A high salary can feel like a safety net, until it actually isn’t.Today, many of us run behind keeping up with SIPs, EMIs, and having a polished lifestyle that looks presentable from the outside, and amid all of this, we assume that we are financially secure, but amid maintaining all of this and trying to make ends meet, we often forget that the true wealth and jewel is our health.And that ‘polished lifestyle’ illusion cracked for a Bengaluru techie earning ₹1.8 lakh a month, who recently opened up on Reddit about the night a family medical emergency exposed just how fragile his finances really were.
Bengaluru techie earning a decent package comes face to face with life when a health crisis struck suddenly
The man wasn’t reckless with money; he had a steady job and disciplined monthly investments. On paper, he was doing everything right. But when his father was rushed to the ICU and the hospital demanded a hefty deposit upfront, none of that mattered. His money was tied up, his credit card was maxed out, and his savings account had barely enough to cover a week’s groceries, let alone a medical crisis.According to the Reddit post, titled “I was living like a fake rich techie making ₹1.8L/month, until an ICU emergency exposed how broke I actually was,” the user said that two years ago, he genuinely believed he had his finances figured out. He lived in a gated community in Bengaluru and invested ₹80,000 every month through SIPs, convinced by all this, he thought he is financially “crushing it.”That confidence collapsed the night his father collapsed and was rushed to a hospital. As he wrote in the post, “The hospital demanded a ₹2.5L deposit upfront for the ICU.” It was a number he simply didn’t have sitting in his bank account, despite his income and investments.Read Reddit post here:I was living like a fake rich techie making ₹1.8L/month, until an ICU emergency exposed how broke I actually was.byu/markettmind inIndiaFinance
He realised money on paper isn’t money in hand
The techie explained that his primary credit card was already maxed out, having recently used it to buy a laptop, while his savings account held only about ₹32,000. His mutual fund investments, the ones he’d been so proud of, couldn’t help him either.The mutual funds he had been so proud of turned out to be of no use in the moment. Redeeming them takes time, and on top of that, there were delays because of the third-party administrator (TPA) involved. So even though he technically had money, none of it was actually reachable when he needed it most at hand.What came next was more stressful than what we would imagine. According to his post, “I spent 1:30 AM frantically calling distant relatives to borrow cash via UPI while sitting in a cold hospital hallway.” he then continued, “Earning a high salary meant nothing when I had zero liquid cash.”
Redditors weigh in with their responses
The post has been going viral since and has received a wave of responses from users online. One Reddit user wrote, “Usually people build emergency funds before investing the money anywhere. Your 6 months of living expenses should be in your emergency fund, which should grow as your income, expenses, and family grow… This is like ABC-level basics of finance. Still, young earners miss it, including me.”Another user was more direct about the numbers themselves, writing, “sorry you had to go through this. But an 80k monthly SIP with just 32k in savings is not a practical investment decision. Always keep at least 3 months of salary as savings.”A third commenter suggested professional help going forward: “bro after everything goes normal, book a session with some good financial advisor to manage your funds.” Meanwhile, another Reddit user concluded, “High income doesn’t mean financial security. Always keep a decent emergency fund liquid, even if it slows down my SIPs a bit.”
