but and then I said tomy wife, you know, can you call
(23:49):
because I had critical illnessinsurance, I thought we should
see if, because that could payout and we you know, that we
probably will need that moneybecause I wasn't working. And so
it turned out that we firsttried to apply for it based on
the the easiest thing is the ifyou had a coronary bypass,
that's one of the for heartattack. That's one of the things
(24:12):
that you can apply for. And soyou just need the proof that you
had a coronary bypass. So youneed the surgical notes and all
that is some paperwork we had toget together. But then as it
turned out, you know, the bankand my insurance provider had a
different opinion of what mytechnically last day of coverage
was, as the bad interbank myemployer was saying it was it
(24:35):
was May 31. And the Initially,the insurance advisor said well,
his first day of retirement,because that's what they called
it, you know, was June 1, whichwas the day of my surgery and
technically could be covered.
Long story short, the bank wasright. And my coverage had ended
on the 31st. And so it was like,at the end of the day, we just
had wasted some time. Not itwasn't you know, you may say
(24:57):
hey, Well, they should have paidout anyways, it was a day later.
But you know, there's got to berule somewhere when it covered
Jen. So I wasn't that freakedout about it. Because, you know,
they said, Well, now you whatyou can do is apply for the
heart attack. So then you had toget different evidence. And so
whatever, there's two or threedocuments we had to get
together, and then within amonth, yeah, we were paid out
(25:19):
the money that we had so.
So that so really, it startedthe this, this thinking about
the financial implicationsstarted in while I was in the
hospital, but to your point, itwas more toward the late summer,
when you know, because thedoctor, the surgeon had said,
(25:41):
Well, you can't go back to workanyways, until maybe mid
September, you know, some stepswe taken years ago came into
play. And that's where I think,you know, I wanted to some of
the points I wanted to make withyou on this call today. Our I
found as an educator, a lot ofthe content over the years that
we did, was trying to get peopleto understand the benefit of
(26:04):
actions that they would taketoday that they wouldn't
actually reap the benefits ofpotentially for years and years.
So that's true about, you know,when you're in your 20s and 30s,
about retirement savings, it'strue when you start a family and
you start to add things likehopefully, you know, life life
insurance that you don't, or, orany other kind of, you know,
(26:25):
insurance, there's, there's somany pressing needs when you're
starting out in life and in yourfinancial life with your
partner, you know, buy or rentand you know, the costs around
that and cars and, and othercosts, and then you've got kids
and you've got their educationand their kids. So there's all
this stuff. And somewhere inthere, you still have to be
(26:47):
thinking about one day, ifeverything works out, and you
stay healthy, you're gonna enterretirement and you have to be
taken care of that, I kind ofput all these things that we
should talk about now is like,planned risks that not just me,
but people like yourself andother people that I would run
into. And just generally theindustry that we're in, we're
(27:08):
all about these were known risksthat could be mitigated against,
you can save for retirement, youcan buy different kinds of
insurance, you can do all thesethings, you know, a lot of this,
these factors came in. And soI'll take specifically how so
let's look at disabilityinsurance. If you're a two
person household or two workingperson household, and you both
(27:31):
work for companies that providebenefits, then you know, you're
in pretty good shape. Becauseeven if one of you were to lose
their job for a while you'recovered by the other person's
benefits, and so on and soforth. In our case, I was always
the one, you know, for the lastcouple of decades of the with
the with the benefits, becausemy wife was freelance. So we you
know, that was a important partto keep in mind, I'd been laid
(27:53):
off from other like, over thecourse of my career, you know,
different things happenedcompanies by other companies,
there's mergers, there's up anddowntimes and stuff. So I've
been laid off two previous time,and had gaps in between before I
landed, you know, sometimes itwas a quick transition to the
next job, but sometimes would bea bit of a gap. And a friend of
mine had about 15 or so yearsago had gone through the same
(28:19):
experience. And had decided,after one of those episodes that
he and his wife would purchasesome disability insurance, ex
whatever benefits they he mighthave with his job. So the case,
yeah, in case at some point theywere ever in the situation where
neither of them were hadbenefits. But you know, there
(28:42):
was an illness. And so itprophetically proved to be a
terrific decision. And, youknow, and happened really just I
think if I remember just monthsbefore he was diagnosed with an
aggressive kind of mental andmelanoma, Mike, a friend of
mine, he's still with us todayand having a successful battle
(29:02):
against his cancer doing reallywell but still, you know,
drawing on his disability. So itmade me think that, you know,
this is a something that weshould we should do, because I
don't if it's just one of us,that's has the benefits and fine
young unemployed. So we made thedecision back then to apply for
(29:22):
it. And then to make the claimwe had to wait three months to
post the event of the heartattack and and the cancer
diagnosis and then we made theclaim and was accepted right
away given the situation. So Istarted the fall off with you
know, someand I found myself pre kind of
thanking, you know, my wifecertainly thanked my advisor who
(29:46):
was you know, big part of thedecision to do this but my
friend who you know, had byexample had taught this and, and
even my younger self for my wifeand I for having the you You
know, we made the rightdecision. And of course, I know,
you know this really well,you're, a lot of these things
are like, there's times in ourlife where we're going on and
(30:09):
things are tight right now, youknow, we're paying all this
money, like, you know, to forinsurance products, or, you
know, the premiums every monthor this and that, you know,
because we also had privatehealth insurance outside of our
benefits. And so that's one ofthe, the other lessons for me
was private versus what'sprovided by your benefits. And
the other thing, and, you know,as you know, because I brought
(30:33):
in you into companies that I'veworked out to educate people
about these issues, and we'vewritten content on it, with your
help. Even if you have benefits,it's so important to understand
what they actually are. Andwithin anyone's benefit package,
there's always differentoptions. So do you just take the
(30:54):
base life insurance, or do youpay a bit more to double it up,
in my case, I had made adecision that, you know, the
critical illness insurance,which paid out against, you
know, certain criticalillnesses, including the two
that I had, I but I could onlyapply to one another story. But
anyways, they, they pay it, youknow, part of my package
(31:16):
included one unit of it, so yougot one unit of it, which was
$25,000. And I decided to add topay for like add premium, and
Diggs get a second unit. So ourpayout was, you know, 50,000,
which, but you know, I've hadfriends that have done the same
thing, but they, they topped itup to 100,000. And so yeah,
again, you're, you're sort ofpaying it out more, but to go
(31:41):
back to the pay yourself, firstthing, it comes off your check
you just after a while youoperate life without knowing it,
and so on, having made thedecision, you know, more than 15
years earlier about getting themthe Disability Insurance, that
also helped. And, and withdisability insurance, there's a
couple of different kinds, youknow, there's the kind that we
(32:02):
got, I guess, is the littlelittle better, kind in some ways
called own occupation. So you'reprotected against not being able
to work in your own occupation.
So you know, in other words, youOh, you can't do your normal
job, but you could go, you know,do some other work or work in a
(32:24):
coffee shop, or whatever itmight be. So you're protected
against the your loss to be ableto do your actual line of work.
So that those two things weredefinitely something I was glad
to have. had those decisionscome back and sort of say, wow,
(32:45):
this is the benefit inhindsight. Now, hopefully,
people, you don't want thesethings to happen, in order to
prove the value of the decisionyou made.
Preet Banerjee (32:54):
That is sort of the the perversion deal you're
making with your insuranceprovider, which is, you know,
you win. If you make a claim,you kind of hope that you don't
win, like you hope that you losethat bet. Right. Yeah. Because
that means you have good health.
Darin Diehl (33:07):
Exactly. So, but there's just some things, you
know, it's tough to predict. So
Preet Banerjee (33:15):
how much was in your emergency fund? Or were you
relying on like a line of creditas your emergency fund? No, I
mean, about that.
Darin Diehl (33:25):
Yeah. So with the sort of straight savings account
emergency funds, that's the onethat was would be volatile. So
it would be you know, we borrowagainst it, so to speak, to take
a vacation, or we would borrowagainst the to help with a down
payment for an automobile and soon and so forth. But over time,
and so there were twice, therewas twice in our life, where we
(33:48):
were carrying debt outside ofmortgage that was primarily line
of credit. In both cases, youknow, we tried to, when we were
younger, it took us longer topay that one off, but later, but
we still sort of focused on itand prioritize paying it off.
And then later when we had itagain, you know, if, if, anytime
(34:10):
I would get a bonus, or youknow, some of the other kind of
extra beyond your salaryearnings, but I always look at
that kind of debt first. Andthen and then now, you know,
say, plugged them into savingsand so on and so forth. So, but
we certainly didn't have youknow, you know, so we're talking
(34:33):
about less than $10,000,probably in pure liquid
emergency fund at that time.
Preet Banerjee (34:41):
And, you know, I want to we've talked about this
one I want to come across ascallous to listen when I raised
this question, but, you know,when it comes to your health
diagnoses that you've had, oneof the considerations is that,
you know, your life expectancyis probably not what you thought
it was, you know, 10 years ago,right? Yeah, the trajectory of
(35:02):
your life, you've totally had toreconsider it, including, you
know, quality of life. And, youknow, you've got a certain
amount of financial resourcesthat maybe initially were
planned for, you know, 2030years of retirement, and maybe
you had plans for traveling inretirement, more travel more
aggressively than then you mightdo sooner. And so does the
(35:26):
calculus change in your mind asto, okay, we've got these
resources. And there's a chancethat I could live, you know, a
long time. But I also sort offeel like, you know, I'm on
borrowed time, I have had twocritical illnesses, do you think
about spending some of thatmoney more aggressively today to
(35:46):
sort of take advantage of thetime that you do have while you
are still having the quality oflife so that you could do
certain things,
Darin Diehl (35:54):
you know, all of those questions just flooded
into me in the early fall oflast year, and it and not
because the reason why they cameup was if you look at it, and
like there's a part A, and PartB to the financial conversation
of the Part A was all theimmediate decisions that we had
to make. And, you know, and sowe got the, we had critical
(36:18):
illness insurance, okay, let'sapply for that got that paid out
with disability insurance applyfor that claim was accepted, we
needed to figure out some costmanagement, and so on and so
forth. Now, everybody wasbecause of COVID had people out
of work, or, you know, they wereon serve, or whatever. So, so
this was a common practiceeveryone was participating in,
(36:39):
and we'd made the decision toget rid of one of our cars, and
just be a single car family, andwe were barely using that, you
know, in the COVID, right of theyear. So. So all, you know, that
these sort of practical plan forunderstood about things we're
(37:01):
all being dealt with, in thefirst few months after, then the
sort of, you know, existentialquestions you're getting at,
sort of came up, and but theybecome very real. And it's
bizarre, because you're, you'refacing, you know, sort of like
this, in some ways, sort ofterrifying question. And at, but
(37:21):
even those, eventually roundback to practical decisions that
you have to make, I startedthinking, Well, you know, what,
what am I going to do now?
Should I get a job? Or should Inot, you know, or strike
continue to try to pick up my,my effort to do something
freelance. And, you know, I wastalking to the oncologist and
he's saying, you know, it'sdisappoint, maybe just like, we
(37:44):
don't know where this is goingto go. But you've got your
disability insurance, you know,why don't you just focus on your
health for a bit. And, and, andthat was generally advice I'm
getting from my friends andfamily and so on. But 10, then,
so I thought, so then I thinkabout that, and I think about
well, I'd learned a term that iscommon to people who are under
cancer treatment, and that, youknow, periodically, you have to
(38:06):
go for a scan that measures theprogress or, or hopefully the
reversal of your tumors andeverything. And so you develop
what's called scan xiety anxietyaround the skin. And so leading
up to the end of October, whenthe first one was coming is when
I started thinking about that,and I started thinking about it,
from a very young age, like thesort of like, darkest thoughts
(38:32):
where, you know, I might not behere that long. And so, like,
what do I need to take care of,you know, for my family, in
terms of, you know, so Iactually had were conversations
with my financial advisor, andone of her assistants, I had a
few of those where it was justme on the phone, not Jeanette,
(38:53):
not my wife, or anything, I justdidn't want her to be sort of
hearing some of this. And as Iwas asking sort of thing, so how
do we what do we have to do likeother things, I have to get an
order, what are they? And so andI wasn't a mess, I was as I was,
you know, discussing thesethings. And because I kind of
processed the thought that thethought of it the terror of your
(39:17):
own life ending lot shorter thanyou wanted it to, and then move
on to okay, but what do we dobetween now and whatever, if
it's a number of years that Ican count on one hand that I
have left? According to thestats kind of thing, then I want
to, I'm going to be doing stuffwith Jeanette, I want to, I want
us to go do stuff and you know,it's which was what we were
(39:40):
planning for early retirementyears anyways, but now you're
trying to move it up to yourpoint.
And then, um, but, you know,that's just where the COVID
wrench gets thrown into a tubebecause whatever plans or
thoughts or, or ideas that thatI I wanted to do well, they were
(40:02):
limited as they were foreveryone else in that, like, you
know, so we couldn't take acouple months and go south for
the winter or anything likethat, because of the the
situation. Since then, I've beenhad those, those conversations
have continued. And they,they've kind of come full circle
to the point where in my lastscan that I had in January, it
(40:23):
had some very good news. Andthen it showed a complete
disappearance of a lot of thespots that they initially had
identified as potentiallycancer. And they said, either
the pills cleaned it up, or itwas post surgical scarring on
other or, you know, fluids thatwere in your system, you know,
your chest at the time. And froma money perspective, well, that
(40:46):
then throws the pump for Okay,so I have the risk of not, maybe
not having a lot of, of ofrunway left, but wanting to do a
lot of things which have to fundnow. But then there's also the
risk of the runway being a lotlonger than I thought it's and
it's as long as what it mighthave been otherwise. In which
(41:08):
case, you know, the longevityrisk is there again. It's like,
I got going, at some point, it'sactually amusing to me, because
these are, these are things andtopics that I've written about
disgust about and, or whatever.
And it's always beentheoretical. And here I am
living these these very realdecisions, not that other people
haven't lived them before me,I'm not the first person, but
(41:30):
there is certainly a change inperspective from being the
person that in the past, I wouldhave interviewed, right?
Preet Banerjee (41:39):
No, no, I totally get I mean, so many, so
many of these financialdecisions we make, they are so
abstract, because we're just notconnected to these future
potential realities. I mean,you've seen the studies that
that show you that you asksomeone how much they want to
save for retirement, they'll sayx, you then show them a
rendering of what they will looklike when they're 70. And then
(42:01):
ask them how much you want tosave for retirement, they'll
say, well, it's greater than x,right. And so the more or I
guess, the more concrete andless abstract you can make those
those future realities, the morereal they get, and they affect
the decisions that we make. Butfor the most part, people do
sort of look at these as moreabstract decisions, they Well, I
know, the right thing to do isto, you know, make sure that
(42:24):
have proper disabilityinsurance, and to save for
retirement. But you know, you,the gravity of that becomes
heavier as those thingsapproach. And when you have
these other realities that getthrust upon you, it just
completely turns your worldupside down.
Darin Diehl (42:43):
Yeah, that's a very accurate description. Because,
you know, at the end of the day,you're having to have these
human conversations with, youknow, your spouse, and your
children or adult, my case, myadult children about these
different possibilities. Andthen, you know, you get to a
point where you don't want thatto be your everyday life, you
know, you want to just sort ofsee people and visit and enjoy
(43:06):
people and stuff. But, you know,I, it's, it's, once you get
past, the terror, which is goingto be there initially, it's just
so odd how quickly you flip theswitch over to logical thinking
again, and it comes into play.
And you you start sortingthrough actual decisions, you
have to make that have apractical implication, on, on on
(43:29):
money and your lifestyle,everything else. But, you know,
it can be and I can get, youknow, if you're the person who's
gone through the you might be ina situation where you're at a
point where you can talk aboutthose things sooner than you
know, maybe your close friendsand your family are comfortable
(43:51):
talking about them with you.
And, you know, I've like, I'vebeen on walks with a friend or
where, you know, I blurted out,well, you know, I might be here
in a couple years, and blah,blah, and I'm just sort of
dropped that as a little phrase.
And I realizing, thinking aboutit from the other person's
perspective. I say, Man, don'tsay that, what the hell, they
(44:13):
don't want to hear that. Like,and it's like so one of the most
helpful pieces of advice I gotwas from a friend of a friend
boat, and both the friend andthis friend of the friend are
both financial services, people,education, people, and so on.
And this sunlight, the friend inbetween introduced the two of us
(44:36):
and this lady had a chat withme. She's got lung cancer, the
same kind I have, and she gaveme some advice to pop to follow
a couple of patient supportgroups that are on like
Facebook, and they're there. Theincredible thing Preet is that
there's these groups, andthey're actually specific, not
(44:58):
To the kind of cancer you have,but right down to the kind of
mutation you have, and then thepill that you're on. So I'm in
one of those groups, whereeveryone has the exact same lung
cancer, the exact same submutation, and then they're on
the exact same medication. Andso you're in that group, and
you're talking. Now, a lot ofthe discussion is, Hey, does
(45:18):
anyone have, you know, this sideeffect, you know, or, or
something, but there's alsopeople that are sort of saying,
you know, last night, I talkedto my family about X or Y, and,
you know, I realized, onemistake I've been making is, you
know, I need to lay thegroundwork a little sooner as to
what we're going to be talkingabout. So people are prepared,
you know, it's like, realpractical advice about how you,
you know, deal with your friendsand family and about these
(45:42):
topics. But I, I don't want togive the impression that I'm
constantly just thinking aboutthe financial aspect of it, it's
just that your life and, and isso tied to money decisions
throughout it, as you know, Imean, you've dedicated your life
to educating people about this,that, yeah, and when it moves
(46:03):
from the theoretical to thehighly, highly personal, it,
it's a very, very differentfeeling.
Preet Banerjee (46:14):
I remember back when I was an advisor, and I was
insurance licensed. And Iremember a senior advisor in the
office, he took me sign, hesaid, you know, you really need
to think about insurance and therole that it plays in financial
planning, and risk mitigation,it's key, and he said, you know,
(46:37):
most advisors don't reallybecome true advisors until they
have to deliver like a deathbenefit check. And so one of
their clients, you know, passesaway, and, you know, they had
insurance in place, they deliverthat check, and they see the
impact of that the person whodied doesn't, but, you know,
(46:58):
hopefully, they had at leastthat peace of mind, knowing that
they had that coverage. But, youknow, especially when it's
unexpected. And he said, youknow, if you take a look at all
the advisors, and planners outthere who have had a client have
a critical illness, a death adisability, and then there was
some plan in place that adviseit, that's when they become
(47:20):
really like an advisor orplanner, that's when it's kind
of like Neo, you know, all of asudden, he sees the matrix.
Yeah. It's like that, that, thatthat moment, and that does feel
moment. Yeah, it doesn't justhappen just by thinking about
it, something has to happen toyou, for you to see the world in
a different way, kind of like,you know, what you've described.
But I think the last thing thatI wanted to leave off on is, you
(47:46):
know, you've shared a lot ofadvice for people, you know, the
takeaways and because you are,you know, a financial educator
yourself, you know, what is sortof the advice that you have for
any role, whether it's planners,individuals, what do you want
people to take away from yoursharing this story?
Darin Diehl (48:09):
Yeah, I think, um, I guess there's, you know, I've
wrestled with that, because Ipeople, some have asked me that
question, not quite the wayyou've asked it, but they've
said, you know, what's your,your biggest takeaway over the
last, you know, several months,even three quarters of the year
now. And it's, I think it boilsdown to two different things
(48:33):
from a, sort of, from a sort ofpurely sort of financial
education side point. It's like,I remember, a friend of mine,
who was more of a pure marketerat once said to me, you know, we
work in a category that that's alow interest category, and I
(48:54):
said, Well, what do you mean bythat? But, well, you know, it's
like, we were in theentertainment industry or
whatever, whatever, you know,it's not hard to get people's
attention because they're, thisis what they're craving. But
it's, it's remarkably Noteveryone gets up every morning
and because, gee, I really wantto get educated about actuarial
tables. Not that you have to gothat far. But it's, it's, it's
(49:21):
so it's a low it, there's a andit's not people think there's a
binary choice between beingcompletely uneducated, and
becoming a financial expert. Andit's not it's just a path. It's
a path that you walk down. Andit doesn't mean you you're not
going to use professionaladvice. You know, if that's what
(49:41):
you want. The bigger problem ispeople you know, wondering if
they should use professionaladvice and see if they'd if they
do they think they now have theycan shut off their education.
Sounds great. Oh, I havesomebody takes care of that. The
bank takes care of that. Mybroker takes care of that. You
know, my financial planner or myaccountant, and never surrender
(50:04):
to any professional no matterdoesn't nothing to do with their
integrity, it has to do withyour own understanding of the
decisions you have to make neversurrendering and any of your
decision making and your yourability to learn about these
things. And so that's what I'vetried to put, you know, instill
on my own kids. You know, one ofyour sort of colleagues in the,
(50:27):
in the industry, Kelly Keanwrote a book a couple years ago,
that I understand she justupdated with some COVID stuff.
Preet Banerjee (50:33):
Yeah, I think it's called talk money to me.
Darin Diehl (50:35):
Yes.
Preet Banerjee (50:36):
So it's a new COVID updated edition, which I
think just launched onWednesday, yeah, the
Darin Diehl (50:42):
24th. But the original version, a couple
Christmases ago, I basicallybought all three of my kids a
copy, and I said, read thisbook. And when you've completed
reading it, I'm going to giveyou you know, X number of
dollars. So it was a, it was ait was an incentive type deal.
But one of them, you know, hadcompleted it within a couple
(51:04):
months, the other one a fewmonths later, and the other one
took her more a year. But thepoint is, it was, this isn't, no
one's saying you have to go getyour MBA in financial services.
But, you know, the more youunderstand the basics, and, and
that means, and, as you know,the most frustrating thing is
(51:26):
that people will have a benefitspackage of work that they don't
really look at. And then theydon't understand, for instance,
the RSP matching, and, and sothey are literally leaving money
on the table, which is theexpression that we used in the
industry to sort of talk don'tleave money on the table. So you
mean, so you know, that you'vegot to lower your zero to
(51:48):
include you pay every penny ofroom that you have, that gets
matched. And then from there andplan your your spending. So so
there's so so oddly, what thatit's that lesson of living
beneath your means, which is thethe so that you have some
flexibility to to do riskmitigation, savings, and, and so
(52:11):
on and planning. So that's thatthat was sort of one I was just
thankful for that I'd gotteninto that strategy. And again, I
told you before, I'm not greatat budgeting, so I didn't we, we
pay yourself first instead,right, as a way of forced
budgeting. But then on the sortof more sort of broader view,
(52:32):
when you think, you know, lifeand everything. I think it boils
down to this, I've kind of madethis point that if my existence
is going to be a lot shorterthan I'd hoped. And I believe
me, I totally have hoped that itwon't be and there's reason,
actual, medical reasons tobelieve that, you know, it could
(52:54):
be much better than it initiallyappeared that it might be. One
should live one's life With thatin mind, and I want to live my
life, you know, by and I ifyou've asked me what the biggest
takeaways, I've embracedgratefulness in a way like I
haven't done for a long, longtime I am so I get so much joy
(53:18):
just for taking my dog on onseven or 8k walk down a, you
know, a Creek Park, inMississauga, and, and, you know,
it's just, there's joy in thatthere's joy and just spending
some time with my family. Andwe've all had to endure this
(53:40):
crazy year, that stressed andcaused us a grief in different
ways. And for some people losingloved ones as part of the grief.
But it is, you know, I would sayif people could embrace like, a
gratefulness and then also anunderstanding of man every day
(54:02):
is a gift. And it doesn't meanthat, you know, you have to
climb a mountain every day or beon a beach every day. But you
know, you still if you couldlook at it. And I recognize even
when I say that every day is agift that there are times in my
life when I heard that messageto and my thought I understood
(54:25):
it and I, you know, openlyagreed with the person making
that point and Carpe Diem andeverything, but I guess there's,
as we've mentioned a few timesin this conversation, there's a
level of this is so real for menow. That it just drives it
home, but that that, you know,from a life perspective point of
(54:47):
view, that would be the thingthat I take away from this and I
tried other people to, to, tobenefit them by by espousing
that point of view.
Preet Banerjee (54:59):
Yeah, and I think, to your first point, I
think something that has kind ofstruck me as you were talking
about, you know, having benefitsat work. And, you know, your
sort of generation having gonethrough a couple of layoffs
before. And they take a look atthe world around me now, and how
there has been a shift where theliability has been shifted
(55:22):
towards the worker from thecompany in terms of benefits, as
we have the gig economy, a lotof people who are self employed
or working on contract, and theyalso may not sort of take a look
at what the value of benefitsare at, you know, some of the
bigger sort of legacy companies.
And so, you know, this, this iskind of a blind spot for a lot
(55:46):
of people, and they don't evenhave benefit coverage, whether
it's private or through work.
And I think that's somethingespecially for people who are
more, you know, self employed.
And again, is that liability hasbeen sort of shifted on to the
individual is really somethingpeople need to take into
account. I see a lot of peoplewho are self employed who don't
(56:06):
have disability insurance, andyou know, it's the first thing
I'll tell them, You need to getdisability insurance, if you're
self employed, or if you're, youknow, working for a company and
they don't have the appropriatelevel of coverage, you can get
it piggyback plan, you can topup and it picks up where that
one leaves off. But you know, Iwant to say Darren, you're a
(56:27):
great friend. And I'm glad tohear the latest round of news
you had told me about that. Thatsort of the the recent progress
updates, so I'm really glad tohear that and I look forward to
you know, swinging by when whenthe pandemic is, yeah.
Unknown (56:51):
Grab it out. I'm
Preet Banerjee (56:52):
gonna drive over to daddy's donuts pick up a box
of doughnuts and head on over.
I'm only gonna let you have onebecause I guess
Darin Diehl (57:02):
yeah, this for a downtown trip for me to meet
you. It would probably requireus grabbing lunch at the
senator.
Preet Banerjee (57:12):
rates. Yes, yeah. Can you do that anytime,
Darin Diehl (57:15):
when that can happen again.
Preet Banerjee (57:18):
All right. Well, we'll leave it there. Thank you
so much for coming on thepodcast to share your story. I
know a lot of people will willbenefit from it. So so thank you
so much.
Darin Diehl (57:28):
Thank you every day is a gift.
Preet Banerjee (57:36):
If you want more personal finance content, or you
have questions for me or topicsuggestions for the podcast, you
can follow me on Twitter orInstagram, same handle in both
cases at Preet Banerjee, I alsohave two YouTube channels, you
can subscribe to my main channelwhich covers personal finance
and investing topics that areglobal in scope, and a Canadian
(57:57):
specific channel as well. That'sit for this episode. Thank you
for listening.
And I don't want to give the impression that I'm
(00:02):
constantly just thinking aboutthe financial aspect of it. It's
just that your life is so tiedto money decisions throughout it
as you know, I mean you'vededicated your life to educating
people about this. When it movesfrom the theoretical to the
(00:23):
highly, highly personal, it's avery, very different feeling.
Preet Banerjee (00:37):
In this extended episode, my good friend Darren
deal is going to explain theemotional and financial impacts
of living through thecoronavirus pandemic after
getting laid off, having a heartattack and then getting
diagnosed with lung cancer. Wehad a wide ranging conversation
about not only his health, butalso the financial implications
(01:00):
of everything he's been throughand is going through from
critical illness insurance,disability benefits, emergency
funds, and more. Darren talksopenly about the decisions he
and his family have made, andhow his perspective about the
balance between money, life andhealth have evolved. There is a
(01:21):
lot to absorb in this episode.
And I want to thank Darrin forvolunteering to tell his story.
This is mostly money, and I amyour host, Preet Banerjee. And
on the show today I'm going tobe speaking with a friend who's
(01:43):
been diagnosed with two criticalillnesses, heart attack, and
cancer. And we're going to talkabout how that completely up
ended his entire life, and ofcourse, his financial life as
well. So he's going to share hisstory about his experience, how
it all happened. We're gonnatalk about the financial
aspects, what insurance he hadin place, we're gonna talk about
(02:04):
how much the drugs cost and howthat threatened to potentially
bankrupt them. And how a wholenew suite of financial decisions
arose from everything that'shappened so far, is a dear
friend of mine. And he thoughtit would be worthwhile to tell
his story, because we both agreethat there is a lot that can be
learned from it. And he's been afinancial educator and marketer
(02:27):
for much of his career. And sohe was eager to help people
learn and think about just howeasily life can change in an
instant. Darren deal. Welcome tothe show, my friend.
Darin Diehl (02:39):
Thank you so much Preet. I was I'm interested to
hear myself talk as they sayafter.
Preet Banerjee (02:46):
Well, first question is, how are you doing
right now?
Darin Diehl (02:49):
Right now? I feel great. I mean, my heart attack
was in late May of 2020. So I'm,you know, six months plus
basically from my surgery date,where I had a quintuple bypass,
that was June 1 of last year.
And so from from from thatperspective, I'm feeling pretty
(03:10):
good. I'm doing my walking, I'mactually in a rehab program now
that got had gotten normallythat would happen within a
couple months after yoursurgery, but it was delayed from
COVID. And now they've, they'redelivering these programs online
instead of, you know, at a kindof like a medical gym type
(03:33):
place. So yeah, I feel goodabout that. And then with the
cancer, I'm, I'm in thetreatment that requires that I
take a pill every day, which isa targeted therapy drug. So I've
not had to endure chemotherapyor radiation to this point.
Radiation may happen a littlebit later this year. But so the
(03:56):
side effects of the targetedtherapy drug aren't anything
like those other two things. Soall things considered, day to
day. I feel pretty good.
Preet Banerjee (04:09):
Well, I'm glad to hear that. Of course, we met
initially, through the financialservices, but we didn't really
connect more deeply until afterI met your wife, Jeanette, and
Jeanette was actually one of thedirectors on million dollar
neighborhood on The OprahWinfrey Network of which I was
hosting season two. She took measide one day in between takes
(04:31):
and she said you know, I thinkyou know, my husband and I'm
thinking myself Jeanette,Jeanette, Jeanette, deal deal
deal, like Darrin deal. He'slike, yeah, Darren's my husband.
And, and then it was after that,that we really started to get to
know each other well, and ofcourse, working on a show
together. You know, you get youbecome very close very quickly,
(04:52):
spending so much time right. AndI had a blast working with
Jeanette. So I thought maybe youcould just talk a little bit
about your background in thefield. Like just very quickly
how you got into the service andkind of what you did. Sure.
Darin Diehl (05:05):
I started out as a journalist, and I worked for
years at standard broadcasting,which doesn't exist anymore. But
at the time, you know, it ownedsome of the biggest radio
stations in Canada, cjd andMontreal and cfrp, and Toronto,
and they had a national newsnetwork and I worked for them
for many years, then the aninteresting thing happened is
(05:29):
that the general manager of thenew service left to go to a
mutual fund company in the 90s.
And the rest of us are goingwell, you know, Ken, was making
fun of chap named KenWhitehurst. I said, Why, why are
you going to mutual fundcompanies as well, they're, you
know, at the, you know, they'refiguring out a way to
communicate with advisors,that's kind of news like, and,
(05:50):
you know, they have this slot,and this idea is in, okay, so
eventually can hired some of thereporters and journalists that
worked for him at standard andbrought them over to that at the
time was global strategy, mutualfunds, another company that no
longer exists, got bought byAGF, around 2000. But they had
an interesting marketing idea atthe time, which we would now
(06:14):
refer to as content marketing.
And essentially, it's, you know,where you provide interesting
and valuable content to yourtarget audience, in this case,
financial intermediaries, and doit on a sort of day to day
urgent basis, like news. But youknow, so there was a bunch of
(06:35):
journalists that were workingthere, that then led me down the
path to sort of stay in thatworld for a while. And I went
from there to Rogers, which hadlaunched advisors, edge
magazine, previous to me goingthere, but they, the year I went
there, they'd launched theirwebsite, advisor.ca. And so I
was running that public, thosepublications and their advisor
(07:00):
forum conference and everythingfor about five years at Rogers,
then I went to stock house calm,which was, you know, small cap
investors hub for a few years,and then ended up going to
another financial servicescompany, this time, a life
insurance company, sunlife,where I launched something
called brighter life, which wasa new service, but for the
(07:23):
general public. You know, so wewere creating content and
connecting with contentcreators, like yourself and
other people that, you know, weall know, in the financial
services education field. Andthen from there, after five
years, I ended up going totangerine bank, where I was up
(07:44):
until November of 2019. Andthere we'd also love to help
them launch and create contentfor their, for their audience.
So I've always been around sortof the, the, the education side
of it. And that's how you and Iinteracted many, many times over
the last several years.
Preet Banerjee (08:03):
Let's fast forward to 2019 November. So
this is when things reallystarted like, like, there's
these massive fork in the roadmoments for you. That all kind
of happened all around the sametime. Yeah. So do you want to
walk us through? So you know,the sad story?
Darin Diehl (08:20):
Yeah, I mean, I had of the pandemic, just by a
couple of months, I got laid offat from tangerine, you know,
some new leadership to come in.
And there was a number ofcolleagues of time that were
laid off that year, but so Iwent into 2020 in job search
mode. And, you know, veryquickly into 2020, we were all
(08:42):
hit with something no one hadpredicted, which was the
pandemic. And that really sortof turned things upside down. At
the same time, I was doingsomething that a lot of other
people did in lockdown, I wastrying to keep up my exercise by
walking and working out online.
(09:06):
And then on, on that day, inMay, was a Sunday morning, I'd
had just finished an exercisesession zoom class with you
know, five or six other of mytrainers, clients, and you know,
I went in the house and startwithin a couple hours, it didn't
start I wasn't feeling well. AndI felt sort of some discomfort
(09:29):
across my chest. But I thoughtyou know, we don't we've done a
lot of chest work that workoutand I thought I just, you know,
I never once thought the wordheart attack. And this was like
on a Sunday. And what happenedis I did sort of get sick to my
stomach and I did spend the nextfew days sort of feeling ill and
at no point did I think I had aheart attack or would anyone
(09:52):
think hey, I think you mighthave so because every there was
such a talk about COVID we werestarting to worry Well, maybe
these, you know, I've got a fewof the symptoms that they list
and I did call telehealth,Ontario. And at the end of the
call, remarkably, the nursesaid, Listen, Mr. Deal, I've
(10:13):
actually called an ambulance tocome to your house, because I
believe you've had a heartattack. Now keep in mind, the
heart attack that she believed Ihad would have happened on the
Sunday. And this is now thefollowing Friday before I
actually called so has almost
Preet Banerjee (10:25):
a full weekend, almost a
Darin Diehl (10:26):
full week. But what had happened is on the Thursday,
a different chest feeling camein, and I was feeling some
discomfort in my chest again,the ambulance came and they they
said, Well, you certainly don'tlook like you're having a heart
attack. Now I said, Well, I'mnot. But here's the story. And
they said, well, they hooked meup to the to, you know, to the
heart monitor and everything andsaid, everything looks okay, but
(10:49):
let's take you in and you know,get your COVID test. And they
can run some other tests. So Iwas in the hospital for a few
hours there. And they taken someblood. And then a doctor came by
one point and said, Listen,though, there's still a couple
more tests I want to do. But ifthey're like, the other thing,
you know, we'll pop send youhome, and we'll you'll hear
whether or not you're, you know,and give your instructions. If
(11:11):
you're positive for COVID, we'lllet you know. But after he got
the last test, he came back saton the edge of my bed looked at
me and said, Mr. Deal, you'vehad a heart attack. And I
couldn't really believe it. Butthat then led to of course,
chest x rays, and an angiogramand a couple days later, where
(11:34):
they determined that they couldsee that I had a number of
blockages, and I would have tohave surgery to basically bypass
at least you know, for I theythought it was going to be four
bypass, it ended up being five.
But the other thing thathappened during that time was a
doctor came to see me and said,Listen, you know, we took some
(11:55):
chest x rays, because we wantedto see if you'd had a pleural
effusion. And we just wanted tocheck and see what we could see
around the heart and everything.
And we did find something thatwe're not sure that we need to
investigate further. And I said,well, what's that? He said,
Well, there's a, there's acouple of lesions on, there's
one on your left lung and one onyour right lung. And I said,
(12:15):
Well, what do you mean lesionsand said, well, we're not sure
what it is, it could be a lot ofthings. But you know, including
some scary things, it could be,you know, some other things all
together. So, you know, I'mstill dealing with the fact that
within the last couple days, Iwas told I had a heart attack, I
have to go for major surgery.
And now they throw this at me.
And of course, no one said theword cancer, no one said the
(12:38):
word cancer but what the firstword you think I thought. And so
I did not have a great nightthat night in the hospital.
Turns out that I had thesurgery, the the heart surgeon
was able to find and remove oneof the lesions while I was still
at the hospital, the lastrecovering from the heart
(12:58):
surgery, he came and let me knowthat, you know, they they ran
pathology, and it is a kind oflung cancer that they
discovered. But they believethey you know that they had
extracted most of it, then thefocus was you know, recovering
from the heart surgery, becausethe first six weeks are pretty
tough because you've had yourchest bone split open. And so as
(13:21):
I was released from hospitalafter 16 days, where they
removed that one lump, you know,on my lung, around that area,
there seemed to have been somespread, including a couple of
lymph nodes. And so at firstthey were thinking if you know,
if it was just if I had just alittle single spot, it would be
stage one, potentially. But youknow, this was clearly in their
(13:44):
mind. a different situation. Andso it was like stage four. And
so what does that mean? And it'slike, the doctors that these are
tough conversations and rememberthe time of COVID these
conversations are happening overthe phone. So I wasn't sitting
in an office with these doctors.
The facts being you know, stagefour lung cancer discovery, what
(14:05):
you've got 19% chance of livingfive years,
Preet Banerjee (14:09):
you've always struck me as you know, you're a
healthy guy, like, you know, I'dfollow you on Instagram and you
know, you're working outreligiously working up a sweat.
And you know, I imagine andcorrect me if I'm wrong, but I
imagine you you have you know, afamily doctor that you've been
working with for years. Yeah,you go to your physicals.
Darin Diehl (14:28):
Well, we had those conversations preed annoying,
like for instance, my doctor,family doctor and I when I saw
him, you know, post recovery, hewas saying well, you know,
Darren, as you know, like youyou fit on the heart stuff,
you've never had highcholesterol. You know, my
cholesterol level was always incontrol. And And then secondly,
you know, I not have I am not anI've never been a smoker. So
(14:52):
lung cancer as I learned,there's different kinds and will
the kind I have is called nonsmall cell lung cancer and it is
it is not smoking related,
Preet Banerjee (15:04):
when we hear, you know, information about
probabilities of, you know,heart attack cancer and the risk
factors, even if you are doingall the right things, it doesn't
mean that Oh, you're, you'reguaranteed not to have these
ailments affect you. Right?
Yeah, the probabilities may belower, but it can still happen.
And so, you know, I think that'sone of the things whenever, you
(15:26):
know, people hear stories likethis, it makes them think a
little bit more about their ownsituation. But I, you know, I
encourage people I know so manypeople who, you know, have gone
so many years without doing thephysical, and they are not even
keeping track of those things.
Like those baseline like, youknow, what's your blood pressure
with your cholesterol level andstuff like that, that stuff you
(15:47):
got to do? But even then, youknow, it's no guarantee. So
okay, so you've now beendiagnosed with a heart attack,
they've found this particulartype of cancer in your lungs.
And so what, what time periodare we talking about?
Darin Diehl (16:03):
So but we learned, I got the surgery was June 1,
and about, and I've been in thehospitals at that point about a
week. So a week later, I was outsix weeks after that is when I
had the PET scan, so about twomonths after the surgeries,
because, you know, there's abouta week delay that I found out
(16:23):
about that. I knew I had cancer,but I found out the stage kind
of thing. And then shortly afterthat, you know, the basically on
that call the surgicaloncologists and the radiation
oncologist said, Look, we're notreally in the picture right now.
Because you've just had, youknow, major surgery, and there's
the level of this spread, youknow, there's radiation guys, I
(16:47):
can't, you know, if I were toradiate you that much, and kill
you kind of thing. So, we'rehanding you over for now to the
medical oncologist. And, youknow, we might come back into
the picture at some point, but,you know, and the medical
oncologist, we'd had one meetingwith terrific, a terrific guy,
he explained that in so yeah,it's, it's one thing you learn
about cancer is there'sspecifics to the kind of
(17:10):
mutation you have. And you know,so you have a certain kind of
cancer with a certain markers ofmutation, that means it falls
into this category, and I happento have one that fell into the
category that was, could betreated with a pill that was
pretty, pretty new, like onlyapproved 2018 kind of thing. You
(17:34):
know, he told me, we, you know,we're gonna want to start you on
this pill, but it's quiteexpensive, and how expensive and
he said, Well, for a yearsupply, because you take it
every day, it's it's like$130,000 $130,000 per
Preet Banerjee (17:51):
year.
Darin Diehl (17:51):
Yeah, it's like, we worked it out. It's like 350
bucks a pill. So, here's how itworks. In Ontario, it's an
across Canada, there's, I thinksimilar things, so it's not
covered by Oh, hip. And in manycases, it might not be covered
by your private insurance.
There's campaigns, you know,underway, lung cancer, Canada is
(18:15):
involved with to get them, youknow, covered and under both
those scenarios. But in Canadathat so when you mentioned at
the top there, why don't we getafford to pay this, first of
all, I'm not working. Secondly,and it's not that we wouldn't do
we'd find a way to do it,because it's, you know, a matter
(18:35):
of life or death, or hopefullybuying a number of years that
you might otherwise not havehad. And there's a bunch of
stuff I've learned about itsince but the doctor told us
about the Ontario Trilliumprogram, which is kind of a way
of covering catastrophic drugcosts for people that don't have
insurance. because keep in mind,like, my wife, as you know, is
freelance in the televisionworld and has been for like the
(18:59):
last 20 years or so. And I wasthe guy full time with the
benefits, but now we are bothnot, you know, we are without
our benefits. So we didn't haveour medical benefits anymore,
hadn't moved yet to sort of buy,like Blue Cross or something to
sort of fill in that gap. Youknow, it's still sort of
figuring it out. But I wascovered up till the end of May.
And when my had my heart attackdoes come we'll talk about this
(19:24):
in a minute because I know we'regoing to talk specific products
and what they did for us, but bybut now, you know, there was
nothing so he said yeah, youapply for it, you tell them the
story and the the way it now ofcourse people have different
means can apply for it. And theway they kind of equalize it is
(19:45):
what's the deductible that youpay? So they look at your tax
records from the previous year,and they calculate your
deductible. So the deductiblethat we were sponsible for over
the course of the year, youdidn't have to pay the whole
thing up front, but over thecourse of the year, would have
added up to about $12,000, Ithink the the drug manufacturer
(20:09):
of this specific bourbon drugthat I was taking, they have a
program that knocks a couple1000 off of that, and so on. So
then it was really down to, youknow, imagining that I'd be
taking it for the next year andhopefully longer, but just
looking at it in a year by yearbasis, it was about 10 grand we
had to come up with. And so wehad some, we had some options
(20:35):
for that. And however, I didn'thave to pull the trigger on any
of them because I was visited bymy former boss from my days at
Rogers media. And then I foundout two days later that he and a
few other former colleagues hadstarted a GoFundMe for me, and
which then has two or three daysbasically all ex colleagues from
(20:56):
different jobs. The 10 grand wasamazing. It which was a
wonderful, you know, just feltso uplifting, not just for the
relief of, you know, having themoney to cover it financially.
But just the gesture was sobeautiful. And it was, yeah,
terrific.
Preet Banerjee (21:18):
It's so it's so touching. I'm not surprised. I
mean, you know, you're such agreat guy. And it's no, no
surprise that you've left suchan impression on so many people
that they would do that.
(21:38):
The conversation with Darren docontinues in just a minute, I
want to give a special shout outto Northern bc for not only
leaving a rating and review onApple podcasts, but for also
completing my survey onfinancial advice. And a thank
you to Massimo Moti, foroffering to buy me a whiskey. If
we ever run into each other atperforming one me and my friend,
(22:01):
I will hold you to that. Takingjust 30 seconds out of your day.
And leaving a reading and orreview on Apple podcasts is much
appreciated. And thank you toeveryone who has already left
ratings and reviews. I do readevery single one. And now back
to the conversation with myfriend.
(22:29):
So let's talk about some of thetiming issues. I mean, like, the
timing is just horrible on somany different fronts. So, you
know, you get you get laid offCOVID hits, you have a heart
attack, you get diagnosed withlung cancer, basically straight
after that. And, you know, atwhat point did the shock shift
(22:51):
from, you know, the healthperspective to potentially the
financial perspective? Like Atwhat point? Did you know, did
you get like a sinking thingabout Okay, what does this mean
financially for me? Yeah,
Darin Diehl (23:04):
it's great question. And I don't know,
there was a specific point ofdemarcation for that, it was
more, it started to boil up aseven while I was in the
hospital, because I had beenlaid off in November of 2019.
But I had an exit package, whichyou know, preserved my salary
for a number of months. Andthen, you know, I, through a
(23:24):
lawyer got that extended a bitmore, and it preserved my salary
and some of my benefits. And soI knew that my benefits went up
to at least the end of May,which was May 31. And so the
heart attack was, like thirdweek of May. So that was sort of
covered, but and then I said tomy wife, you know, can you call
(23:49):
because I had critical illnessinsurance, I thought we should
see if, because that could payout and we you know, that we
probably will need that moneybecause I wasn't working. And so
it turned out that we firsttried to apply for it based on
the the easiest thing is the ifyou had a coronary bypass,
that's one of the for heartattack. That's one of the things
(24:12):
that you can apply for. And soyou just need the proof that you
had a coronary bypass. So youneed the surgical notes and all
that is some paperwork we had toget together. But then as it
turned out, you know, the bankand my insurance provider had a
different opinion of what mytechnically last day of coverage
was, as the bad interbank myemployer was saying it was it
(24:35):
was May 31. And the Initially,the insurance advisor said well,
his first day of retirement,because that's what they called
it, you know, was June 1, whichwas the day of my surgery and
technically could be covered.
Long story short, the bank wasright. And my coverage had ended
on the 31st. And so it was like,at the end of the day, we just
had wasted some time. Not itwasn't you know, you may say
(24:57):
hey, Well, they should have paidout anyways, it was a day later.
But you know, there's got to berule somewhere when it covered
Jen. So I wasn't that freakedout about it. Because, you know,
they said, Well, now you whatyou can do is apply for the
heart attack. So then you had toget different evidence. And so
whatever, there's two or threedocuments we had to get
together, and then within amonth, yeah, we were paid out
(25:19):
the money that we had so.
So that so really, it startedthe this, this thinking about
the financial implicationsstarted in while I was in the
hospital, but to your point, itwas more toward the late summer,
when you know, because thedoctor, the surgeon had said,
(25:41):
Well, you can't go back to workanyways, until maybe mid
September, you know, some stepswe taken years ago came into
play. And that's where I think,you know, I wanted to some of
the points I wanted to make withyou on this call today. Our I
found as an educator, a lot ofthe content over the years that
we did, was trying to get peopleto understand the benefit of
(26:04):
actions that they would taketoday that they wouldn't
actually reap the benefits ofpotentially for years and years.
So that's true about, you know,when you're in your 20s and 30s,
about retirement savings, it'strue when you start a family and
you start to add things likehopefully, you know, life life
insurance that you don't, or, orany other kind of, you know,
(26:25):
insurance, there's, there's somany pressing needs when you're
starting out in life and in yourfinancial life with your
partner, you know, buy or rentand you know, the costs around
that and cars and, and othercosts, and then you've got kids
and you've got their educationand their kids. So there's all
this stuff. And somewhere inthere, you still have to be
(26:47):
thinking about one day, ifeverything works out, and you
stay healthy, you're gonna enterretirement and you have to be
taken care of that, I kind ofput all these things that we
should talk about now is like,planned risks that not just me,
but people like yourself andother people that I would run
into. And just generally theindustry that we're in, we're
(27:08):
all about these were known risksthat could be mitigated against,
you can save for retirement, youcan buy different kinds of
insurance, you can do all thesethings, you know, a lot of this,
these factors came in. And soI'll take specifically how so
let's look at disabilityinsurance. If you're a two
person household or two workingperson household, and you both
(27:31):
work for companies that providebenefits, then you know, you're
in pretty good shape. Becauseeven if one of you were to lose
their job for a while you'recovered by the other person's
benefits, and so on and soforth. In our case, I was always
the one, you know, for the lastcouple of decades of the with
the with the benefits, becausemy wife was freelance. So we you
know, that was a important partto keep in mind, I'd been laid
(27:53):
off from other like, over thecourse of my career, you know,
different things happenedcompanies by other companies,
there's mergers, there's up anddowntimes and stuff. So I've
been laid off two previous time,and had gaps in between before I
landed, you know, sometimes itwas a quick transition to the
next job, but sometimes would bea bit of a gap. And a friend of
mine had about 15 or so yearsago had gone through the same
(28:19):
experience. And had decided,after one of those episodes that
he and his wife would purchasesome disability insurance, ex
whatever benefits they he mighthave with his job. So the case,
yeah, in case at some point theywere ever in the situation where
neither of them were hadbenefits. But you know, there
(28:42):
was an illness. And so itprophetically proved to be a
terrific decision. And, youknow, and happened really just I
think if I remember just monthsbefore he was diagnosed with an
aggressive kind of mental andmelanoma, Mike, a friend of
mine, he's still with us todayand having a successful battle
(29:02):
against his cancer doing reallywell but still, you know,
drawing on his disability. So itmade me think that, you know,
this is a something that weshould we should do, because I
don't if it's just one of us,that's has the benefits and fine
young unemployed. So we made thedecision back then to apply for
(29:22):
it. And then to make the claimwe had to wait three months to
post the event of the heartattack and and the cancer
diagnosis and then we made theclaim and was accepted right
away given the situation. So Istarted the fall off with you
know, someand I found myself pre kind of
thanking, you know, my wifecertainly thanked my advisor who
(29:46):
was you know, big part of thedecision to do this but my
friend who you know, had byexample had taught this and, and
even my younger self for my wifeand I for having the you You
know, we made the rightdecision. And of course, I know,
you know this really well,you're, a lot of these things
are like, there's times in ourlife where we're going on and
(30:09):
things are tight right now, youknow, we're paying all this
money, like, you know, to forinsurance products, or, you
know, the premiums every monthor this and that, you know,
because we also had privatehealth insurance outside of our
benefits. And so that's one ofthe, the other lessons for me
was private versus what'sprovided by your benefits. And
the other thing, and, you know,as you know, because I brought
(30:33):
in you into companies that I'veworked out to educate people
about these issues, and we'vewritten content on it, with your
help. Even if you have benefits,it's so important to understand
what they actually are. Andwithin anyone's benefit package,
there's always differentoptions. So do you just take the
(30:54):
base life insurance, or do youpay a bit more to double it up,
in my case, I had made adecision that, you know, the
critical illness insurance,which paid out against, you
know, certain criticalillnesses, including the two
that I had, I but I could onlyapply to one another story. But
anyways, they, they pay it, youknow, part of my package
(31:16):
included one unit of it, so yougot one unit of it, which was
$25,000. And I decided to add topay for like add premium, and
Diggs get a second unit. So ourpayout was, you know, 50,000,
which, but you know, I've hadfriends that have done the same
thing, but they, they topped itup to 100,000. And so yeah,
again, you're, you're sort ofpaying it out more, but to go
(31:41):
back to the pay yourself, firstthing, it comes off your check
you just after a while youoperate life without knowing it,
and so on, having made thedecision, you know, more than 15
years earlier about getting themthe Disability Insurance, that
also helped. And, and withdisability insurance, there's a
couple of different kinds, youknow, there's the kind that we
(32:02):
got, I guess, is the littlelittle better, kind in some ways
called own occupation. So you'reprotected against not being able
to work in your own occupation.
So you know, in other words, youOh, you can't do your normal
job, but you could go, you know,do some other work or work in a
(32:24):
coffee shop, or whatever itmight be. So you're protected
against the your loss to be ableto do your actual line of work.
So that those two things weredefinitely something I was glad
to have. had those decisionscome back and sort of say, wow,
(32:45):
this is the benefit inhindsight. Now, hopefully,
people, you don't want thesethings to happen, in order to
prove the value of the decisionyou made.
Preet Banerjee (32:54):
That is sort of the the perversion deal you're
making with your insuranceprovider, which is, you know,
you win. If you make a claim,you kind of hope that you don't
win, like you hope that you losethat bet. Right. Yeah. Because
that means you have good health.
Darin Diehl (33:07):
Exactly. So, but there's just some things, you
know, it's tough to predict. So
Preet Banerjee (33:15):
how much was in your emergency fund? Or were you
relying on like a line of creditas your emergency fund? No, I
mean, about that.
Darin Diehl (33:25):
Yeah. So with the sort of straight savings account
emergency funds, that's the onethat was would be volatile. So
it would be you know, we borrowagainst it, so to speak, to take
a vacation, or we would borrowagainst the to help with a down
payment for an automobile and soon and so forth. But over time,
and so there were twice, therewas twice in our life, where we
(33:48):
were carrying debt outside ofmortgage that was primarily line
of credit. In both cases, youknow, we tried to, when we were
younger, it took us longer topay that one off, but later, but
we still sort of focused on itand prioritize paying it off.
And then later when we had itagain, you know, if, if, anytime
(34:10):
I would get a bonus, or youknow, some of the other kind of
extra beyond your salaryearnings, but I always look at
that kind of debt first. Andthen and then now, you know,
say, plugged them into savingsand so on and so forth. So, but
we certainly didn't have youknow, you know, so we're talking
(34:33):
about less than $10,000,probably in pure liquid
emergency fund at that time.
Preet Banerjee (34:41):
And, you know, I want to we've talked about this
one I want to come across ascallous to listen when I raised
this question, but, you know,when it comes to your health
diagnoses that you've had, oneof the considerations is that,
you know, your life expectancyis probably not what you thought
it was, you know, 10 years ago,right? Yeah, the trajectory of
(35:02):
your life, you've totally had toreconsider it, including, you
know, quality of life. And, youknow, you've got a certain
amount of financial resourcesthat maybe initially were
planned for, you know, 2030years of retirement, and maybe
you had plans for traveling inretirement, more travel more
aggressively than then you mightdo sooner. And so does the
(35:26):
calculus change in your mind asto, okay, we've got these
resources. And there's a chancethat I could live, you know, a
long time. But I also sort offeel like, you know, I'm on
borrowed time, I have had twocritical illnesses, do you think
about spending some of thatmoney more aggressively today to
(35:46):
sort of take advantage of thetime that you do have while you
are still having the quality oflife so that you could do
certain things,
Darin Diehl (35:54):
you know, all of those questions just flooded
into me in the early fall oflast year, and it and not
because the reason why they cameup was if you look at it, and
like there's a part A, and PartB to the financial conversation
of the Part A was all theimmediate decisions that we had
to make. And, you know, and sowe got the, we had critical
(36:18):
illness insurance, okay, let'sapply for that got that paid out
with disability insurance applyfor that claim was accepted, we
needed to figure out some costmanagement, and so on and so
forth. Now, everybody wasbecause of COVID had people out
of work, or, you know, they wereon serve, or whatever. So, so
this was a common practiceeveryone was participating in,
(36:39):
and we'd made the decision toget rid of one of our cars, and
just be a single car family, andwe were barely using that, you
know, in the COVID, right of theyear. So. So all, you know, that
these sort of practical plan forunderstood about things we're
(37:01):
all being dealt with, in thefirst few months after, then the
sort of, you know, existentialquestions you're getting at,
sort of came up, and but theybecome very real. And it's
bizarre, because you're, you'refacing, you know, sort of like
this, in some ways, sort ofterrifying question. And at, but
(37:21):
even those, eventually roundback to practical decisions that
you have to make, I startedthinking, Well, you know, what,
what am I going to do now?
Should I get a job? Or should Inot, you know, or strike
continue to try to pick up my,my effort to do something
freelance. And, you know, I wastalking to the oncologist and
he's saying, you know, it'sdisappoint, maybe just like, we
(37:44):
don't know where this is goingto go. But you've got your
disability insurance, you know,why don't you just focus on your
health for a bit. And, and, andthat was generally advice I'm
getting from my friends andfamily and so on. But 10, then,
so I thought, so then I thinkabout that, and I think about
well, I'd learned a term that iscommon to people who are under
cancer treatment, and that, youknow, periodically, you have to
(38:06):
go for a scan that measures theprogress or, or hopefully the
reversal of your tumors andeverything. And so you develop
what's called scan xiety anxietyaround the skin. And so leading
up to the end of October, whenthe first one was coming is when
I started thinking about that,and I started thinking about it,
from a very young age, like thesort of like, darkest thoughts
(38:32):
where, you know, I might not behere that long. And so, like,
what do I need to take care of,you know, for my family, in
terms of, you know, so Iactually had were conversations
with my financial advisor, andone of her assistants, I had a
few of those where it was justme on the phone, not Jeanette,
(38:53):
not my wife, or anything, I justdidn't want her to be sort of
hearing some of this. And as Iwas asking sort of thing, so how
do we what do we have to do likeother things, I have to get an
order, what are they? And so andI wasn't a mess, I was as I was,
you know, discussing thesethings. And because I kind of
processed the thought that thethought of it the terror of your
(39:17):
own life ending lot shorter thanyou wanted it to, and then move
on to okay, but what do we dobetween now and whatever, if
it's a number of years that Ican count on one hand that I
have left? According to thestats kind of thing, then I want
to, I'm going to be doing stuffwith Jeanette, I want to, I want
us to go do stuff and you know,it's which was what we were
(39:40):
planning for early retirementyears anyways, but now you're
trying to move it up to yourpoint.
And then, um, but, you know,that's just where the COVID
wrench gets thrown into a tubebecause whatever plans or
thoughts or, or ideas that thatI I wanted to do well, they were
(40:02):
limited as they were foreveryone else in that, like, you
know, so we couldn't take acouple months and go south for
the winter or anything likethat, because of the the
situation. Since then, I've beenhad those, those conversations
have continued. And they,they've kind of come full circle
to the point where in my lastscan that I had in January, it
(40:23):
had some very good news. Andthen it showed a complete
disappearance of a lot of thespots that they initially had
identified as potentiallycancer. And they said, either
the pills cleaned it up, or itwas post surgical scarring on
other or, you know, fluids thatwere in your system, you know,
your chest at the time. And froma money perspective, well, that
(40:46):
then throws the pump for Okay,so I have the risk of not, maybe
not having a lot of, of ofrunway left, but wanting to do a
lot of things which have to fundnow. But then there's also the
risk of the runway being a lotlonger than I thought it's and
it's as long as what it mighthave been otherwise. In which
(41:08):
case, you know, the longevityrisk is there again. It's like,
I got going, at some point, it'sactually amusing to me, because
these are, these are things andtopics that I've written about
disgust about and, or whatever.
And it's always beentheoretical. And here I am
living these these very realdecisions, not that other people
haven't lived them before me,I'm not the first person, but
(41:30):
there is certainly a change inperspective from being the
person that in the past, I wouldhave interviewed, right?
Preet Banerjee (41:39):
No, no, I totally get I mean, so many, so
many of these financialdecisions we make, they are so
abstract, because we're just notconnected to these future
potential realities. I mean,you've seen the studies that
that show you that you asksomeone how much they want to
save for retirement, they'll sayx, you then show them a
rendering of what they will looklike when they're 70. And then
(42:01):
ask them how much you want tosave for retirement, they'll
say, well, it's greater than x,right. And so the more or I
guess, the more concrete andless abstract you can make those
those future realities, the morereal they get, and they affect
the decisions that we make. Butfor the most part, people do
sort of look at these as moreabstract decisions, they Well, I
know, the right thing to do isto, you know, make sure that
(42:24):
have proper disabilityinsurance, and to save for
retirement. But you know, you,the gravity of that becomes
heavier as those thingsapproach. And when you have
these other realities that getthrust upon you, it just
completely turns your worldupside down.
Darin Diehl (42:43):
Yeah, that's a very accurate description. Because,
you know, at the end of the day,you're having to have these
human conversations with, youknow, your spouse, and your
children or adult, my case, myadult children about these
different possibilities. Andthen, you know, you get to a
point where you don't want thatto be your everyday life, you
know, you want to just sort ofsee people and visit and enjoy
(43:06):
people and stuff. But, you know,I, it's, it's, once you get
past, the terror, which is goingto be there initially, it's just
so odd how quickly you flip theswitch over to logical thinking
again, and it comes into play.
And you you start sortingthrough actual decisions, you
have to make that have apractical implication, on, on on
(43:29):
money and your lifestyle,everything else. But, you know,
it can be and I can get, youknow, if you're the person who's
gone through the you might be ina situation where you're at a
point where you can talk aboutthose things sooner than you
know, maybe your close friendsand your family are comfortable
(43:51):
talking about them with you.
And, you know, I've like, I'vebeen on walks with a friend or
where, you know, I blurted out,well, you know, I might be here
in a couple years, and blah,blah, and I'm just sort of
dropped that as a little phrase.
And I realizing, thinking aboutit from the other person's
perspective. I say, Man, don'tsay that, what the hell, they
(44:13):
don't want to hear that. Like,and it's like so one of the most
helpful pieces of advice I gotwas from a friend of a friend
boat, and both the friend andthis friend of the friend are
both financial services, people,education, people, and so on.
And this sunlight, the friend inbetween introduced the two of us
(44:36):
and this lady had a chat withme. She's got lung cancer, the
same kind I have, and she gaveme some advice to pop to follow
a couple of patient supportgroups that are on like
Facebook, and they're there. Theincredible thing Preet is that
there's these groups, andthey're actually specific, not
(44:58):
To the kind of cancer you have,but right down to the kind of
mutation you have, and then thepill that you're on. So I'm in
one of those groups, whereeveryone has the exact same lung
cancer, the exact same submutation, and then they're on
the exact same medication. Andso you're in that group, and
you're talking. Now, a lot ofthe discussion is, Hey, does
(45:18):
anyone have, you know, this sideeffect, you know, or, or
something, but there's alsopeople that are sort of saying,
you know, last night, I talkedto my family about X or Y, and,
you know, I realized, onemistake I've been making is, you
know, I need to lay thegroundwork a little sooner as to
what we're going to be talkingabout. So people are prepared,
you know, it's like, realpractical advice about how you,
you know, deal with your friendsand family and about these
(45:42):
topics. But I, I don't want togive the impression that I'm
constantly just thinking aboutthe financial aspect of it, it's
just that your life and, and isso tied to money decisions
throughout it, as you know, Imean, you've dedicated your life
to educating people about this,that, yeah, and when it moves
(46:03):
from the theoretical to thehighly, highly personal, it,
it's a very, very differentfeeling.
Preet Banerjee (46:14):
I remember back when I was an advisor, and I was
insurance licensed. And Iremember a senior advisor in the
office, he took me sign, hesaid, you know, you really need
to think about insurance and therole that it plays in financial
planning, and risk mitigation,it's key, and he said, you know,
(46:37):
most advisors don't reallybecome true advisors until they
have to deliver like a deathbenefit check. And so one of
their clients, you know, passesaway, and, you know, they had
insurance in place, they deliverthat check, and they see the
impact of that the person whodied doesn't, but, you know,
(46:58):
hopefully, they had at leastthat peace of mind, knowing that
they had that coverage. But, youknow, especially when it's
unexpected. And he said, youknow, if you take a look at all
the advisors, and planners outthere who have had a client have
a critical illness, a death adisability, and then there was
some plan in place that adviseit, that's when they become
(47:20):
really like an advisor orplanner, that's when it's kind
of like Neo, you know, all of asudden, he sees the matrix.
Yeah. It's like that, that, thatthat moment, and that does feel
moment. Yeah, it doesn't justhappen just by thinking about
it, something has to happen toyou, for you to see the world in
a different way, kind of like,you know, what you've described.
But I think the last thing thatI wanted to leave off on is, you
(47:46):
know, you've shared a lot ofadvice for people, you know, the
takeaways and because you are,you know, a financial educator
yourself, you know, what is sortof the advice that you have for
any role, whether it's planners,individuals, what do you want
people to take away from yoursharing this story?
Darin Diehl (48:09):
Yeah, I think, um, I guess there's, you know, I've
wrestled with that, because Ipeople, some have asked me that
question, not quite the wayyou've asked it, but they've
said, you know, what's your,your biggest takeaway over the
last, you know, several months,even three quarters of the year
now. And it's, I think it boilsdown to two different things
(48:33):
from a, sort of, from a sort ofpurely sort of financial
education side point. It's like,I remember, a friend of mine,
who was more of a pure marketerat once said to me, you know, we
work in a category that that's alow interest category, and I
(48:54):
said, Well, what do you mean bythat? But, well, you know, it's
like, we were in theentertainment industry or
whatever, whatever, you know,it's not hard to get people's
attention because they're, thisis what they're craving. But
it's, it's remarkably Noteveryone gets up every morning
and because, gee, I really wantto get educated about actuarial
tables. Not that you have to gothat far. But it's, it's, it's
(49:21):
so it's a low it, there's a andit's not people think there's a
binary choice between beingcompletely uneducated, and
becoming a financial expert. Andit's not it's just a path. It's
a path that you walk down. Andit doesn't mean you you're not
going to use professionaladvice. You know, if that's what
(49:41):
you want. The bigger problem ispeople you know, wondering if
they should use professionaladvice and see if they'd if they
do they think they now have theycan shut off their education.
Sounds great. Oh, I havesomebody takes care of that. The
bank takes care of that. Mybroker takes care of that. You
know, my financial planner or myaccountant, and never surrender
(50:04):
to any professional no matterdoesn't nothing to do with their
integrity, it has to do withyour own understanding of the
decisions you have to make neversurrendering and any of your
decision making and your yourability to learn about these
things. And so that's what I'vetried to put, you know, instill
on my own kids. You know, one ofyour sort of colleagues in the,
(50:27):
in the industry, Kelly Keanwrote a book a couple years ago,
that I understand she justupdated with some COVID stuff.
Preet Banerjee (50:33):
Yeah, I think it's called talk money to me.
Darin Diehl (50:35):
Yes.
Preet Banerjee (50:36):
So it's a new COVID updated edition, which I
think just launched onWednesday, yeah, the
Darin Diehl (50:42):
24th. But the original version, a couple
Christmases ago, I basicallybought all three of my kids a
copy, and I said, read thisbook. And when you've completed
reading it, I'm going to giveyou you know, X number of
dollars. So it was a, it was ait was an incentive type deal.
But one of them, you know, hadcompleted it within a couple
(51:04):
months, the other one a fewmonths later, and the other one
took her more a year. But thepoint is, it was, this isn't, no
one's saying you have to go getyour MBA in financial services.
But, you know, the more youunderstand the basics, and, and
that means, and, as you know,the most frustrating thing is
(51:26):
that people will have a benefitspackage of work that they don't
really look at. And then theydon't understand, for instance,
the RSP matching, and, and sothey are literally leaving money
on the table, which is theexpression that we used in the
industry to sort of talk don'tleave money on the table. So you
mean, so you know, that you'vegot to lower your zero to
(51:48):
include you pay every penny ofroom that you have, that gets
matched. And then from there andplan your your spending. So so
there's so so oddly, what thatit's that lesson of living
beneath your means, which is thethe so that you have some
flexibility to to do riskmitigation, savings, and, and so
(52:11):
on and planning. So that's thatthat was sort of one I was just
thankful for that I'd gotteninto that strategy. And again, I
told you before, I'm not greatat budgeting, so I didn't we, we
pay yourself first instead,right, as a way of forced
budgeting. But then on the sortof more sort of broader view,
(52:32):
when you think, you know, lifeand everything. I think it boils
down to this, I've kind of madethis point that if my existence
is going to be a lot shorterthan I'd hoped. And I believe
me, I totally have hoped that itwon't be and there's reason,
actual, medical reasons tobelieve that, you know, it could
(52:54):
be much better than it initiallyappeared that it might be. One
should live one's life With thatin mind, and I want to live my
life, you know, by and I ifyou've asked me what the biggest
takeaways, I've embracedgratefulness in a way like I
haven't done for a long, longtime I am so I get so much joy
(53:18):
just for taking my dog on onseven or 8k walk down a, you
know, a Creek Park, inMississauga, and, and, you know,
it's just, there's joy in thatthere's joy and just spending
some time with my family. Andwe've all had to endure this
(53:40):
crazy year, that stressed andcaused us a grief in different
ways. And for some people losingloved ones as part of the grief.
But it is, you know, I would sayif people could embrace like, a
gratefulness and then also anunderstanding of man every day
(54:02):
is a gift. And it doesn't meanthat, you know, you have to
climb a mountain every day or beon a beach every day. But you
know, you still if you couldlook at it. And I recognize even
when I say that every day is agift that there are times in my
life when I heard that messageto and my thought I understood
(54:25):
it and I, you know, openlyagreed with the person making
that point and Carpe Diem andeverything, but I guess there's,
as we've mentioned a few timesin this conversation, there's a
level of this is so real for menow. That it just drives it
home, but that that, you know,from a life perspective point of
(54:47):
view, that would be the thingthat I take away from this and I
tried other people to, to, tobenefit them by by espousing
that point of view.
Preet Banerjee (54:59):
Yeah, and I think, to your first point, I
think something that has kind ofstruck me as you were talking
about, you know, having benefitsat work. And, you know, your
sort of generation having gonethrough a couple of layoffs
before. And they take a look atthe world around me now, and how
there has been a shift where theliability has been shifted
(55:22):
towards the worker from thecompany in terms of benefits, as
we have the gig economy, a lotof people who are self employed
or working on contract, and theyalso may not sort of take a look
at what the value of benefitsare at, you know, some of the
bigger sort of legacy companies.
And so, you know, this, this iskind of a blind spot for a lot
(55:46):
of people, and they don't evenhave benefit coverage, whether
it's private or through work.
And I think that's somethingespecially for people who are
more, you know, self employed.
And again, is that liability hasbeen sort of shifted on to the
individual is really somethingpeople need to take into
account. I see a lot of peoplewho are self employed who don't
(56:06):
have disability insurance, andyou know, it's the first thing
I'll tell them, You need to getdisability insurance, if you're
self employed, or if you're, youknow, working for a company and
they don't have the appropriatelevel of coverage, you can get
it piggyback plan, you can topup and it picks up where that
one leaves off. But you know, Iwant to say Darren, you're a
(56:27):
great friend. And I'm glad tohear the latest round of news
you had told me about that. Thatsort of the the recent progress
updates, so I'm really glad tohear that and I look forward to
you know, swinging by when whenthe pandemic is, yeah.
Unknown (56:51):
Grab it out. I'm
Preet Banerjee (56:52):
gonna drive over to daddy's donuts pick up a box
of doughnuts and head on over.
I'm only gonna let you have onebecause I guess
Darin Diehl (57:02):
yeah, this for a downtown trip for me to meet
you. It would probably requireus grabbing lunch at the
senator.
Preet Banerjee (57:12):
rates. Yes, yeah. Can you do that anytime,
Darin Diehl (57:15):
when that can happen again.
Preet Banerjee (57:18):
All right. Well, we'll leave it there. Thank you
so much for coming on thepodcast to share your story. I
know a lot of people will willbenefit from it. So so thank you
so much.
Darin Diehl (57:28):
Thank you every day is a gift.
Preet Banerjee (57:36):
If you want more personal finance content, or you
have questions for me or topicsuggestions for the podcast, you
can follow me on Twitter orInstagram, same handle in both
cases at Preet Banerjee, I alsohave two YouTube channels, you
can subscribe to my main channelwhich covers personal finance
and investing topics that areglobal in scope, and a Canadian
(57:57):
specific channel as well. That'sit for this episode. Thank you
for listening.
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