What Can Ruin the Plan

Most financial plans are built from averages. Ruin arrives through combinations.

A market decline is manageable until income disappears at the same time. A business setback is recoverable until personal guarantees convert it into household debt. A crypto position is tolerable until the custodian fails and legal ownership becomes uncertain.

Protection begins with a ruin register.

List events under six headings:

Income — illness, disability, redundancy, client concentration or loss of work authorisation.
Liability — damage to another person, professional error, contractual guarantee or business debt.
Health and accident — deductibles, uncovered treatment, interrupted earnings and rehabilitation.
Counterparty — bank, broker, platform, insurer, custodian, tenant, employer or business partner failure.
Concentration — one employer, one company, one property, one currency or one person responsible for every financial task.
Access — lost passwords, missing documents, death or incapacity leaving no one able to act.

For each event, score:

Probability: low, medium or high.
Severity: inconvenient, serious or existential.
Detection: would you know early?
Control: what can reduce probability or severity?

Work first on existential severity, even when probability is low.

Insurance is one control, not the whole plan. Read what the employer, state and existing policies already cover. In Switzerland, employees are generally insured against occupational accidents; non-occupational accident cover generally applies when working at least eight hours a week for the employer. Salary continuation during illness varies with employer insurance and employment circumstances. The gap — not the product advertisement — determines whether additional protection is useful.

Operational controls matter too:

Keep the optionality reserve outside the operating business.
Avoid personal guarantees you do not fully understand.
Use two-factor authentication and a secure password process.
Keep an asset and account register.
Document where pension, insurance and tax records are stored.
Name a trusted person who knows how to find the register without knowing every password.
Verify financial providers through FINMA’s authorised lists and warning information.

For crypto, understand custody. FINMA has warned that foreign custody chains can involve bankruptcy and legal risks and that crypto values can be highly volatile. A sophisticated asset thesis does not repair an unsound ownership chain.

For trading and business, set a maximum capital loss that does not invade the lower rungs. For property, model refinancing, repair and income loss together rather than separately.

Then write a kill criterion: the condition under which an exposure is reduced, closed or transferred. A risk without an exit rule can quietly become an identity.

The objective is not to remove uncertainty. It is to ensure that one event does not earn the right to decide the rest of your life.

The Field Note

Build the ruin register. Choose the three existential events. For each, add one financial control, one legal or insurance check and one operational control. Complete the smallest action within 48 hours.

CHOOSE THE NEXT MOVE

01If income and liquidity dominate, return to W03 and W04.

02If counterparties or concentration dominate, revise W07, W08, W11 or W13 before adding capital.

Sources & Swiss context

Swiss illness and accident context: https://www.ch.ch/en/work/illness--accident--disability/absences-from-work-due-to-illness-or-accident/ | FINMA authorised institutions: https://www.finma.ch/en/finma-public/authorised-institutions-individuals-and-products/ | FINMA warning list: https://www.finma.ch/en/finma-public/warnungen/warnliste/ | FINMA crypto custody risks: https://www.finma.ch/en/news/2026/01/20260112-mm-am-01-26/

Editorial education, not personalised investment, legal or tax advice. Swiss rules, limits and product terms can change; verify current information before acting.