I have schizophrenia and my husband is my caregiver, but our 4-part financial safety net means I'll be OK no matter what

It wasn't an easy conversation to have, but both Rebecca Chamaa and her husband sleep better knowing she's covered in case of emergency.

• I have chronic paranoid schizophrenia and my husband is my caregiver.
• To ensure I'll be OK if anything ever happened to him, we built a financial safety net.
• We have retirement savings, life insurance, an affordable home, and savings to cover my needs.
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As someone with chronic paranoid schizophrenia, I rely on my husband for many caretaking roles. He's among millions of Americans doing the same work: AARP reports that one in five Americans are caregivers, and that of those people, 61% are working outside of the home on top of their caregiving roles.

There are many unique challenges for caregivers, like getting a break from being on call 24/7, finding support from family, healthcare workers, and the community, and navigating healthcare and insurance issues, to name a few. One thing that most likely occurs to everyone providing care to an aging parent, special needs child, spouse, or other loved one is, "What happens if something happens to me?"

That last question can interfere with the caregiver's mental health if there is no possible or suitable answer. For years, my husband and I made choices to create a parachute for me if he became disabled, had an accident, or died. Talking about worst-case scenarios is unpleasant, but not planning or talking about them can cause a feeling of being unsafe or lacking security (adding increased stress to people who already have a significant amount).

My husband and I set up a safety net for me

We didn't do just one thing to create a safety net for me. It was a series of small steps and choices we made that gave my husband and me peace of mind that I wouldn't end up without a place to live or money for groceries or electricity if something unexpected and unwelcome happened to him.

We got life insurance

Life insurance is among the many elements of my safety net, though we didn't add it to our financial plan until our 40s. If you think of life insurance when you are younger (20s or 30s), getting a policy and a significant amount of coverage is relatively inexpensive. We didn't think about adding it to our financial plan until we were in our mid-40s when it was no longer affordable for us to get more than the amount to cover the remainder of our mortgage, but it was still a wise choice for us.

We bought a more affordable place to live

While our friends were acquiring big mortgages in California, we bought a small condo in a nice area and took out less than a $100,000 loan. We later sold that home and moved to another city when real estate was much more expensive. However, we still bought in a price range that we could manage without cutting out the possibility of saving and investing (and we took out the life insurance policy to cover the whole mortgage). That was over 10 years ago, and we have tried to pay down our mortgage ever since.

While some people will upgrade their car or home when they receive promotions or raises, when my husband received a promotion, raise, or bonus, we used the money to make a principal payment on our mortgage and to up our savings. A few years ago, we refinanced our mortgage from a 30-year loan to a 15-year loan, which means we are paying a larger amount in principal each month. Because interest rates were so low at the time, it hardly added any extra to our monthly payment, and we are happily watching as what we owe goes down significantly from year to year.

We invest for retirement

Not only do we work at paying off our mortgage, we consistently make the necessary contribution to my husband's 401(k) to receive the full company match. When we were able to, we also upped our contribution over the years.

We have an emergency fund

We have used daily choices, like budgeting and cost-cutting strategies, to build up an emergency fund (six months of my husband's salary in savings). We have often had to take from that fund to buy a car (never new, always used) or pay for an unexpected expense, but we always made an effort to build the fund back up again as swiftly as possible.

We have chosen to live below our means because our priorities differ from those around us. We decided to work toward and focus on our mental health and a feeling of doing the best we could to prepare for an uncertain future. We have never had an expensive wardrobe, a new car, a big house, or dined at the finest restaurants. Our life has never been an enviable reel for Instagram.

Still, even if the two of us are healthy far into our retirement, and the parachute we worked so hard to build is not necessary, the financial choices we have made over the years will mean we can loosen up our budget in the later years of our lives. For the time being, my husband, as a caregiver, has one less worry.