Help Comes From The Heart

First off, I just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated to our campaign. I feel very humbled by the fact that we were able to raise $5450, which had a massive impact on our financial situation.

The last few months have been busy with our noses to the grindstone. We were able to pay off Terra's van as planned, and made small strides despite some dental needs that came up. But, that all changes with the campaign :)

Now for the fun bits:

We were able to pay off three major medical debts and a few minor bills. In all, these bills represent $450/month of expense that is GONE. This gives us a HUGE amount of breathing room, and allowed me to pull Terra's check out of the budget so that it is finally extra money. This extra can go for extra snowball money or fun money without impacting the established get-out-of debt plan -- which makes me very happy :). Words cannot describe the relief I'm feeling at this point.

However, this isn't the best part. I recently discovered that Aetna is reprocessing all of our Vivaglobin claims as a pharmacy benefit instead of a major medical benefit. Translation? That means that instead of each dose costing $800 per kid per month (then subject to deductibles and 80/20), each dose is $65 flat. $65!! Since Aetna's pharmacy was one of the three major debts we paid off with the campaign, we will be getting approximately $1200-$1500 back from Aetna. THIS IS HUGE :)

I'll use this to pay off the remaining balances on some of the smaller bills and use the rest to continue walking up our debt snowball. Sure, our deductible will be replaced, but we are in a pretty good place now and that's ok :).

THANK YOU again to everyone who has donated and who has been praying for our family. You can still donate at From The Heart by specifying our family in the notes, OR you could go see what other great families are being sponsored and help meet their needs :).

Busy six months

It has been a busy six months in our household. I had canceled our credit cards and we were going without, we had a cash only Christmas, AND I was able to pay off two large debts. Lots of sacrifices were made to make this happen, bit it was all worth it. We sold a car and replaced it with a cheap cash-only alternative, canceled all extra utilities, didn't go out, didn't eat out, worked extra jobs and finally pulled through a big win. Granted, we still have a ways to go, but are in a much better position than we were six months ago.

The biggest lesson learned - FILE YOUR HOMESTEAD TAX EXEMPTION! I waited too long to do this and got burned by my mortgage payment for the last year. That, however, has changed and our new payment is $300 less than it was before, freeing up that much more in the budget for the debt snowball. It is probably good timing because of the ongoing medical treatments the girls will need, but with insurance hopefully covering everything, we should be in good shape.

The next thing on the radar is a couple small medical debts and the Van being paid off. I'll be sure to update this more frequently as we knock down more debts. It CAN be done people.. you just have to have discipline.

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.

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.