23. You lend money to your sketchy cousin, and it seems he’s even sketchier than you thought.
24. Your 20-something kid gets seriously ill—and hadn’t bothered to buy health insurance.
25. It’s been years and your cash-value life insurance still doesn’t have much cash value.
26. Self-employment proves to be a bust.
27. Your life’s savings went into rental properties—and the properties attracted a string of deadbeat tenants.
28. Your child has a medical condition that means she’ll always need financial support.
29. The U.S. electrical grid is hacked.
30. Your new boss takes an instant dislike to you.
31. We discover the economy won’t function if everybody keeps retiring at 62.
32. You become a grandparent—when your daughter is 15.
33. You belatedly find out about your spouse’s gambling addiction.
34. U.S. stock prices don’t just plunge. They also stay down for three decades —just like Japan’s.
35. Your elderly parents are scammed out of the inheritance you were counting on.
36. The biggest local employer collapses—and so do local property prices.
37. Your father leaves everything to his children , which is when you learn you have three half-siblings.
38. Vanguard Group decides to become a for-profit company.
39. Medicare’s funding problems finally catch up with it.
40. Your brokerage firm has a massive computer failure —and all account records are obliterated.
41. It turns out Treasurys aren’t the world’s safest investment.
42. Your kid takes out hefty college loans—but never graduates.
43. The index-fund naysayers turn out to be right.
44. Termites, cockroaches and mice.
45. Your 10-year-old likes to cook—when nobody else is at home.
46. You should have invested in canned goods.
47. Your employer finds out about that thing you did in high school.
48. Deflation.
49. Your neighbors tear down their house and build a monstrosity.
50. That gloom-and-doom financial prophet who’s been getting it wrong for decades? He’s finally right.
This column originally appeared on Humble Dollar. It was republished with permission .
