This year I decided to participate in the Freeze Yer Buns Challenge by Crunchy Chicken. hosted by My thermostat has been hovering around sixty degrees, and to be honest, I really haven’t been cold. I’ve been wearing fleeces and sweatshirts and using my woodburning stove to heat the house. It’s been pretty pleasant. We got our first electric bill in the mail since it’s been cold and it was $89.  Not too bad! I guess I can get off Mr. Money’s back now. It looks like he’s living up to the challenge as well. We’ve been debating buying a programmable thermostat, but I think it would be a waste of money because we can do the same thing by turning it up and down ourselves. I think I’m going to venture out to Goodwill today to look for some sweats and fleeces and sweatshirts if I get ambitious enough.  It seems that on weekends (and cold ones at that) I like to stay home and relax and not go anywhere!  There are many projects I can be working on: finish [...]

I’ve been having a bad couple of weeks.  First I find out there’s a good possibility I’m going to lose my job, and with that comes losing my health insurance. I am a little stressed and I’m worrying a lot about money right now and what the heck I am going to do about health insurance. I’m going to sign up through my current employer, but I’m really sweating what I’m going to do if I lose my job because I have to have health insurance.  But not only am I worrying about those two big things, I’m also worrying that I’m not saving enough money and paying off debt fast enough.  I read all these blogs and it seems like everyone else is saving more than me and paying off debt faster than I am.  We’re doing the best we can right now, and in all actuality I think we’re doing well, but I can’t help but doubt whether or not we’re doing the right thing.  This leads me to believe something important that I not only need to [...]

Yesterday I received an “explanation of benefits” from my health insurance company in the mail for my surgery I had a couple weeks ago.  I ripped open the envelope and my heart stopped.  $10,375.25.  My surgery cost over $10,000!  I have been awaiting the hospital bill for awhile because I knew it was going to take a chunk out of our budget.  I was assuming that the surgery would cost $5,000 on the high end, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw that it was twice what I had estimated! I had planned on paying about $1250 for my co insurance since I have met my deductible this year.  That was really worrying me.  I pay 20% for surgery after my deductible is met.  20% of $10,000 is $2,000, $750 more than I had anticipated!  I looked over the letter and discovered that after the discounts the hospital gave my insurance company, I’m going to be paying about $250.  I can’t tell you how happy I am!  The rest of that money can sit comfortably in our emergency [...]