Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

How to Save on Your Family’s Medical Expenses While in Debt

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Debt can be crippling at times, affecting things like your quality of life and even your ability to access the services that you need. One of these services is health care, which can be a necessary evil, especially for people with families. This is because healthcare costs are generally quite high, calling for measures to help make them more manageable whenever possible. It’s clear to see how much more urgent it could be to do this if you happen to be in debt. Here are a few ways in which you can save on your family’s medical expenses while you’re in debt so that you make the best use of your money.

Practice Prevention

Prevention is said to be better than cure, and this is even more true in this case. By working to prevent health issues from coming up in the first place, you can save a considerable amount of money. That said, there are several things that you can do to safeguard your health as a family, including going for screenings, regular exams, and vaccinations. Don’t forget that your oral health is also a part of your overall health, and in this case, you should maintain proper oral hygiene routines. One of these is knowing that if you use mouth rinses and fluoride toothpaste alongside regular brushing and flossing, you can lower tooth decay by as much as an impressive 40%.

Make the Best of Health Insurance

Another way in which you can save money on your family’s medical expenses is by making the best use of your insurance coverage. One way to do this is to only use health care professionals in your insurance provider’s network. This is generally going to cost you significantly less money than going to medical facilities that aren’t part of your insurance provider’s network. You can make use of it during screenings and tests meant to help you prevent health issues from coming up. On this note, it’s highly recommended for everyone, no matter their age, to have a physical exam done once every single year.

Learn to Negotiate

You should know that you can negotiate for better prices for treatment or other health care costs that you need. To have the best chance of being granted a discount, you could pay in cash. In this case, you’re going to benefit even more if you have a health savings account for your family where you can withdraw the money you need for treatment. As a result of this, you can avoid digging yourself even deeper into debt, something that may not even be an option if you’ve filed for bankruptcy in some cases. In this case, you may already know that Chapter 13 bankruptcy is sometimes called the wage-earner’s plan. It’s designed for people with a regular income and who would like to repay their debt, but need assistance in doing this.

Compare Different Health Care Providers

Last but not least, make comparisons between different healthcare providers and centers since each sets prices for its services independently. While doing this, make sure that you only compare between the most reputable names in health care. Seeking medical advice and assistance from someone without proper qualifications is a terrible thing to do. This is because they could worsen the condition and leave you with much higher costs than you may have initially had to pay.

By taking these steps and additional ones like making use of generic drugs instead of their original versions whenever you get a prescription, you can make savings while safeguarding your family’s health. Make plans for the future so that you can get access to the best health care possible in your situation while working on clearing your debt. This way, better financial times for you and your family may be ahead.

I Quit My Job: How I Did It; and You Can Too

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One of the first things that you, I, or anyone else will likely worry about when contemplating quitting our jobs is the financial aspect of doing so.  We’ll worry about whether we’ll be able to make enough money, on our own, to pay our bills.  We’ll worry about whether that income, if it is enough, will be steady.  We’ll worry about how we’ll make that money, and whether the income streams that we have are going to be robust enough to scale to a point where we can securely quit our jobs and work for ourselves.  I know they were things that were foremost on my mind when I was deciding whether I should quit my job or not.  In the end, I decided that it was time to let go of some of my fears and take the leap towards self-employment.  Taking that leap was not an easy thing to do.  Here’s how I was able to do it, and how you can too.

Get Your Finances in Order

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  It’s not.  If it were, there would be a lot of personal finance bloggers who would be blogging about something else today, myself included.  Despite what some people believe, personal finance isn’t a simple thing to master.  I know I haven’t done it yet.  I’m a little bit further along the curve than some, and further behind than others.

When I first started blogging about personal finance, it was during a very dark time in my financial life.  My wife and I had been wondering if we were going to have to declare bankruptcy, and paying our bills each month was a juggling act.  Somewhere in that time period, I discovered other personal finance blogs, and through them, Dave Ramsey.  I ordered, and read Ramsey’s book, The Total Money Makeover.

It was the beginning of a financial turnaround for us.  Ramsey’s book Kathmandu , Nepal,Himalayas,Everestgave us the financial know-how and direction to turn our finances around.  With the help of that book, and the amazing community of personal finance blogs, our finances became something that was far less of a worry for us.  That was over five years ago now. If we hadn’t had that turnaround, and gotten our finances in order, there is no way that I would have been able to do what I did.  We have been aggressively paying down our debt and refusing new debt whenever possible.

When I Quit My Job

If you’re a regular reader here, you are familiar with the story leading up to the day I quit my job.  We had become a bit lax in our financial governance, were about to buy a new house, and were suffering from a severe case of lifestyle creep.  Our lifestyle had grown along with our incomes.  We still were attempting to pay down our debt, and we were still avoiding new debt in most places, but we could have been doing so much more than we were.  That’s our fault.  We got comfortable with our income, got comfortable with the luxuries that we had let creep into our lives, and we lost sight of our end goals.  The day that I decided to quit my job, we took all that back and started actively working towards our goals again.

In a way, quitting has been a blessing.  It’s given us a renewed perspective on what we need, how much we need, and what we can do without.  If you think you are going to quit your job or just want to quit your job, you can’t do it without having a firm grasp on your finances, and truly having them in order.

Cut Your Costs

Part of getting your finances in order, and a large part of being able to make it without the once steady income that you made at your job, is cutting your costs to a level that is sustainable, given your new income level.  I went from a mid-5-figure-a-year salary with steady paychecks every two weeks to a part-time job that I get 20 hours a week at and an inconsistent online income.  In the time since I quit, we’ve cut our costs dramatically. When I was still employed, we were spending nearly $6,000 a month.  That includes debt repayment but is still a pretty large number. Now, we’ve cut our costs by about $2,000.  If you had asked me in October of last year if we could do that, I would have said you were nuts. We found a way to do it and so can you.  It’s all a matter of motivation.  Do you have the motivation to cut costs so that you can give your dream the wings it needs?

Work Your Ass Off

Have your finances in order.  Cut all the costs you can.  None of that will amount to a hill of beans unless you are ready and willing to work your ass off.  It’s something that I still struggle with.  Every job you’ve ever had has conditioned you to expect to have someone telling you what you had to do.  Everywhere you’ve ever worked, you’ve had a supervisor looking over your shoulder giving you the tasks that you were to work on, setting your yearly goals for you, and keeping you motivated to do them with the threat of unemployment.  Once you quit your job, and decide to work for yourself, that all ends.  It sounds freeing, doesn’t it?  It is.  And, it isn’t.  You have to become your own supervisor.  Your only motivator is to make your choice valid and make enough money to live off of.  You aren’t going to get fired for spending 4 hours a day on Facebook anymore; You’re going to go broke.  Scary, no?

As scary as that may sound, it is freeing.  You’ll have the freedom to make the choice to work your ass off.  It’s something that, even now, almost 3 months later, I still struggle with.  There have been days where I haven’t done a damn thing.  And, I’ve regretted each one of them.  Each day spend screwing off has cost me potential money.  If I don’t get anything written for this site or any of my other sites, it’s one less article that you’ll enjoy reading (I hope), and one less well-written article to attract new readers and new advertisers.  Because of the long-lasting ability of any article that I write, the repercussions of a missed article can be exponential.  What you choose to do, may not be writing content for websites, but you’ll likely see the same trend.  And you’ll likely struggle to keep yourself on task without a supervisor.  I’m learning, and you will too, that you have to provide that supervisory oversight for your new venture.  It’s no longer a matter of keeping your job, but of keeping your bills paid, your heat on, and the foreclosure agent from your front door.  Work your ass off.

Have a Little Hope (And Faith)

None of what I’ve said is the most important part of this.  Without hope, you are destined to fail.  You have to have hope that you will succeed.  You have to have hope that you’ll overcome any mistakes you make.  You have to have hope that you will prevail and make your venture grow roots and blossom.  You have to have faith in yourself, that you can do the things you need to do to make your venture a success.  Without hope and faith, you will fail.  I can tell you, firsthand, that there are going to be days when both your hope and your faith will falter.  There will be days that you feel like you’ve started on the trail to scale Mt. Everest.  The air is getting thin, and all you want to do is, stop, turn around, and head back to the comfy, warm, job you had before.  But, like anyone who has attempted to climb that mountain, you have to keep climbing.  The trail may change directions from time to time, but the goal is the same.  Find ways to renew your hope through community, family, and friends.  I’m lucky enough to have a very supportive family, friends, and the community of personal finance bloggers to help me keep that hope and keep my faith.  You can find that too.

Get your finances in order, dramatically cut your costs, work your ass off, and keep your hope and faith alive.  Reach your summit.
photo credit: ilkerender

4 Tips to Help You Avoid Bankruptcy

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If you’re feeling swamped by debt and money problems, you might consider bankruptcy as a solution. After all, a Chapter 7 bankruptcy can get your debts discharged in 90 days. This is a very tempting solution that works for some people. However, it has major consequences, so you’ll want to avoid bankruptcy if at all possible. Here are some tips to help you avoid bankruptcy.

1. Keep Track of Your Spending

You need to have a budget. If you have an incomplete budget now, it is time to tighten it up and make sure it includes everything you’re buying. If you don’t keep track of your spending, you’ll end up spending a lot more money than you anticipated without realizing it. This might lead to you taking on debt in order to cover the remaining bills. Chapter 7 bankruptcy can discharge debt like credit cards, medical bills, personal loans, and overpayment. But it comes at the cost of your credit and has a lot of consequences. If you track your spending carefully, you’ll be able to tell where all of your money is going. It will also let you find the holes and plug them up, preventing you from wasting money.

2. Don’t Overspend

Even if you know where your money is going, spending too much of it will still put you at risk of bankruptcy. Don’t overspend on purchases, both large and small. Instead, learn how to research prices and find different savings opportunities. You might be able to find a cheaper alternative to the item you’re looking at. Or you can get it on sale during certain times of the year. When you avoid overspending, you can also avoid taking on debt since you’ll be working within your income. So be conscious of prices when you’re buying and look for ways to bring those prices down.

3. Work With Your Creditors

If you’re overwhelmed by your debt, there may be ways to make it easier without bankruptcy. Lenders are often willing to work with you if you explain what is going on. Call your credit card company and tell them if you’re struggling to make your payments. While they won’t cancel the balance, you might be able to get a lower interest rate or avoid a penalty for late payment. These companies don’t want you to get in trouble with your debt. They’d rather work with you to find a way in which you can still pay them and avoid bankruptcy. In 2016, there was an increase from 24,797 companies in bankruptcy in the first quarter of the year to 25,227 in the second quarter. If you work with your creditors, you may be able to avoid being part of this.

4. Consolidate Your Debt

Often, you have debt coming from all different sources. You may have credit cards, auto loans, medical bills, or other loans you’ve taken out and can no longer pay. One way to make these manageable is by consolidating your loans. In this case, you’ll take out another loan and use it to pay off all of your debts. Then you’ll only have one bill to pay, with only one interest rate. This can make your payments much smaller each month, giving you a chance to get back on your feet.

While bankruptcy is a solution to financial troubles, it can be a difficult one. You want to find ways to avoid it if at all possible. If you’re struggling with debt, consider applying these solutions to your problems first. By figuring out your financial situation and looking for assistance, you will have a better chance of getting back on your feet without filing for bankruptcy.