Finances are Spooky

Ok, that was a lame attempt at Halloween humor, but things were a bit scary there for the last couple months. We had built up quite the backlog of medical bills, but I am glad to say that I was able to work out payment plans with ALL of the providers without having to incur any new debt to do so.

I also got some decent news over the last couple months -- the big one being getting a rather generous staged raise between now and January 1st. The first part of it was effective this month, and while I've only had two paychecks with the extra money, the effects are already starting to become apparent. In January, the next phase kicks in. This is awesome not only that it is extra money, but the total between my raises and all of the money that I've been able to free up by cutting lifestyle equates to about what our old house payment used to be :). The realization that you have managed to gain basically a mortgage payment is a very good one indeed.

With the payment plans I've got in place and the extra money coming in now, I've got a great outlook for how the rest of 2009 will go and how 2010 will turn out. I'm already starting to get panicked calls from creditors about my balances going away. I've got a 0% interest medical loan that I've just about paid off. When it got to be about 5 months away from being paid off, they have been calling me once a week with "good news" that I've got money available that they will gladly give me -- at 24% interest. No thanks :). By the way, making sure they only have my Google Voice number is awesome. It makes it easy to ignore them :).

Whew... Can I get off this ride yet?

Ok, so I've been quiet on here for a bit, but that's because I've been holding on for dear life trying not to get flung off this marry-go-round of disaster. In July, our insurance reset, so we got another $500 put into an account and $1000 put into our Flex Spending account to last through the end of the year. By 7/31, all $1500 of that money was gone and we are just about through our deductible (of $3000). Granted, it started a bit lower because of the first 6 months of the year, but still :).

Then, to top it all off, Piper had to get some dental work done and because the Dentist lied about taking our insurance, we owe $591. Sure, they can "take" it and send the claim in, but for the things that are actually covered, it is at 60/40 instead of 80/20. Also, because they are out of network, other things cost a bit more. When I confronted them about this, they simply said "oh yeah, we're not in the network because they make us charge less." No kidding... you don't say?

So, here is my nastygram against "Pediatric & Adolescent Dentistry" in Carmel, Indiana. We saw Dr. Laura Brinson Grahm, who actually is a great Dentist, but her business practices are complete crap. The other dentist in that practice is Dr. Rebecca Stuart Donnelson. I'm not sure of her competency, but I still insist that no one do business with them, and if you do currently, please stop :). And for Google's sake, here's some more information in hopes this gets indexed: Address: 13450 N Meridian St. Suite 363 Carmel, Indiana 46032. Phone: 317-846-5893.

Thanks to the wonderful freedom of speech we all have, they can't force me to take this down either, so eat it :). Stating that you can process Delta Dental isn't the same as being in network, and you need to make that clear to patients in need of semi-emergency work.

I've officially got the Vibe listed in hopes of selling that and paying off another year old hospital bill. I've actually got someone coming to look at it tomorrow. They've contacted me before and from the first email I'm sure they are going to low ball me, but we'll see how things go.

What I really need to do is stumble into about $30,000 somehow. That would make things much easier to deal with (and get a few predatory lenders out of our lives). I'd still have a ways to go, but it would be at least a bit more doable. At least my beater is running strong, and I got the AC somewhat fixed too -- so I'm not losing 20 lbs of water during my drive home everyday :).

Let this be a lesson -- Debt is bad, and even worse when you don't have an emergency fund and actually have a couple long term medical conditions to take care of. Cut the cards... live within your means.

Bills Are From Mythology

I swear, bills are really a new form of Hydra. You cut one head off, and three more grow up in its place. Things have been rather interesting around here lately :).

First off, I'm driving the Grand Am as my daily driver (finally), and am getting ready to prep the Vibe for sale. I've even managed to pay off one of the many medical bills we had laying around. The downside, however is that I've incurred about twice what that one was (on another payment plan), and will be having to pay for a MRI soon. THEN, the Max (one of our dogs), began trying to scratch his brain out of his cheek, so we had to take him to the vet. Some shaving, treatment, antibiotics, lamp shade, and $160 later, he's all better. Poor guy, he looked so pitiful for the first day :).

The icing on the cake is the wonder that is increasing property taxes. Due to the recent changes around here, our house payment is going to go up about $200 -- effectively undoing some of what I've been driving toward with freeing up cash flow. If I can sell the vibe and use the proceeds to pay off another medical loan, then I'll be back up $300 a month. With the Van edging in on the $3000 mark, it should be one of the next things to go. Speaking of the Van, I had to get some work done on it which cost a bit. The good news is that I got the Tires for Life deal on it when I bought it, so I'll be getting a new set of tires here soon. The bad news is that to keep the deal, I've got to get it aligned (understandable), which will run about $150. :)

I did get a letter in the mail today from a Pontiac dealer, however. They are looking for Vibes (I guess people have been asking for them). Since they know I have one, they are offering to buy it because they are low on inventory. They're also offering more than what I owe on it, and I could possibly get more out of them -- so that is kind of cool. It would be nice to be able to sell it and get pretty close to what I want without the hassle of actually having to deal with people :).

Anyhow, I'm off for now. The next update will probably be what happens with the car. Stay tuned :)

More Car Voodoo

I've had some time to really check out the car that I talked about in the last few posts, and have discovered some pretty cool things. The main gem in this is the exhaust problem I had I was able to fix with a $5 roll of JB Weld putty. Turns out that when they put the exhaust on the car, they only welded the bottom half of it to the flange that connects to the header, not the top half. So, a little bit of putty crammed into that joint later, I've got a sealed exhaust system :).

I spent some time cleaning the interior too and it is in surprisingly good shape. I imagine if the previous owner took the time to actually clean it, he could have gotten a lot more out of the car. I'm going to be getting some seat covers here soon, but the seats really don't need it -- they just look a bit dull. After I do some more little cosmetic things to it, it will be a pretty nice little car.

Mechanically, I need to recharge the AC ($30 kit), and at some point the wheel bearings may need to be replaced (I'm noticing some odd vibrations when coasting). Even without doing the usual tuning I do to the intake, ignition, and exhaust systems, this car is getting 32-35mpg -- not bad for a 13 year old car. I'm really curious to see how well it does after I play with it some more.

Now, all I have to do is get the vibe cleaned up and listed for sale. I'll let everyone know how that goes soon. Hopefully it will sell quick :).

Forum Credit Union = Awesome

A few posts back I was ranting about Chase and their aptitude for not being customer centric. With that in mind, I'd like to tell you what happened with my recent dealings with Forum Credit Union.

I had a few questions about a loan I have through them, so I logged into the online banking to get my account number to call. While there, I noticed they had an online chat option, so I decided to check that out. The app ran surprisingly well, and I got someone right away. We worked though the question that prompted the visit, then she asked the classic "Is there anything else that I can help you with?"

"As a matter of fact, there is." I answered. I asked her what would be involved in setting up a checking account, because I was wanting to move my banking business away from Chase. She responded "I can do that for you right here. I just need you to accept these conditions. Agreeing in this chat is the same as doing it in writing." She then proceeded to paste a few paragraphs into the chat window.

That was all it took. She later asked if I wanted debit cards, so those are on the way now. It was by far the coolest experience I think I ever have had with banking. In contrast, most of the correspondence I've gotten from Chase was a small bit of actual content surrounded by auto-generated legalese and the typical "You are very important to us" nonsense. If I were so important, why is most of what you send generated by a computer?? :)

Anyhow, if anyone is looking for a financial institution that isn't going to screw you over (in service or financially), I would highly recommend Forum. They are quick, courteous, and well, they are a Credit Union. They weren't involved in the sub-prime shenanigans and have a decent financial position. Unlike Chase, I don't foresee Forum changing rates on anything to try to compensate for their bad decisions -- but I digress :).

Bottom line: Forum Credit Union = Awesome.

It may be Crap, but it's mine.

Project "find a beater" has been a success, and as of last Friday, I'm the proud owner of a 96 Grand Am. To be fair, it probably isn't that much of a beater. I mean, the interior is a bit rough, the engine is strong (recently rebuilt), and the body is in GREAT shape. The kicker is, I managed to pick it up for $850 :). It has 155,000 miles, which is low for a car that old.

The only REAL problem with it a small exhaust leak between the header and catalytic converter. Out of comic curiosity, I called a muffler shop to see what they would charge me to replace that section of pipe. Apparently "they would HAVE to replace the entire cat for that pipe to be replaced" -- at $600. I was trying really hard not to completely laugh at the guy considering the car is only worth $850 :). After some quick searching at Advanced Auto Parts, I found I can fix it for under $50. SO, that will be my project for this weekend. After that is done, I'll be able to start driving it as my daily, so the Vibe will be listed for sale soon. It will be good to finally get this debt snowball rolling.

If anyone is interested, it is a 2003 and in awesome shape, 88K miles, and I will be listing it for $6800 :).

I'm actually kind of excited about this in a sick sort of way. It reminds me of getting my first car. Even though it isn't all that great, you can enhance its value by accessorizing it :). I'm totally going to be getting an 8-ball shifter for this thing... :)

It has been a LONG month...

Indeed, it has been a long month. Nothing seemed to be going right in the midst of getting beat down by bills, but I have a plan that might do the trick.

Basically, I'm going hardcore and have been getting rid of services and picking things to sell to try to get extra money and to reduce monthly outlay. The latest victims? DirecTV and Vonage. Most of our entertainment comes from Xbox Live and network TV, so the DirecTV had to go. I dropped Vonage and went back to a basic line just so that the alarm has something to use.

The next step will be to get rid of my car. I'm currently looking to pay cash for something around $1500 or so. The idea is that by spending $1500, I can free up roughly $6800 in debt and get rid of about $300 a month in monthly obligations (depending on what I can get for the vibe, of course.)

I've also been working like crazy in a second job to help fund the car plan, so hopefully this will fall into place soon. I'll keep you updated on how it is going when I get the snowball rolling.

Money Saving Tip: Cheap Family Outing

Yesterday we decided to go to the Zoo, which normally could be a fairly expensive ordeal. We, however, managed to go with no cost aside from a couple small things we got the girls in the gift shop. How did we accomplish this great and wondrous feat? Let me explain :).

Now, it does help that we had free tickets to get in, but a lot of money can be spent on drinks and food. Instead of buying that $5.00 burger and $3.00 beverage for everyone, we decided to have a family picnic. The Zoo here doesn't allow you to bring in your own food, but they do give pass outs so you can go back out to your car. There, we opened up the back of the van, sat down, and ate our packed lunch. It was actually a really cool experience. We were the only ones out there, so it was quiet and we were able to sit in peace and enjoy our food and our company without distractions. I tell you what, that sure beats fighting lines and crowds of people to get overpriced food. Not dealing with other people's bratty kids is a plus to :).

Ode to Being Busy

I apologize if I haven't been keeping up with this as much as I should, but I've actually been busy with a lot of side work to pay for the mess I'm about to describe.

A few posts back, I mentioned getting an 18 month loan at 0% for some medical expenses we've racked up at a local hospital. Well, as of right now, I've paid off just about $1000 of that bill, and have about another $1000 in forthcoming expenses. I've actually been trying to pay the loan and the extra bills in tandem, but I just can't afford to do that anymore. I'm going to try to see if I can increase the credit line a bit and tack the new ones onto my previous loan. It shouldn't raise the monthly bill TOO much, but it will still be very close on the budget. Here's to hoping nothing catastrophic happens (yes, my emergency fund is depleted now too...).

My Father-in-Law wants us to go to Texas for Christmas and is hounding us to figure out if we're coming or not, but the way things look, I don't think we can go -- and all for the sake of money. I'd basically have to start saving what I'm paying in medical bills now to have the cash to go, but since we have the bills and the budget is too tight with them, I'm not sure how that is going to happen. To anyone out there reading this who don't have debt, DON'T GET ANY. Or if you have to, keep it under 25% of your gross. When you lose one person working, it really taxes things. I went from having a few hundred extra a month to put toward debt to going in the red every month. Not a fun place to be.

Looks like I've got a lot more side work ahead of me...

Fun With Stimulus

I just got my first paycheck containing our tax cuts. Yes ladies and gets, I'm now the proud recipient of a whopping $33 more dollars a paycheck. Seriously? That's almost not worth the effort of updating Quicken and re-doing budgets. But hey, I'll take what I can get considering how we are going to be screwed later with other hidden taxes.

Things have been a bit rough around the house lately. We still have medical bills trickling in, so my monthly budget is still getting beat down. That, coupled with Terra not working anymore has made things tough. The extra $33 helps, but still doesn't mitigate the problem, just makes it a bit less of a problem.

I've actually been trying a lot harder these days to pick up side work, and finally landed a decent one last night. It involved making a co-op website for 2-4 companies so I think it will probably be a pretty stable gig worth a decent amount of billable hours. I'm going to be billing it out in chunks to hopefully help with the cash flow nightmare I keep getting caught in.

I did realize last night that I probably need to look into quarterly taxes now as well. Before, my side stuff really didn't amount to much and when I turned it in, I was never penalized. This job though, could be worth enough that I might get fined if I don't turn in some sort of taxes on it. I haven't ever had to do something like this before, so I'm not quite sure where to turn. Looks like it may be time to consult one of Dave's ELPs to figure out what to do :).

Anyhow, that's what we've been doing lately -- treading water. My main problem now is time. Working full time, and doing this side stuff is very taxing. I still have some other projects I want to do, but they won't necessarily be bringing in a lot of cash right away. Gotta concentrate my efforts on what will pay the most, even though they aren't on the top of my "this would be cool/fun" list.

Lazy....Economy, and Other Musings

After my glorious rant before, you'd think I'd run right out and try to switch banks. The truth is my work hours keep me away while the banks are open. I have, however, found out there is a branch of a particular bank I want to check on close to my house, so maybe over a weekend or a day off I can run up there and get this business straightened out.

On a positive note, despite what the government is trying to do to the economy, it seems to be starting to recover on its own. With the DOW approaching 8000 again, things are starting to look up in various markets. Let's just hope it continues. My only problem is not having any cash to invest now, because man, I would make a killing :).

The other day I was listening to a local talk radio show, and the host brought up coupons. Specifically, he was wondering if people who thought coupons were too much of a hassle were starting to use them if they had them, or were actively hunting them. I suppose I'd fall into the category of using them if I have them, but I'm definitely not actively seeking them out. Perhaps I should. Let me pose this question: how many of you are using coupons more when you didn't before? Also, if you are, where is a good and easy place of finding them? :). Like I said before, I'm too lazy to put too much effort into anything for too long :).

Until next time..

How Chase is Screwing Its Customers

I know times are a bit lean, especially if you are a financial institution. However, this doesn't give you the right to take it out on your customers in a somewhat captive market.

This story I have heard from multiple sources who come from every walk of life. Until it became my own, I wasn't aware of it. After things affected me and I started looking into the problem more, I became increasingly annoyed with those responsible.

Here's the deal. I've been a customer for chase for quite a few years. I've got a decent credit rating, always paid my bills on time, and brought quite a bit of business to Chase. I was a "responsible customer" as you might want to call it.

The financial crisis hit, and can be boiled down to irresponsible banks giving loans to irresponsible or ill-informed people who couldn't afford said loans. These handful of people completely crippled the financial system because so much was riding on the product they were failing to support.

Fast forward a couple months, and I get a notice in the mail from Chase stating they are changing the terms on my Credit Card. These types of things aren't really that big of a deal, but I actually decided to read this one a bit more closely. Even though I've been a good customer, a "responsible" customer, my interest rate was being changed from 6.5% fixed to 10.99% variable -- which in today's market puts it around 13%. So, for being responsible, I get "rewarded" with a 116% increase in my interest rate wheras those who have been irresponsible with their funds are getting handouts (bailed out) from the government. The interest rate I was moved to is higher than my first credit card I got when I was in HIGH SCHOOL working part time -- and had no credit history.

More stories I've heard range from adding monthly service fees to boosting interest rates even higher -- upwards of 22%. After some heated messages I finally got a reason -- "we needed to adjust our terms to make these products more profitable". So, due to their bad business decisions, those of us who did nothing wrong are being shouldered with carrying the company out of this mess.

As I noted in a previous post, I'm working on moving my business elsewhere. To reference the "captive market" comment above, in today's climate it is getting increasingly hard to find someone willing to take on a large chunk of unsecured debt i.e credit card balances. As soon as I can find somewhere I can move to, I am jumping ship and I hope that most of Chase's customers are in a position to do so.

I know you're hurting, but alienating your good customers is not the way to make it through unscathed. This is the same backward mentality that keeps certain parties from cutting taxes to stimulate the economy because they think it will cut into their tax revenue too much. Here's a news flash -- you put more money back into people's pockets they will spend it. The tax revenue collected from this spending would far outweigh the cost of giving people money back.

As the saying goes - "I'll promise to be nicer when you promise to be smarter". Here's to you Chase.

Things Just Keep Getting Interesting

A lot of things have happened since I last posted. Basically, due to the girls' health concerns, my wife had to quit her job to keep the kids out of day care. Needless to say this has severely upset the budget. I think I've got things lined back out, but there isn't any room for extra payments on anything which is depressing. I've been taking up side work to get extra money to help pay on this stuff. So far, I've been able to make about $1300 since this all went down -- so lets hope I can keep this up this year.

During this we did have a couple bright spots though. Some friends of ours pooled together money to give us some cash and a bunch of gift cards to groceries and supermarkets. All in all, we got a few hundred dollars, so we're putting that to good use getting food and trying to make it stretch it as far as we can.

I ended up just banking all of my tax return (which was off by $1500...stupid turbo tax). I'm going to use that to pay off the new medical bills I talked about in my last post(which have started to come in btw), and use the rest to pay down our hospital loan after the dust settles.

Friendly reminder: if anyone wants to help out you can do so with the paypal link to the right :).

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.