Income Protection: Why GoFundMe Is Not a Plan for Your Wealth and Legacy

GoFundMe is not a plan. That line came out of my guest's mouth months before we ever sat down to record, and it stuck with me enough that I called her the same day to book a consultation.

This episode of Business Therapy™ was a first for me too, my first in-person interview, recorded right here in my studio with someone I already count as a friend before a guest: Pacha Badibanga, founder and CEO of Afya Legacy Builders and a financial literacy expert with a background in nursing.

From the Hospital Floor to the Financial Foundation

Pacha didn't start out in finance. Years spent teaching and leading in healthcare taught her something most financial advice skips over: life can change in seconds and most safety nets aren't built to survive that. Watching patients lose everything to illness, long before it ever touched a savings account, is part of what pulled her toward wealth building. She saw firsthand how quickly a stable life can unravel once income stops and how few people have anything in place when that happens.

Investing Comes Last, Not First

Most of us learned the same order: get a job, open a 401k, start investing. Pacha sees it differently, describing a financial version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, with health and basic needs at the base, protection next and investing sitting at the very top.

When people invest before protecting their income, illness, disability or death can undo everything sitting on top of a foundation that was never built. She's watched people grow retirement accounts for years, only to have to drain them the moment their income actually stops.

Where Money Sits: Tax-Now, Tax-Later, Tax-Advantage

Pacha broke money down into three baskets. Tax-now is income already taxed and simply saved. Tax-later covers accounts like a 401k or 403b, where the tax bill waits until withdrawal. Tax-advantage is where tax-free growth lives, in places like a Roth IRA or cash-value life insurance.

None of these, on their own, answer the question she asks clients to sit with: if illness hit today, which account would actually pay you? Most people, she's found, have never stopped to ask that question at all.

Income Protection: The Piece Easy to Miss

Health insurance covers medical bills, not the mortgage, the car payment or groceries while too sick to work. Pacha calls that gap income protection, a life insurance policy with living benefits that pays out while still alive if serious illness, disability or long-term care needs interrupt the ability to earn. It functions like any other account, something paid into monthly, except this one is designed to show up exactly when everything else is at risk of falling apart.

Why the GoFundMe Line Stuck With Me

Nobody starts a GoFundMe for a birthday or a vacation. It's almost always sickness or death. If getting sick is more of a when than an if, leaning on a crisis fundraiser in the moment starts to feel less like a plan and more like a last resort, one that also asks people to make their hardest moments public in order to get help.

Probate and the Cost of Not Planning

Pacha shared that when someone passes, many accounts lock immediately, moving through probate court for months or even years, all while family covers funeral costs that typically run eighteen to twenty thousand dollars, with almost no charity safety net beyond cremation.

She opened up about burying her own grandmother without a plan in place, describing those frantic first hours of making calls and choosing a funeral home while barely having room to grieve and how that experience shaped the business she eventually built.

Priorities, Not Affordability

People tell Pacha their plate is too full to add another expense, yet won't blink at a five or six hundred dollar event ticket. She talked about catching herself the same way once, pausing in a mall to ask what a purchase was really adding to her life. Her gentle nudge: look around at the last few things purchased and notice what they've actually contributed. It's less about whether the money exists and more about where it's quietly going instead.

Build What Matters

These are the kinds of conversations explored inside Business Therapy™, where business, money and mindset meet. Feel free to learn more or book a consultation at www.jokedurojaiye.me

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About the Author: Joké Durojaiye is a Life Coach, Business Therapist™, and author of UNMUTE YOURSELF. She helps creative women entrepreneurs separate the math from the drama so they can develop the leadership, clarity, and emotional capacity required to build sustainable businesses. Learn more at jokedurojaiye.me