Search Results for “three-alternatives-to-a-budget/budget-lesson-part-5/debt-burnout/budget-lesson-part-3/travel-expenses-why-i-splurge/future-dreams/budget4/medical-costs-and-choices/slow-carb-diet-how-to-avoid-going-bat-crazy/brown-bagging-your-way-to-savings” — Page 3

Looking Back: 2012 in Review

Misc

Another year draws to a close while I still feel like it’s March…2002. How does that happen?

Here are the 10 most visited pages on this site over the past year:

Numbers 4 & 8 surprise me a bit, because they are carnival posts. There’s no meat there.

Number 10 is an unfinished series. I will finish that soon.

What else has happened this year?

My financial situation has changed pretty drastically.

My mother-in-law passed away in April, leaving my wife a house, a reasonably well-funded retirement account, and a moderate life insurance policy.
Two of my side hustles have grown to the point where I was close to looking at the end of my day job. One of them is still on the upswing, the other has contracted a bit.
I changed my day job. The new job is mostly a lateral move, but a bit of a backwards step in my career. I’m not managing a team any more and I’m not the senior developer. I have picked up more social media and advertising responsibilities, which is a direction I’ve wanted to go for a while. Combined with a pay raise and moving to an industry I care about, this is a good move.

These changes worked out well with the several years of debt elimination. Now, our credit cards are paid off each month and our mortgage is down to $24,000. The inherited house is almost ready for the renters to move in just one month from now, and we’re considering adding more properties to our financial plan. We did take out a car loan 6 weeks ago, but that was only to take advantage of a deal. We’ve paid off nearly half of the loan and should have the rest paid off in a couple of months.

What’s on tap for 2013?

I’m hoping to carve out more time for me. And my family. I’ve worked almost nonstop in 2012, now I’d like to explore some personal interests and develop some non-commercial hobbies. There are a few commercial projects currently in the works, and a few planned, but I’m going to try to keep those under control this year. My interest vary and don’t always stick for long, so there’s no real measure of success here, but if I can buy an atlatl and learn how to chuck a spear into a target or maybe brew a few batches of beer, I’ll be happy.

I’m also going to spend more time working on my health. Working 60 hour weeks with at least an hour of daily commute time killed most options for exercise. Now that I’m working from home, I’ve been walking a mile or more every day that’s been above 15 degrees. I’m going to restart the slow carb diet tomorrow. It won’t be as complicated this time, because I can eat out of my refrigerator instead of trying to pack a slow carb meal or find one at a restaurant for lunch. I’ll consider this a win if I can drop 60 pounds this year.

What about the blog?

I’ve considered selling this site. Time is always crunched, and I’m no longer paying off debt, but I still need the outlet. I’ll probably keep to the twice-a-week schedule and you can probably expect me to focus more on personal and business development instead of money.

Have a happy new year!

Cutting Healthcare Costs

Finance

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.

Saturday Roundup

Life

I’ve spend the last 10 days at home with my two youngest kids. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s amazing watching them interact with each other and seeing how their imaginations works. It’s also been a helpful reminder that, if I don’t turn on the TV, they will happily find something else to do.

30 Day Project Update

This month, I am trying to establish the Slow Carb Diet as a habit. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.

I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my belly, waist, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.

Weight: I have lost 11 pounds since January 2nd. This is crazy. At least part of this has to be due to the natural swing of up to 5 pounds from day to day, and part of it is due to the fact that I was wearing jeans when I weighed in the first time and cotton pajamas this morning. From now on, this is going to be the first thing I do on Saturday mornings, so everything is as consistent as possible. Another factor is that I’ve cut most of the crap out of my diet for a week. My body has been flushing garbage. But dang! 11 pounds in a week. I’m a bit excited.

Total Inches: I have lost 5.5 inches in the same time frame. This is proof that it’s not just water that I lost, which is where first, dramatic losses usually originate in a diet.

The loss seems a little bit nuts. Here’s hoping it stays consistent.

Best Posts

Your retirement account shouldn’t be an optional investment. Do you know how to maximize retirement savings?

I’m a big fan of making extra money. Money Crashers lists 6 sites to help you rake in the cash, without needing any special skills.

Unclutterer is giving away three Fujitsu Scansnaps. I want one of these is a way that isn’t quite right.

I’ve been moving to LED lights instead of CFLs for a few years. CFLs make lousy security lights in Minnesota in the winter. They take 5 minutes to get to full brightness when it’s cold. LEDs last forever.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote one year ago.

I posted about the difference between bribes and rewards and the problems inherent in trying to buy good behavior.

Lesson 2 of my budget series went live, detailing my monthly bills.

We made some changes to our budget plans that haven’t worked very well. Over the course of the last year, every one of these ideas has either been partially or totally abandoned, but it’s working for us.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

How to Complain – The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

3 Things You Need to Know About Homeowner’s Insurance was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.

You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.

You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.

That’s all for today. Have a great weekend!

Medical Costs and Choices

Finance, Parenting

: Image via Wikipedia

I’m not a bad father.

Last spring, we noticed my son had a wandering eye. One of his eyes would just drift when he was looking at something. It was happening consistently, so we brought him to the eye doctor. After an exam, we found out that his eyes were 20/100. The doctor said that getting him classes may be enough to fix the wandering eye problem. The theory was that his eye was drifting because his eyes weren’t able to focus. Bringing the world into focus could have let his eyes train themselves to work right.

Nine months with glasses later, the problem hasn’t gone away, so we went back to the eye doctor.

He’s got alternating exotropia. His eyes aren’t working well together. One eye will focus, and the other will drift. So now we’re looking into vision therapists.

A friend went through something similar with his kid, so I asked him for the name of the doctor he used. He gave it to me and told me the clinic was the best in the business, and I would be paying for that. I asked about the cost and was handed the doctor’s spiel about how sad it is that parents focus more on the cost of care than getting the best possible care.

What a load of crap.

First of all, that’s a sales pitch. Of course the doctor is going to defend his prices. If his prices are exorbitant(I don’t have a basis for comparison) and he can’t defend them, people will go elsewhere. $3000 isn’t pocket change. That’s a significant chunk of change. Refusing to look at your options is irresponsible.

Second, price does not equal quality. There are a ton of things that are overpriced garbage. Not only do scam artists abound, but some legitimate things are are horribly overpriced at one location and reasonably priced at others. To stay on the vision theme, my $10 glasses are every bit as high quality as any $400 pair I’ve ever owned. The difference between generic and brand-name drugs? The label and the price. The FDA requires they be chemically identical to be sold. If you insist on the brand name because it’s “better”, you are flushing your money down the toilet. If you live by “you get what you pay for” you are guaranteed to get ripped off.

Third, balancing cost and treatment doesn’t mean I care less. Yes, I am killing my debt as fast as I can right now. Even when I was willing to use a credit card, I wouldn’t drop $3000 without considering my options. I have an entire family to consider, not one problem that my kid doesn’t even notice. Grr. I hate getting told–implicitly or otherwise–that I am a bad parent because I don’t choose to waste my money the way other people do. I’ll check out my options first, thank you.

Now, I will pay for the best when it is warranted. My wife wants Lasik and mentioned some sale some company was having. No. The guy sticking a laser and a scalpel in my eye will not be the lowest bidder. When I left the gene pool, I went to one of the top guys in the state for the procedure. When those things screw up, it’s permanent.

Vision therapy? Not so much. If it comes to surgery, we’ll go with the best. But it’s not there, yet. My kid is going to get a series of eye exercises, no matter where we go. Even if I go to some back alley vision therapist with a degree from a Nigeria U, what’s the worst case scenario? We may have to try someone else. Since I will be doing a bit more research than that, odds are better that my kid will get exactly the same therapy regimen for 1/4 of the cost. That’s the difference between a perfectly competent doctor and a perfectly competent doctor who convinced some trade magazine to write him up as the best in the business.

What do you think? Am I neglecting my kid by wanting to save some money for his braces, too?

Future Dreams

Relationships

While jogging with my wife a few days ago, we had a conversation that we haven’t had in years. We discussed our dreams.

It’s an important conversation for couples to have. What are your hopes? What are your dreams? Where do you want to be in 10 years? In 20? In 50? Planning for the future gives you a map for the present.

My wife and I hadn’t had this conversation in years. A few days ago, we did. Our life-goals are simple and achievable.

I want to leave the corporate world and support my family with writing and the training classes I do. I want a chunk of land outside of any major metropolitan area, but close enough for the entertainment and shopping. I want enough land to expand my classes on my own property, relying on no one.

My wife wants enough land to have some horses. It was unspoken, but I think she wants my goals to take off so they can support her goals, too.

We want a comfortable retirement and we want to help the kids with college.

We’re a bit behind the game for college funding. That’s ok, though. There is nothing wrong with a kid working his way through college and learning those life lessons.

We are also behind on the retirement. But, if I can support us doing the things I love, I don’t need $X million. Retirement isn’t a cessation of activity, it is taking the time to do the things you love on your own schedule. If writing a book while sitting on my private range is enough to fund our life, that’s the perfect retirement.

Sunday Roundup – Life’s Been Busy

Misc

inventables — Image by hahatango via Flickr

I’ve been skipping the Sunday roundups for the last month. Over the last 4 weekends, I have put 2000 miles on my car, taking 4 trips–only one of which I consider optional and that was the only fun trip. With the extra gas, and having to pay for my son’s vision therapy, we went over budget by more than $4,000.

Ouch.

It’s the first debt I’ve picked up in more than 2 years. It’s leaving me twitchy and crabby. I don’t like it much at all.

And, with all of the traveling, I have let the Sunday posts slip.

Weight Loss Update

I am on the Slow Carb Diet. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.

I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.

Weight: I have lost 45 pounds since January 2nd. I haven’t weighed in since my last Sunday update. For the last week, I haven’t been terribly strict about being on the diet and I haven’t stressed about staying on it while traveling.

Total Inches: I have lost 27 inches in the same time frame.

Best Posts

Every home needs a secret tunnel. Every time a house in my neighborhood goes up for sale, I try to convince my wife we should buy it and connect it to ours with tunnels.

Some day, when I’m a brazillionaire, if I hate my descendants, I’m going to set up my will to frustrate them all.

Haggling is a skill I need to work on.

The Monster Hunter Alpha early advanced reader copy is available. The Monster Hunter books are fun, fast reads.

Bacon art makes me cultured and hungry.

Making strangers smile is a way to make your day memorable.

I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when I hear about people successfully chasing their dreams.

I need to find a use for some of the unique materials here.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Karate Guess So was the winner of last week’s Best of Money Carnival! Woo!

Debt Options was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Budgeting Sucks was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

The Benefits of Ignorance was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

New Debt was included in the Yakezie Carnival.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.

You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.

You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.

Have a great week!

Search Results for: three-alternatives-to-a-budget/budget-lesson-part-5/debt-burnout/budget-lesson-part-3/travel-expenses-why-i-splurge/future-dreams/budget4/medical-costs-and-choices/slow-carb-diet-how-to-avoid-going-bat-crazy/brown-bagging-your-way-to-savings

30 Day Project Update

Best Posts

LRN Timewarp

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

Weight Loss Update

Best Posts

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Get More Out of Live Real, Now