How Cancer Reshaped My Relationship with Money
Cancer didn't change everything overnight. It was quieter than that.
In movies, a cancer diagnosis always comes with some big moment of clarity. The patient stares out the window, soft music plays, and suddenly they understand what really matters in life. They book a trip to Italy. They quit their job. They cry and laugh and donate all their savings to charity.
That was not my experience.
When you are in active treatment, you are often too tired and too sick to reflect on the meaning of anything. Some days were so hard that my brain had zero capacity left for existential thinking. I was just trying to get through the week. The deep thoughts came later, slowly, in the quieter moments between appointments.
One of those thoughts was about money.
Before I go further: I'm not writing this from a place of financial comfort. I'm a normal person with a normal salary living in an expensive city. I budget carefully because I have to. I have a mortgage and it's a real weight. I'm not rich, I'm not even particularly comfortable. But I stopped obsessing over paying down debt as fast as possible, because I realized I was sacrificing the present for a future I wasn't even sure would look the way I imagined. This post is just my personal reflection, not advice.
The assumption buried in all financial advice
Most standard financial advice is built on one quiet assumption: that you will be healthy and functional long enough to enjoy the future you're saving for.
Invest now, enjoy later. Delay the nice holiday, wait for retirement. Suffer a little today for the bigger reward tomorrow.
I used to find that reasonable. Now I find it a bit naive.
Not because saving is wrong. Saving is fine. But the version of "save everything, enjoy nothing until later" stopped making sense to me once I understood, in a very personal way, that later is not guaranteed. And even if later comes, the version of you that arrives there might not be able to enjoy it the same way.
My grandmother is living proof of this. She spent her whole life being careful with money, saving, not spending on herself, putting things off for later. She is now in her nineties. She has the money. But she doesn't even remember anymore. Cognitive decline took that from her before she ever got the chance to enjoy what she saved. The window didn't just close. It disappeared entirely.
I think about her a lot when I make financial decisions now.
What actually changed for me
My shift wasn't dramatic. I didn't suddenly become reckless with money. I still save. I still think before I spend. I'm not interested in buying things I don't need or going into debt for the sake of "living in the moment."
But some things changed quietly.
I travel more now. Within my actual budget, not borrowed money, but I stopped treating travel as a reward I had to earn first. If I want to go somewhere and I can afford it, I go. Life is short. My body is not guaranteed to be this functional forever. I know that now in a way I didn't before.
I spend more on experiences I used to think were too expensive. Concerts. Musicals. A nice dinner. Before, I would look at the ticket price and think "that's a lot for one evening." Now I think "that's one evening I will actually remember." The calculus changed.
I spend more on good food. This sounds small but it isn't. Eating well, cooking things I enjoy, not just the cheapest option every single time. My body went through a lot. Feeding it well feels like the least I can do.
And I'm more generous with my family. More willing to pay for things, to treat people I love, to not overthink the cost when it comes to the people who matter.
It's not about spending more. It's about spending intentionally.
I think the version of financial wisdom I'm describing gets misread sometimes as "just spend everything, you might die anyway." That's not it.
It's more like: I now have a clearer sense of what money is actually for. It's not a score to maximize. It's not something to hoard until some hypothetical perfect future. It's a tool, and like any tool, it's only useful if you actually use it.
I still have savings. I still think about the future. I just stopped treating enjoyment as the thing I have to earn after all the responsible boxes are checked. Sometimes the concert is the responsible choice. Sometimes the trip is exactly the right use of money. Because experiences have an expiration date too, and it's tied to your health, your energy, and the people you'd share them with.
The suffering-now-for-later approach only makes sense if you're confident about what later looks like. I'm not. And I'm not sure anyone really is.
What I'd say to someone newly diagnosed
I wouldn't give financial advice. That's not my place and I'm genuinely not qualified.
But I would say: give yourself permission to spend on things that make your life feel worth living right now. Not recklessly. Not stupidly. But without the guilt that comes from the idea that you should always be sacrificing today for tomorrow.
Today is also your life. It counts too.
Has a big life moment ever changed how you think about money? I'm curious whether this resonates, or whether you see it completely differently.
Source: How Cancer Reshaped My Relationship with Money
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