Silverish lining?

Things are starting to look up I think. All but one of the claims I talked about last time have been paid, and the last one is just probably stuck in the red tape. We did confirm that both girls do have the genetic disorder, but at least we know what the problem is now.

Piper had a tube put back in, and I've seen a bit of what that will cost -- roughly $1000. The good news is we're already in the 80/20 part of our insurance, so we'll have the rest of the year to basically coast through stuff.

I JUST did my taxes, and between all the medical expenses and other things, we're going to be getting about $4,000 back. Combine that with the couple side jobs I've picked up, and I'll have just about $5,000 to tackle the latest round of medical bills. I SHOULD be able to pay off the $2500 loan for our last hospital stay, the $1200 or so for the tubes, and get our emergency fund back to $1000. After that stuff is all out of the way, I'll be able to be hitting an extra $150 on the van bringing that payment up to $340. At that rate, I'll only have about a year left to pay to get rid of it. Hopefully, I'll get some more side work between now and then to get rid of it faster :)

Health Care will be the Death of me...

To continue our fun medical saga...

We had a series of tests done a while back to try to figure out what was going on with Piper's immune system. Things went smoothly and we found out what we needed to. A few months after that, we decided to get Makenna tested for the same things to see if she had the same problems (so we could fix things before they got bad). After that test, we got a notice from the insurance saying it wasn't covered because it fell into the "experimental or investigational" category. That alone confused me, because aren't ALL tests "investigational"? If not, why do the test? :)

Anyhow, we had the lab and our doctor appeal the decision because it is actually medically necessary. One of the bits of ammunition I gave the most recent lab was that we had this done earlier, and we didn't have anything rejected from the first round.

Today, I got a bill from the first lab -- FOR $2500! Turns out they submitted everything to the old insurance, so it still hasn't been processed by Aetna. This is where I start to worry a bit with their "experimental or investigational" definition. ALL the tests they ran the first time would be "investigational" because we had no idea what was going on.

At least the first round of tests was set in by a specialist (infectious disease doc). The one that was rejected was just our pediatrician, so coming from a doc a bit higher up the food chain may help get everything covered.

This could get interesting.

Negotiation Works Wonders

Today I actually accomplished something pretty nifty. I had two separate bills come in from a hospital a month apart. I had set up 3 month payments on the first bill before the second came in (and was three times the first). I managed to get them to combine the two bills AND reset the three months for the new amount. Also, the way it sounded, I could have pushed the payments off a month if I really needed to.

One other minor accomplishment of late was getting the Bank of America to reset my payment date of a loan so that it was in the end of the month. Our bills were WAY too front-loaded on the month to be comfortable (had the budget right, but cashflow was never there). It will take a couple billing cycles to change (a complete crock), but at least they changed it.

The moral of the story? It never hurts to ask I guess. I never really did this sort of thing before because I think I was a bit ashamed to ask for help. The more I'm dealing with this stuff, the more I'm wanting to ask for terms to be different and things of that nature.

New Year, New Budget

I finally got to see the net effect of my raise, which ended up being about and extra $160 a month -- not bad. We also decided to cut back on our lunch/weekend budget substantially which added another $120.

The main thing that is killing us is child care. Before, it was around $172 a Week, but we managed to get it down to $129 a week by having family watch the kids two days a week (1 - 3 days cost the same).

The net effect of all this shuffling is an increase of $480 a month in the budget. Some of this has been eaten up by car insurance because I can't afford to pay the lump sum this time around. If we can stick to this new budget, we should be able to make some headway. Really, if we can just suffer through this for about six months, we should start to open up some cash flow again.

Things are going to be tight this month though. I've had to pick up some side work just to make it through a couple unexpected (and forgotten about) bills. Our electric bill this time around was double what I was expecting ($370), and I had COMPLETELY forgotten about license plates -- another $250 or so. My goal is to start fresh in February and STICK TO THE BUDGET. We'll see how that goes. I'm sure there will be extra medical expenses of some sort creep up -- they always seem to :).

Murphy's at the Door

Just when you start heading down a good path, something has got to get in your way. That's where we are right now. I've completely fallen back to baby step 1 (getting $1000 in the bank) due to another round of medical expenses.

The good news is I did get a raise this year. I haven't gotten my first check with it on there so we can redo our budget, but the budget needs some serious work anyway. Aside from the new found problems, the budget was there to just cover all the bases, not to help us get ahead. The new challenge is to 1) fix the budget with new bills and new income and 2) build in extra to the budget to help pay things down.

I was really in a bad place last weekend just trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do to get out of this mess. I have a lot of things coming due all at once, and had drained the emergency fund due to other unforeseen medical expenses. I'm actually looking forward to doing my taxes because I'm going to be able to write off medical expenses this year. We had nearly $10,000 in medical expenses (most paid, some on credit cards, and some in loans). Subtract the $2000 flex spending account, and I'm still left with a healthy chunk to work with. Granted, you can only write off what is after 7% of your income, but that still leaves me with a few grand to write off :).

I'll probably sit down this weekend to redo my budget with the new numbers (I'll get my first check with the raise on the 15th), so I'll put an update here after I'm done. I know I'm going to have to cut things this time around, just not sure what is left to cut :(

Incentives....Really?

A couple months back, I decided to dream a bit and took a stroll around a local Mitsubishi car lot, and even drove a couple. Out of my curiosity, I went ahead and let the sales guy give me his pitch, and run through all of the purchasing numbers and leasing numbers. I know it was a bit mean to get his hopes up, but I do find sick enjoyment from time to time letting people try to sell me something I have no intention of buying and watching them look at me dumbfounded when I walk away.

Anyhow, I've been getting marketing email from them off and on ever since. A couple things even caught my eye. One was if you bought one of the remaining 2008 models, they would PAY your car payment for 6 months. Nothing I heard or read had "fine print" so I was of half a mind to go get a 12 month car loan and let them pay for half my car :). I know that probably wouldn't happen (maybe with a fight, but not likely) so I didn't mess with it.

This brings me to the topic of my rant. I got another email today about the 2009 models. "Get dealer incentives of $1000." One thousand dollars? Really? That's like maybe 5% of the cost of a new car. What kind of incentive is that? Most grocery store sales give you a better discount than that. Buy one get one half off, three for one, etc. Incentives? That's not an incentive. That is insulting my intelligence to think offering $1000 will make me think I'm getting a great deal on something that has been marked up well beyond that.

You would think with the struggling auto market, they would have their own INCENTIVE to help spur interest in their products. How about having a Kohl's style sale. You know, things between 40-60% off. Cars on the "clearance rack" marked down to 75% off. You start doing that and I guarantee people will start flocking in to by cars. If I could all of a sudden buy a new Lancer for $6000, now you've got my attention.

Are you listening auto industry? You want to sell stuff -- then HAVE A SALE. Forget this 1-5% off crap, actually mark something down and maybe we'll come pay you a visit.

Not that I could afford to pay $6000 for a new car right now, but still :). AFTER I get this mess cleaned up, I'm much more likely to be buying a $6000 car than a $15000 car.