daylatedollarshort
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
- 9,358
Some of our biggest expenses have been healthcare related and helping out family members. We just covered the out of pocket max of $6,550 for a family member. We also had a bid to have some trees thinned and some removed - the first bid came to $10K. I hadn't really thought about the trees getting bigger over the years, trees reaching the end of their life span and needing removal and the arborist expenses going way up as time passes. But we like having a wooded lot and spend a lot of our time outside so it is worth it to us.
I had a 40 minute medical test and the initial bill was $7K. I learned the hard way we are in maybe the highest cost healthcare zip code in the country. Insurance got that down to under $5K but still pretty crazy. Next time I will know to get bids before hand, maybe drive 50 miles away for routine work and/or go to the county hospital for routine tests. So in the future that won't happen again plus we will have Medicare eventually. There's a high percent of seniors in our area on Medicare which is partly why the hospitals charge more for anyone not on Medicare plus we have a single network buying up all the doctor's offices and facilities in the area for near monopoly pricing.
On the plus side we've found all sorts of ways to lower our expenses we didn't even know about before retirement, college was much less than we thought it would be (online credits, in state schools, community college credits, paid internships, financial aid, etc.) and the ACA came along. So overall our budget and long term financial plan are actually much better than our initial estimates.
I had a 40 minute medical test and the initial bill was $7K. I learned the hard way we are in maybe the highest cost healthcare zip code in the country. Insurance got that down to under $5K but still pretty crazy. Next time I will know to get bids before hand, maybe drive 50 miles away for routine work and/or go to the county hospital for routine tests. So in the future that won't happen again plus we will have Medicare eventually. There's a high percent of seniors in our area on Medicare which is partly why the hospitals charge more for anyone not on Medicare plus we have a single network buying up all the doctor's offices and facilities in the area for near monopoly pricing.
On the plus side we've found all sorts of ways to lower our expenses we didn't even know about before retirement, college was much less than we thought it would be (online credits, in state schools, community college credits, paid internships, financial aid, etc.) and the ACA came along. So overall our budget and long term financial plan are actually much better than our initial estimates.
