Avoiding A GoFundMe

where I take on crowd-sourced safety nets

I see it often - the online community rallies around someone’s GoFundMe in the wake of a disaster, with people celebrating our collective kindness as we join in support. In reality, GoFundMe exposes a hollowness at the core of the health industry.

These campaigns pop up constantly—for car crashes, ungodly healthcare costs, battles with major illness, unexpected deaths, urgent shelter needs, breakdowns in mental well-being, and more. In reality, no corner of this world escapes a tragedy.

CrowdFundMe

Crowdfunding works because it’s practical. It’s quick and easy to launch, easy for anyone to join, and it celebrates the heartwarming side of our shared spirit.

As a bonus, during emergencies, these efforts can provide relief almost immediately—a speed that traditional structures (insurance claims, financial aid organizations, community safety nets, etc) rarely match.

And hey - GoFundMe is a digital feel-good. It feels good to chip in and help a friend in need, and to see your name on the scoreboard for doing so.

Bluntly

When these pleas for donations turn into our go-to lifeline, they shift from emblems of solidarity to stark indicators of a lack of proper safeguards.

Turning to crowd-sourced aid for hospital stays, health crises, and devastating setbacks isn’t a badge of resilience—it’s a glaring reminder that those grinding through life often don’t have those safeguards and foundational security intact.

GoFundMe, while being a handy resource, is not:

• Transferable job benefits

• A Comprehensive medical plan

• Single-payer healthcare

• Long-term disability aid

• On-the-job injury compensation

• Counseling for emotional struggles

• A replacement for a pension/retirement account

• A robust framework of protection

• A supplement or replacememt for life insurance

It patches the void solely because the void was left unfilled - possibly a lack of good or proper insurance, a lack of savings or emergency funds, a lack of planning, a lack of initiative, or possibly even a lack of caring until it came time to care (that’s always a tough pill to swallow).

Choices

But what are these safeguards, and where are they? Are they accessible? Are they affordable? Well… that’s where it gets difficult.

• Health Insurance: That’s a tough one. A brutal one. Obama gutted - absolutely gutted - the health insurance industry. After his “Affordable Healthcare Act”, the cost of insurance has skyrocketed, and to find an affordable plan often means exposing yourself to extremely high deductibles. That being said, you need health insurance, and whatever that deductible is, it needs to be held in savings. That way, you’re not on GoFundMe looking for 5 grand to cover an ER visit when your golf partner DUI’s the golf cart off the cart path.

• Emergency Fund: These sound easy on paper, but are hard to implement. Every time your kid needs to sign up for a travel baseball season, or a trip to 30A gets proposed, it usually means another hit to the emergency fund. Those are not emergencies. They may well be expenses you cannot afford and thus must do without. I advocate one year of expenses in your emergency fund, held in liquid cash (a Money Market Fund). This money sits there, untouched. Yes, it is tantalizing, yes, that money is tempting to dip into and “borrow from it”. Don’t. Doing so ensures you won’t be on GoFundMe looking for 10k when you drive your Tesla off into a ditch while you’re Gramming from the Pensacola Bay Bridge.

• Disability Insurance: If you cannot survive without working, then you need disability insurance. If you are mortgaged out your ass with multiple car payments, student loans, credit cards, and a home equity line of credit, then you need disability insurance. If, for some reason, you are unable to work, you need to be able to continue to fund the lifestyle you signed up for. This way, you won’t be on GoFundMe looking for 25 G’s because you lost your strumming hand in a leafblower accident.

• Retirement Account: You need to be saving at least 15% of your income for retirement. Probably more. With another 15% going to taxes as well, this means you will be living on less than you make. Carry that “less than you make” idea into your monthly budget and spending plan as well. That way, when you’re 70 and you’re bones are cracking, you’re not on GoFundMe looking for a payout to buy a rocking chair, Advil, and a bed at Sunny Acres Farm.

• A Healthy Lifestyle: Face it. For my music business friends, living in recording studios or tour buses is a death sentence. Office life, where your time is occupied sitting behind a desk, is no different. Sedentary lifestyles, a lack of healthy food options, avoidance of sunlight, booze, drugs, and sleep deprivation - life will come at you fast. Trust me, I found out the hard way while lying in the ER, blind in one eye and numb in various parts of my body from a high blood pressure-induced stroke. Get healthy. Doing so gives you a chance at avoiding a GoFundMe where you’re calling a 4-chamber heart attack a “warning sign” when the real warning sign was a “3” as the first number on your bathroom scale.

Other Pitfalls

• Not every sob story breaks even, let alone goes viral. Success hinges on your network’s size, your social media game, your “relatability” factor, and even your demographics. This turns GoFundMe into a popularity contest, not a meritocracy.

• GoFundMe skims 2.9% + $0.30 per donation (plus payment processor cuts). Furthermore, GoFundMe funds can count as taxable income unless it’s a pure gift from strangers (rare in tight-knit circles). Creators eat setup costs too, and failed campaigns leave you with zilch after the hassle.

• Airing your trauma (a cancer diagnosis, extreme accident, deadbeat ex) for donations invites vultures—gawkers, trolls, exes dredging up dirt, or industry whispers about your “stability” may appear. Add to that the post-campaign crash: gratitude fatigue, resentment if it flops, or survivor’s guilt if it succeeds but your buddy’s didn’t.

• Multiple GoFundMes can breed fatigue. We pat ourselves on the back for that $50 Venmo to the professional djembe player with pneumonia—until it’s his fifth bout with pneumonia this year. At that point, your wallet starts whispering ‘pass.’ GoFundMe can become the group chat that started as a lifeline but turns into spam: everyone’s muted, but the notifications keep on coming.

Single Payer Reality

There’s some hypocrisy in conservative circles where the mantra is to fight vehemently against single-payer healthcare (government-funded healthcare by way of taxation). Yet here are, with GoFundMe as our own twisted version of “single-payer healthcare.” We’re not innovating; we’re cosplaying a safety net with spare change and pity likes.

Real single-payer? Picture this: universal coverage, no premiums eating away at your budget, no deductibles draining your emergency fund, and no freelance blackouts because you switched gigs mid-year. It’s funded by taxes we already pay (just smarter), untethered from employers who want to treat benefits like a participation trophy.

No more “I make too much for Medicaid but too little for the gold plan” limbo. In a single-payer world, your leafblower-induced hand-mangling doesn’t bankrupt you or turn your source for food into a digital tin cup.

Until then, yeah, keep sharing those GoFundMe links... but let’s stop pretending it’s progress.

What Goes Around

I’m sure my take may disqualify my GoFundMe should I crash my racecar into a wall and lose both my legs. I hope not, as I am a strong believer in the principle of “what goes around comes around.” Lord knows I’ve contributed to enough fundraisers to raise up some karma for myself. I even quit my job to start a non-profit aimed at helping those in need.

The intent here is not to disparage those using GoFundMe, but to get us thinking differently. Good things can happen when we start thinking differently - especially when our current thinking is not really working for us.

Methodically irreverent,

Todd