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Cutting Healthcare Costs
It’s not a secret that health care can be expensive. Many people pay two and three digit bills for their prescriptions. A visit to the doctor’s office can hurt the budget. Glasses cost hundreds of dollars? How can you cut this cost?
Drugs
If possible, go generic*. There is no difference between Trazorel and trazadone, aside from the cost. Wal-mart, Target, and many other stores offer common generic prescriptions for $4-5. When you are talking to your doctor, ask if there is an drug option that has an available generic. When you are talking to your pharmacist, ask if there is a generic alternative available.
Get the price match. The Cub Foods pharmacy near me matches the Target generic drug price, giving us $4 generics for the asking. This is often an unpublicized deal, so make sure you ask. If your pharmacy will not match nearby prices, consider going elsewhere.
See if there is a 90 day plan. Many insurance companies sponsor a 90 day prescription plan that gives you a 90 supply of drugs for the 60 costs as long as you are willing to accept the drugs by mail. For expensive prescriptions, this 33% discount can be a substantial savings.
Physician
Does your clinic offer online consultations with your doctor or nurses? Some clinics offer a chat or email option to talk to your doctor without requiring a visit that will add fees and copays to your expense sheet. Most clinics and hospitals have a free nurse line for basic questions, like “When is my baby‘s fever dangerous?” It’s a great chance to save some money. I know, from personal experience, that they won’t be shy if they feel you need to come in, but they generally won’t try to convince you to come in if aspirin will fix the problem.
Stay in-network. Check with your insurance company to make sure the doctor you want to see if in your network and therefore, available at the cheapest out-of-pocket price. If not, and you really want that doctor, ask your insurance company if they accept nominations for the network and ask your doctor if he’d be interested in being nominated.
Stay home for your cold. Don’t go to the doctor for every minor problem. The best remedy a doctor can give your for your cold will reduce it to a seven day malady. On the other hand, if you do nothing, it will go away in about a week. Why waste the money? This counts double for the emergency room and urgent care. Strep throat is not an emergency. Wait until morning and go to the clinic, paying the lower fees instead of the large ER costs. Make an appointment for a doctor visit, if possible. Urgent care is billed the same as a regular visit, but most insurance plans double or triple the copay for urgent care visits.
Cash Flow
A Health Savings Account(HSA) is a pre-tax account to save for qualifying medical expenses similar to a Flexible Savings Account(FSA). The main differences are that HSAs are only available for people with high-deductible insurance plans and do not have to be spent on medical expenses. Non-qualifying expenses move from pre-tax to post-tax, meaning you will be charged federal income tax for non-qualifying withdrawals. FSAs are “use it or lose it” plans. If you don’t use it, it will go away, usually at the end of the year. That makes December a great time to stock up on over-the-counter medicines and possibly replace your eyeglasses, as both of those are qualifying expenses. Find out if you have either option available. If you use either one, set aside a place to store every imaginable medical receipt, so you can be reimbursed. Make sure you understand the FSA-eligible expenses.
An Ounce of Prevention
Get routine checkups. The earlier you find a problem, the more options you have. This goes for everything from cancer screenings to blood tests. Get a physical every year and know what is happening with your body. We may be living in the future, but replacement parts are still hard to come by.
Maintain Your Health
It’s cheaper to be healthy. Eat right, exercise, quit smoking.
I enjoy a good meal. It’s one of my favorite things. I won’t cut rich foods out of my diet, so we reduced portions. Beyond the first few bites, the flavor isn’t nearly as enjoyable or even noticeable. There’s no more enjoyment for huge servings than small ones.
Get more exercise, even if it’s just a 2o minute walks twice a week parking on the far side of the parking lot, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
Vision
Go online. This one is worth a write-up all by itself. I have 6 pairs of prescription glasses–all varieties of frames and coatings–that have cost a grand total of about $150. There is no noticeable difference between my cheapies and the designer alternatives. While I work on the write-up, the best site to introduce you to the concept of online glasses is GlassyEyes. Reviews, coupons, and discount likes. They have step-by-step instructions on turning an intimidating idea into a simple and cheap solution to an expensive problem.
How do you save money on health care?
* There are no generics available on new drugs until the initial patent expires. This gives the pharmaceutical companies a change to recoup their research and development costs. Without this patent period, new private drug research would evaporate. Don’t hate the brand names, but don’t show undue loyalty.
Cooking Poor
Frugal cooking can be an intimidating concept. It’s easy to turn a meal into a huge expense, but it’s not that hard to trim your grocery budget without sacrificing variety and flavor. It just takes some planning and a few money-saving techniques. We usually feed our family of five, often with guests, for about $100 per week.
Schedule your meals. Find or make a weekly meal planner. I recommend this or this. Cross out the meals you don’t need to worry about due to your schedule that week. If you won’t be home, you don’t have to cook that meal. Fill in the meals in the remaining slots. Keep your schedule in mind. If you get home from work at 5:30 and have to be somewhere by 6:30, dinner needs to be something quick. Also, make sure you include every side dish you will be serving. Now, look at the recipe for each dish in every meal. Write down everything you need to make all of the food you plan to eat that week. While planning your meals, think about how to use your leftovers. If you cook chicken breasts one day, the leftovers can be chicken nuggets the next.
Take inventory. Take your meal plan and a pen while you look through all of your cabinets and your refrigerator. Why buy what you already have? If you already have steaks in the freezer, don’t waste your money buying more. If you have it, cross it off of your meal plan shopping list. Whatever is left is your shopping list. Review it. Is there anything that can be combined or eliminated? Is there a key ingredient for a sauce that’s missing?
Don’t forget the staples. If flour or sugar is on sale, stock up. Anything you use on a regular basis is a staple, buy it when it’s cheap.
Build a shopping list from your meal plan. When you are in the store, stick to your list. It’s hard, but avoid impulse purchases at all costs. Don’t shop hungry, don’t buy things just because they are on sale, and don’t dawdle. Get what you need and get out.
Avoid pre-processed food. We slice and shred our own cheese. Buying the pre-shredded cheese costs an extra $5 and saves just 5 minutes. Don’t buy pre-sliced apples or anything that will only save a few minutes for several dollars of cost.
Every couple of weeks, I cook a large pot of either beans or rice and keep it in the refrigerator. Almost every meal that we cook gets a cup or two of beans or rice added to it. It doesn’t alter the flavor much, but it adds a few extra servings for pennies. It’s a healthy way to stretch any meal on the cheap.
We have a large bowl in the refrigerator filled with mixed greens. We buy whatever salad-like greens are on sale and prepare the large salad all at once. Most meals start with a salad, which makes it easier to fill up without relying on the protein dish, which is generally the most expensive part of a meal. As a dedicated meat-eater, it took some getting used to, but it’s a good meal–cheap and healthy.
Cook enough for at least 3 meals. That will eliminate 2/3 of the work involved in cooking. Plan ahead to make your meals simple and easy.
Freeze the leftovers in usable sizes. Stock up on semi-disposable meal-sized containers. Freeze some in single-serving sizes for work, and others in family-size servings for last minute meals at home. Preparing for last minute meals keeps you from serving garbage or takeout when life gets in the way of your plans.
Avoid wasting leftovers. Wasted food is wasted money.
When you are done cooking meat, take any drippings or scraps and throw them into the slow-cooker along with any vegetable scraps laying around. Cook it overnight, then strain it into an ice cube tray. You now have stock/broth ready to be added to any recipe.
Plan for serial meals. Chicken breast leftover from today’s meal can become chicken nuggets tomorrow, to be shredded into chicken salad the next day.
When there isn’t enough left for a full serving, we put the remains in a resealable bag in the freezer. When we accumulate enough to fill our slow-cooker, we dump in all of the bags with a couple cups of water. I look through the refrigerator for any leftovers that have been overlooked that week or any vegetables getting close to being too old. It all gets cut up and added to the cooker to cook on low all day. I rarely add seasoning because everything going in the pot tastes good. We never get the same meal twice and our “free soup” is never bland.
That’s how we cook cheap, without sacrificing too much time. How do you save money cooking?
This post is a blast from the past. Originally posted here in January 2010.
Make Extra Money Part 2: Niche Selection
If you want to make money, help someone get healthy, wealthy or laid.
This section was quick.
Seriously, those three topics have been making people rich since the invention of rich. Knowing that isn’t enough. If you want to make some money in the health niche, are you going to help people lose weight, add muscle, relieve stress, or reduce the symptoms of some unpleasant medical condition? Those are called “sub-niches”. (Side question: Viagra is a sub-niche of which topic?)
Still not enough.
If you’re going to offer a product to help lose weight, does it revolve around diet, exercise, or both? For medical conditions, is it a way to soothe eczema, instructions for a diabetic diet, a cure for boils, or help with acne? Those are micro-niches.
That’s where you want to be. The “make money” niche is far too broad for anyone to effectively compete. The “make money online” sub-niche is still crazy. When you get to the “make money buying and selling websites” micro-niche, you’re in a territory that leaves room for competition, without costing thousands of dollars to get involved.
Remember that: The more narrowly you define your niche market, the easier it is to compete. You can take that too far. The “lose weight by eating nothing but onions, alfalfa, and imitation caramel sauce” micro-niche is probably too narrowly defined to have a market worth pursuing. You need a micro-niche with buyers, preferably a lot of them.
Now the hard part.
How do you find a niche with a lot of potential customers? Big companies pay millions of dollars every year to do that kind of market research.
Naturally, I recommend you spend millions of dollars on market research.
No?
Here’s the part where I make this entire series worth every penny you’ve paid. Times 10.
Steal the research.
My favorite source of niche market research to steal is http://www.dummies.com/. Click the link and notice all of the wonderful niches at the top of the page. Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc. spends millions of dollars to know what topics will be good sellers. They’ve been doing this a long time. Trust their work.
You don’t have to concentrate on the topics I’ve helpfully highlighted, but they will make it easier for you. Other niches can be profitable, too.
Golf is a great example. Golfers spend money to play the game. You don’t become a golfer without having some discretionary money to spend on it. I’d recommend against consumer electronics. There is a lot of competition for anything popular, and most of that is available for free. If you choose to promote some high-end gear using your Amazon affiliate link, you’re still only looking at a 3% commission.
I like to stick to topics that people “need” an answer for, and can find that answer in ebook form, since I will be promoting a specific product.
With that in mind, pick a topic, then click one of the links to the actual titles for sale. The “best selling titles” links are a gold mine. You can jump straight to the dummies store, if you’d like.
Of the topics above, here’s how I would narrow it down:
1. Business and Careers. The bestsellers here are Quickbooks and home buying. I’m not interested in either topic, so I’ll go into “More titles”. Here, the “urgent” niches look like job hunting and dealing with horrible coworkers. I’m also going to throw “writing copy” into the list because it’s something I have a hard time with.
2. Health and Fitness. My first thought was to do a site on diabetic cooking, but the cooking niche is too competitive. Childhood obesity, detox diets and back pain remedies strike me as worth pursuing. I’m leaning towards back pain, because I have a bad back. When you’ve thrown your back out, you’ve got nothing to do but lie on the couch and look for ways to make the pain stop. That’s urgency.
3. Personal Finance. The topics that look like good bets are foreclosures and bankruptcies. These are topics that can cost thousands of dollars if you get them wrong. I hate to promote a bankruptcy, but some people are out of choices. Foreclosure defense seems like a good choice. Losing your home comes with a sense of urgency, and helping people stay in their home makes me feel good.
4. Relationships and Family. Of these topics, divorce is probably a good seller. Dating advice definitely is. I’m not going to detail either one of those niches here. Divorce is depressing and sex, while fun, isn’t a topic I’m going to get into here. I try to be family friendly, most of the time. Weddings are great topic. Brides are planning to spend money and there’s no shortage of resources to promote.
So, the niches I’ve chosen are:
- Back pain
- Bankruptcy
- Conflict resolution at work
- Detox diets
- Fat kids
- Foreclosure avoidance
- Job hunting
- Weddings
- Writing copy
I won’t be building 9 niche sites in this series. From here, I’m going to explore effective keywords/search terms and good products to support. There’s no guarantee I’ll find a good product with an affiliate program for a niche I’ve chosen that has keywords that are both highly searched and low competition, so I’m giving myself alternatives.
For those of you following along at home, take some time to find 5-10 niches you’d be willing to promote.
The important things to consider are:
1. Does it make me feel dirty to promote it?
2. Will there be customers willing to spend money on it?
3. Will those customers have an urgent need to solve a problem?
I’ve built sites that ignore #3, and they don’t perform nearly as well as those that consider it. When I do niche sites, I promote a specific product. It’s pure affiliate marketing, so customers willing to spend money are necessarily my target audience.
5 Steps to Save
- Image by BitHead via Flickr
“Saving is too hard.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“How much should I save?”
“Who the heck are you to tell me what to do with my money?”
“Shut up, Jason.”
These are the things I hear when I start talking about getting a good strategy in place to save some money. Financial matters are intimidating to a lot of people. They’d rather not think about their money any more than they absolutely need to, if that much. Here, I’m breaking it down to some simple steps to make saving easy.
1. Get motivated. Why do you want to save some money? Are you trying to make a secure future, or do you just want to buy a new toy? These are the kind of questions you have to ask yourself. Nobody else can tell you why you want to make changes to your lifestyle, and nobody else’s reasons matter in the least. Saving money is something you have to do for you.
2. Figure out how much you can save. Generally, you’re going to need a budget so you can figure out what you can afford to save, but not always. If you are making ends meet, then you get a raise, you can obviously afford to bank the difference. If you do that, you’ll never even notice the missing money. If you try to save so much your mortgage goes unpaid, you’re plan is doomed to failure.
3. Open an account at a new bank. The biggest problem I used to have when I was trying to save was that it was too easy to get the money. Every time I checked the balance of my checking account, I saw the balance in the savings account. Worse, it took seconds to transfer that money from my savings account to my attached checking account. Every time I wanted to see if I could afford whatever toy I was looking at, I’d see money that wasn’t earmarked for anything in particular. Naturally, that money got spent more often that it was ignored and allowed to grow. Now, I can completely forget about the money.
4. Automate. I’ve automated everything I can. All of my bills are paid automatically, except for one company that insists on quarterly paper invoices. I’ve got $665(neighbor of the beast!) automatically transferred to my INGDirect account, to get divided between my various savings goals, including a fund for my semi-annual property tax payments and a fund to pay for the braces we haven’t actually had to buy yet, but will in a couple of years. The money disappears into a bank I don’t use for my day-to-day expenses and grows completely out of sight. Every once in a while, I look at the account and get surprised by how much has accumulated.
5. Get rich. Once you’ve got the other four steps in place, all you’ve got to do is let it work. Over time, you will build wealth in a way that may surprise you. Your goal at this point is to do nothing new. Every once in a while, you can pull out some money and tuck it into an investment account to get some real growth going for you.
“Thank you.”
“You’re the best.”
“What would I do without you?”
“How can I show you my appreciation? <wink><wink>”
“What the heck are you doing with my wife?”
These are the things I always hope to hear after sharing my strategies to save money.
Karate Guess So
“Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, [makes squish gesture] get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do “yes”, or karate do “no”. You karate do “guess so”, [makes squish gesture] just like grape. Understand?” -Mr. Miyagi
It occurred to me that lately, I’ve changed my day-to-day cash flow plans a couple of times.
A year ago, I was running on a fairly strict cash-only plan.
A month ago, I was running on a strict budget, but doing it entirely out of my checking account.
Now, I’m loosening the budget reins, and moving all of my payments and day-to-day spending to a credit card, including a new balance that I can’t immediately pay off.
The thing is, changing plans too often scares me. Like the quote at the beginning of this post, I start worrying about being squished like a grape.
The simple fact is that any plan will work.
If you want to get out of debt, just pick a plan and run with it. If that means you follow Dave Ramsey and do the low-balance-first debt snowball, good for you. Do it. If you follow Suze Ormann and do a high-interest first repayment plan, great. Do it. If you follow Bach and pay based on a complicated DOLP formula to repay in the quickest manner, wonderful! Do it!
Just don’t switch plans every month. If you do that, you’ll lose momentum and motivation. Squish like grape! Just pick a plan and go. It really, truly does not matter which plan you are following as long as you are following through.
This applies to other parts of your life, too. For example, there are a thousand fad diets out there. Here’s a secret: they all work. Every single one of them, whether it’s Weight Watchers, slow carb, or the beer-only diet. The only thing that matters is that you stick to the diet. If you manage that, you will lose weight on any diet out there. Except for the jelly bean and lard diet. That one will make you extra soft.
Another secret: the productivity gurus are right. Every single one of them. David Allen, Stephen Covey, Steve Pavlina, and the rest. They all have the One True Secret to getting the most out of your day. Really. Pick a guru and go! But don’t try to Get Things Done in the morning and do 7 Habits at night. Changing systems, changing plans, changing your mind will make you sabotage yourself.
The real secret to accomplishing great things, whether it’s paying off $100,000 of debt, dropping 40 pounds in 3 months, or tripling your productivity is to do it. Just get started and, once you’ve started, don’t stop. If you keep going and stay consistent, you’ll accomplish more than anyone who hops from system to system every few weeks.
