Best thing you can do to protect yourself from bad events like health issues is to have a cushion of cash! The strategy is the same: spend less, so you can save more money.

You can't protect yourself from bad events like health issues with a cushion of cash. I mean not unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank. My son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at 19 months old (4+ years ago) and with what we spend on hospital, health insurance, supplies, etc we could buy a new Toyota Camry every single year. Let that sink in for a minute. I have been a contractor for quite a while so we've been able to weather it, but if I was making a 'normal' salary (I'm in the Southeast US) we'd be drowning in credit card bills to pay for our son's care.