The Weight of Money

Okay, the title on this post is totally lame because yall know I ain’t got no tempin’ job, I’m working my job straight up. But, I suppose this dedicated worker-bee-business has taken over my time and suddenly I ain’t got any time for anything other than proofing proposals, adding project pages, answering the five million questions, and putting out an endless stream of fires. It’s mad-house season right now; we’ve got a December 15 deadline loomin’ on a million dollar allocation of program funds that’s got people all in a tizzy trying to get some.

I don’t want to be doing this mad marathon dash, I want to be thinkin’ about money (my money), thinkin’ about where all my money went last weekend, and thinkin’ about how I’m gonna make it all back by the end of the year. That’s what I wanna be doing, but all I’m gonna be doing is busting my ass to survive the next few weeks of full-on rush hour at work.

And, the slight adjustment of colloquial language is just a reflection of the time I spent talkin’ to dem (damn) indians in Oklahoma who ain’t got it together enough to get shit done so I can get on back to working my gnawed-nailed fingers to the bone. There just ain’t no good reason why I gotta be callin’ them up and down, time and again, just to get someone on the damn phone that will satisfy some self-righteous public servants in order to get my car legal to drive in the oh-so-miserable state of Maryland. I ain’t happy about havin’ to play catch up for the hours held in motor vehicle association purgatory. This just ain’t the week, nor the month, for dealin’ with this stuff.

Note: Just so I don’t get anyone jumping all over me for getting pissy about the absolute lack of competency of the indians in Oklahoma – it ain’t no major generalization beyond the specific office set that I’m talking about and I got plenty of years of experience callin’ in on them to know I am dead on with my aggravations and frustrations.

The Monday following a very long weekend always bring a reluctance to get out of bed on time and a desire to extend the weekend indefinitely. Luckily, there is the Carnival of Personal Finance #76 beckoning us to our offices.

Hopefully everyone had a good holiday and survived the societal pressures to spend, spend, spend. I, however, did not fare so well and my pocketbook is considerable lighter despite my good intentions. I did not participate in any of the black Friday shopping blitz and made plans to make it a no-spend weekend. However, quite the opposite happened and I’ll recap that experience later this week. Oh, the cost of creativity.

Wow, it’s only been a month since my last, make the call post and I’m doing it again. This week’s call was in response to ourvery first cable internet bill. Against my better judgment, and after a valiant attempt to make do with dialup, we ordered Comcast high-speed internet.

Background: Last month the partner got fed up with dialup and talked me into ordering cable. He logged on and found it available for $60 a month, for non-cable customers, $20 to install, and a cable modem cost of $100. He made his case and I agreed that we could get it but that I would order it the next day.

The next day, I went online, did some searching, and ordered service with a 3 month promotion of $29.99 a month, a $100 rebate, and a free modem. I told the partner to expect the modem to arrive in 10 days and to be home for the installation at the same time – he was impressed.

Make the Call: Yesterday, our first Comcast bill arrives and I’m shocked to find the total amount due of $145.89 – whoa!

Call #1: I call billing and get transferred to tech support – needless to say that tech support couldn’t fix my billing problem.

Call #2: I call back and kindly tell the billing clerk that I’m being charged $57.95/month when I should be paying $29.99 for the first six months (did ya catch that? I wanted another 3 months thrown in there). The agent searches through her available promotions and says that she can give me the $29.99 for 12 months instead of six. Sure! She prorates the offer to include our start date, recalculates my bill, and suddenly the installation charge is gone too. I ask about it and she says that promotion must have taken care of it. .

Results: If I had done nothing, my annual bill would have been $725.39. I called because I expected to pay only $557.63 for the first year, and, thanks to the call, I will only pay $359.51.

Actual savings of $365.51 (50.4% or $30 a month).

Previous Make the Call Posts:

Save Money: Make the Call I - - utilities and late fees ($59.90 saved)
Save Money: Make the Call II - credit card interest rates (43.2% reduction)
Save the Money: Make the Call III - high-speed internet bill ($365.51 saved)

Health Care on Less Than You Think: The New York Times Guide to Getting  Affordable Coverage, written by The New York Times contributor Fred Brock, is the third book by Brock focusing on “increasing wealth by decreasing expenses”. The author claims that this book “is a guide for dealing with our increasingly dysfunctional health care system in the coming years.”

The chapters of the book read like individual news articles. Statistics and figures are constantly being thrown at the reader in order to paint the picture of a dysfunctional system. Sometimes the numbers provided really make sense in the context of the author’s examples. However, often times I found the figures and comparisons to be too superficial and shallow – they do nothing other than give the reader more pages to trudge through.

There are several chapters that contain very helpful information and concepts that will assist individuals in saving money on health care costs.  Unfortunately, the practical advice is often buried in lots of repetitive text and figures.

Chapter 1: Spending More, Getting Less

If you’re looking for practical savings advice, skip this chapter. This chapter includes endless numbers of facts, figures, and statistics extracted from various reporting and research groups.

Chapter 2: Protect Your Health, Protect Your Budget

The author continues heavy use of statistics and examples of medical problems. Amidst these figures, common medical insurance terms are defined.

This chapter includes five steps for saving money on health insurance – including suggestions like choosing a policy with high lifetime caps and low deductible and maximum out-of-pocket expenses; reading the fine print on your policy and avoiding low caps on specific procedures; and getting dual coverage if possible and practical.

The author also discusses saving money during hospital stays and suggests negotiating lower charges with the hospital or asking for the same discounts that insurance companies pay, keeping a log of all care and services your receive, requesting a detailed bill and comparing it to your log, and hiring a lawyer to contest charges if needed.

Chapter 3: Off The Job

Brock explains COBRA and HIPP coverage. Overall good resource for those with employer-sponsored health insurance.

Chapter 4: Health Savings Accounts

Lots of information about HSA (which is not the same as FSA) and several considerations for choosing an HSA plan. This chapter would benefit from a few more examples but provides lots of good information to get the reader started.

Chapter 5: The State of Your Health and the State Where You Live

Another very repetitive chapter that basically boils down to the fact that insurance and health care costs vary based on where you live. I didn’t need a chapter of filler facts to tell me that.

Chapter 6: Rx for Your Wallet

Basic take away message is that prescription prices vary based on location and you should shop around.

Chapter 7: Mastering Your Insurer’s Fine Print

This chapter tells you to read everything, doublecheck everything, and relentlessly appeal as needed. Suggestions on how to fight some common denials are also included. Also, Brock advises people to pay a bill AFTER the insurance has paid.

Chapter 8: Planning for Medicare

Several Medicare options explained.

Chapter 9: The Threat to Your Savings and Retirement

Brock summarizes the entire book and provides the short list of ways to save. Skip this chapter if you’ve read the chapters relevant to your situation.

Chapter 10: Sorting Our Your Options

This is another throwaway chapter – with only a couple pages, it manages to do nothing more than tell you what you already know.

There is some great information in this book – you can dig it out of chapters two, three, four, six, seven, and eight. Otherwise, the rest of the text looks like it was drawn out just to fill the pages. Honestly, this book could drop the news article feel (redundant facts and reactive wording) and be condensed into a small, useful booklet on saving money on health care costs.

Okay, it is only 10:00pm, but when you’re used to an up before dawn schedule, it might as well be midnight. I’m tired and it has been a very tiring day. My temp position, hehehe, is working in that I haven’t been posting and have been getting more done.

In this incredibly short posting hiatus, there has been a very big development and hopefully I’ll be writing a new post titled “Getting a 20%-30% Raise in 90 Days”. Like I said, there has been a very big development and there will be lots to talk about once I can find the time to do so — and once I have some final numbers to throw out.

For now, must get some sleep so I can look fashionable in my mom-hat this weekend and hopefully have enough R&R to happily put the work-jacket back on Monday morning.

I’m taking a temporary assignment. This isn’t actually another job, it’s a recommitment to the one I have. I’ve been taking out too much time for reading and writing posts and not enough actually getting my work done. So, I’ve decided to take on a temporary mindset of all work and no play. What this means — no more posting this week during working hours. Maybe I’ll post something in the evenings, but it is highly unlikely. I’ll check in for next week’s Carnival of Personal Finances and re-evaluate then. Hopefully I’ll kick some to-do list butt and be all ready to juggle work obligations and financial fun by Tuesday. Failure to do this may result in posts about the lack of money instead of what we’re doing with our money.

Just like the consistent evaluation of spending helps me stay within budget, I need to check in on my monthly goals in order to meet them.

So far, I’m on track for funding the daughter’s saving account. I’ve already made a deposit of $130 and am planning another similar deposit later this month.

For transferring monthly bill payments, I’ve taken care of the biggest one – the cell phone. I still need to get one more bill moved over.

Dentist appointments have been set for the partner and I. I wasn’t going to make one for myself, but a tooth pain that I’ve been having today encouraged me to make that call. We’ll prolly put the daughter’s appointment off until next year.

Drastic debt reduction hasn’t happened, yet. Payment is scheduled for the last days in November assuming deposits and transfers are made accordingly. I want to increase the planned payment to $6,000 because it sounds so much better than $5,500. The partner isn’t so excited about rounding up for the sake of it — he thinks it is too much work to make it happen. I’m willing to work for it and am going to push myself, and our budget, to make it happen - just for the sake of it.
It isn’t scheduled to happen until the last days of the month, as long as there are no delays in transfers and processing. I’m even working extra hard to see if I can come up with another $500 just to make it an even $6,000 payment.  The partner thinks that rounding up for the sake of it isn’t worth the effort needed to make it happen – I’m still gonna try for it anyways.

Who is reading this stuff? Who should be reading this? Are we reaching the people who need this information?

Thanks to a submission to the Carnival of Debt Reduction #61, I stumbled across a post by The Simple Dollar: The Wrong People Are Reading Personal Finance Site.

I feel that TSD’s point is right to an extent; these are topics and subjects that many of us have a real grasp on – but not all of us. We have looked at our retirement options, savings options, debt reduction options, income options – but not all of us.

It is the ‘others’ that we need to be reaching and this reader’s comment reminds us we are. Maybe our influence isn’t always visible, but it is making a difference. How many bloggers have been inspired to address financial issues after reading a pf blog? I was and I even started this site after reading a friend’s blog.

But perhaps these posts help us more in our individual personal relationships and discussions about money. Recently, there have been posts about finances and relationships, including reactions to parents’ spending habits and concern over sibling’s money problems. Maybe we need to move beyond the myob (mind your own business) approach and start financial discussions with peers. Perhaps then we’ll be reaching those who “need” to be hearing this information.

I can say that pf blogging has prompted me to ask more forthright questions about finances, breaking away from that unspoken rule that money is off-limits. In fact, the partner and I got into an investing and savings conversation over a post soccer-game lunch with other parents we knew nothing about and had no real relationship with – we just brought finances into the conversation and it was well received.

We need to set the bar for making conversation about money acceptable, non-threatening, non-comparative, enlightening, and educational. We need to get the word out, on the web and in our communities and families. We recognize that we are not experts, we just recognize the importance of respecting our finances as an important part of our life. This is how to reach others with the wealth of information that we’ve accumulated in this community.

Looks like I missed a carnival yesterday – The Carnival of Debt Reduction #61. Thanks to Journey to Financial Freedom for hosting and my apologies for the late recognition.

However, this works out well because it gives me enough time to do some link walking and check out other submissions.

The year is ending – make sure you’re going to use up all the funds in your FSA (Flexible Spending Account).
I collected receipts and made a dental appointment for the partner to make sure that we’ll use all the funds. Thankfully, I found a receipt for contacts ($74) that was going to be the largest chunk of the claim. Also, I recently restarted two maintenance meds and that provides $32/month expense that we can claim.
Don’t let the year pass by without using the funds. If you have a lot of funds left and no necessary medical treatment in sight, try some of these suggestions:

• schedule dental appointments
• schedule general checkups
• buy next year’s supply of pain and cold relief OTC medications
• purchase extra disposable contacts
• stock up on OTC contraceptives or pregnancy tests

If you’re planning to schedule appointments, do it now. End of the year slots fill up quick.