It’s that time of year again, when it seems like everyone around you is getting sick with the flu. Your coworkers are calling in sick. Your friends are canceling plans. And it seems that everyone you walk past on the street is either coughing into their sleeves or sniffling into crumpled tissues.
The flu is not something that you want to catch. In some cases, flu symptoms can be severe and require hospitalization. But even if you try your best to avoid the virus, you might still catch it and find yourself recovering in bed for several days.
To make sure that you’re prepared for the flu, you should take these steps as soon as possible:
Get Your Flu Shot
One of the best things that you can do to prepare for the flu season this year is to get the influenza vaccine. The influenza vaccine can increase your immunity from the flu for the remainder of the season. So, you’ll be less likely to catch the virus than someone who hasn’t gotten the vaccine, and if you do happen to get the flu, your symptoms will be less severe.
Stock Your Medicine Cabinet
When you’re really sick, you don’t want to take multiple trips to the nearest pharmacy to get medicines to soothe your symptoms. Save yourself the trouble by stocking your medicine cabinet with those medicines ahead of time.
What should you get?
- Pain relievers (acetaminophen is particularly good for pain and fever relief)
- Decongestants
- Nasal sprays
- Cough drops
If you get the flu, you just have to shuffle to the bathroom and open your medicine cabinet to get the remedies that you need.
Get Some Groceries
Your medicine cabinet isn’t the only cabinet that you should be stocking at the beginning of flu season. You should also be stocking your kitchen cabinets. Why? You won’t bein any condition to go grocery shopping or cook a wholesome dinner when you’re sick with the flu. So, you’ll want to have some simple staples in your cabinets that you can pull out when you’re feeling terrible. This includes cans of chicken noodle soup, boxes of soda crackers and packets of herbal teas.
Set Aside Some Savings
Do you have an emergency fund? You should. An emergency fund can help you manage urgent, unplanned expenses that are outside of your usual budget. These urgent expenses can include sudden prescription medications that aren’t completely covered by your insurance plan. When you get really sick and your doctor prescribes you a medicine that you didn’t anticipate needing, you can pay for it out of pocket by making a withdrawal from your emergency fund.
If you don’t have an emergency fund, you could use your flexible spending account (FSA) to help you pay for sudden prescription costs. An FSA allows you to use your reserved savings for eligible health-related expenses. So, while you can’t use this safety net for all emergencies, you’ll at least be able to use it to pay for medicines (both prescription and over-the-counter options).
And what if you don’t have enough savings for emergencies? In that case, you may want to borrow funds to make the payment in a short amount of time. You could do this by applying for a personal line of credit online. A personal line of credit is a form of revolving credit that is particularly handy for emergencies. You can request a withdrawal within your credit limit and then use the withdrawal to cover an urgent expense in a short amount of time. Afterward, you can make repayments and replenish the line of credit.
It’s possible that you’ll get through flu season completely unscathed. But you can’t be sure of this. So, take these preparations so that you’ll be ready to rest and recover from the flu.
