Thanks for visiting Ultimate Money Blog! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. The other day we received our bill for our annual homeowners insurance premium.  I opened it up and was shocked that it was $110 more than last year, at $724.  I didn’t think that in one year the rate would go up that much!  I looked over the bill, and there is a blurb about inflation: “Inflation has increased construction cost by 3.00 percent.  Your coverage and premium have been increased accordingly.”  What? 3% of $615 (what the premium used to be) is only around $18.  So why did my premium go up over $100?  Annoying. We already have a $1000 deductible and I really don’t want to raise that.  I don’t know if I should shop around for homeowners insurance quotes, or if I should just stick with them because this is normal.  I have our cars insured with the company also, so we receive a discount for that.  I also like that the company that we’re with is a [...]

It’s open enrollment time for benefits at my employer.  They have given us our options for health insurance, and we are able to choose which plan we’d like.  The choices for health insurance have been simplified down to a few choices, and it mainly boils down to two choices: a high deductible health plan or a PPO.  Last year, we ended up going with a PPO health insurance, and it ended up costing us more money out of pocket in premiums each month.  We did have less out of pocket expenses than if we had chosen the high deductible health plan.  Of course, this year I’m going to analyze the costs and see what makes more sense for our family.  The thought of a high deductible health plan scares me for a few reasons, but I need to not dismiss it, and see if we’d save more money going that route for health insurance. Cost of High Deductible Health Plan versus PPO The cost for the high deductible health plan for the entire year is $1,162.68.  The cost for the [...]

I went to the dentist this morning.  Before I went, I made sure to check our current dental insurance information on our company’s human resources website. It’s a good thing I did because it had changed from last year.  While I was logged onto the site, I printed out the dental insurance information.  The cost printed out along with the explanation of benefits.  For a whole year of dental insurance that covers myself and husband, we pay $402.24.  It’s only $15 a paycheck, but I really started to wonder if it’s worth having dental insurance any more.  Neither myself or my husband have been to the dentist at all this year (bad, I know!).  So we’re pretty much not using the insurance at all. Our open enrollment period is coming up soon, and I’m wondering if I should just go ahead and drop the dental insurance.  I do think it’s very important to have your teeth cleaned every six months (and our insurance pays for that 100%) but if we don’t do it, then we’re wasting $402.24.  I don’t think [...]