Financial Learnin'

One of our goals for this year is to figure out how to be a good boy and girl when it comes to money. Yes, you'd think that would have been a goal a long time ago, but I guess experience is the best teacher. I'm going to write some stuff down now, because it will be interesting to see what the goals were, and what we'll have done by next summer.

Our friends recently got us on this Dave Ramsey kick, and we're going to try to work together to do his program and get out of debt... again. We've been out of debt twice before. When I say out of debt, I mean except for the mortgage, car payment and student loan. I'd like to be ALL THE WAY out of debt, and that's the point of the program.

The last time we were out of debt was last May. It lasted one month, because in June, we went to CA on our RV trip, and I'm glad we did, but it was $4000. It's not paid off. I also decided not to grade papers this year, so no extra money for me. Because of that debt, less money went elsewhere, which resulted in us accruing more debt, though not that much. We'd like to get rid of it, but first we need about $2000 in our easy to use savings acct. There is $2000 in our Etrade, but we're not touching that. There's also a 401K we hope is not hurting too badly.

DH will start at a wonderful new Microsoft job soon, which will bump our pay and also our guessing game of how much medical we pay for month. See, sometimes we pay $300 or $400 a month, other times it's $500 for hospitalization extra, or $150 because someone has croup (which could happen tonight, in fact). Since MS will pay all our everything medically, all the guesswork is gone. Phew!

As an aside, I should give my husband a name, instead of DH. I can think of a few, but I should be nice... :) Honey? Ideas?

Here is something we learned today, for instance. DH had surgery last month. We then got the surgery bill. It paid for the surgery 100%, but the two CAT scans leading up to the surgery that tell them where to cut? Those weren't covered, to the tune of $1122. WTF???

So, today, DH got a swing shift because his buddies from his current work (3 days to go) want to take him out tonight. This morning he played TA DA! The Insurance Company Game. After much searching and establishing of a timeline and deeming responsibility, it was determined that because our insurance is based in N. Carolina, and not in our state, they go by their rules. Because of this, we were not told we had to do a pre-authorization. When we found out, they said they don't do "retroactive pre-authorizations". Now that's a fun doublespeak term for you.

However, because of this dumb rule in which we do not have mind-reading skills, this has happened so often since the merger, that there is a form you can fill out right there on the website, and now we have filled it out and will be waiting for up to 180 days to find out what happens next. Meanwhile, the clinic will start charging you if you do not pay the balance after 60 days, to the tune of 12%. Since they can't actually stop that process, you have to call back every 30 days to restart the clock on both the insurance company and the clinic that is waiting for payment. So for the next five months, we'll probably be calling on the third of each month.

Beauracrazy!!!

The lesson learned here is that, in 2 hours, DH earned $500/hour because he followed up.

Here is the best thing about the switch over to a new job, besides the fact that our insurance is about to become worth its weight in gold:

DH gets paid on the 15th and 30th with his current company. He starts with the new company on Dec. 8th. So far we have determined he will get a full paycheck on the 15th from the old company, and will get a even fuller one on the 30th because he gets a bit of his paid time off (PTO) cashed out! On top of that, we are pretty sure he'll get a new paycheck from the new company, but we don't know what days he'll be paid. Is it twice a month, and is it variable? We'll find out all of this on Monday, I imagine.

So basically, by January, we'll have gotten double paychecks.

According to the Dave Ramsey plan, we need the savings first, then we start a debt snowball by attacking one debt, and when it's gone, apply that amount to the next one, til it's gone.

Then, in February, we'll get our tax refund, probably. At that point, if we're really, really lucky, we may get rid of our consumer debt once again. And then we can start on the big stuff and fix up our house a teeny bit, too.

Oh, and get DH a different car, possibly. But no rush on that.

Yay us!!!