I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘plan’ Category

Last Thursday I went to the dentist, and I got the news I knew I would, but with more finality than I expected.

I have to have my wisdom teeth out.

My mouth is… not small, and my wisdom teeth were never impacted and fit in there just fine. So I hadn’t had them out as a teenager like many people do. My last dentist had made noises about me getting them out because one of them wasn’t quite fully erupted, but he didn’t explain more than that. (I’ve since decided, after starting with our new dentist, that the last dentist wasn’t the best of dentists). We just got dental insurance in August 2007, so now we go to a different dentist and this was my first appointment with him. They did a lot more things than the last dentist did, including measuring my gums compared to my teeth, and determined that my gums are slightly receding - which could be a problem but might not turn out to be, so that’s a wait and see thing as I go to this dentist regularly and he sees if they continue to recede or if they’re just like that normally. But around my wisdom teeth, especially the not quite fully erupted one, my gums are receding a lot, and if left unchecked, I’ll not only lose my wisdom teeth but the molars next to them too.

Well of course, I don’t want that to happen. So out come the wisdom teeth.

The bad news is - my dental insurance doesn’t cover oral surgery. They claim my medical insurance should cover it. Well, my medical insurance has an exception in their policy for oral surgery such as wisdom teeth removal. They don’t cover it. The dentist says they’ll submit the charges to both and see what happens but honestly, I am not holding my breath. Our health insurance is generally good but they are very picky about things and my dental insurance is pretty useless for more than cleanings and x-rays. So I am about 98% sure I will be paying out of pocket for this procedure.

$382 per tooth. Plus $50 for the medicine to make me not feel it.

So… I have a $1600 expense looming. I can’t do it right now but I also can’t wait too long. The dentist would prefer I have them out in February but I am going to wait until September. Our Flexible Spending Account for medical expenses, for some reason, runs August 1st - July 31st instead of Jan 1st - Dec 31st like most peoples. We also have a fairly low cap we can put it in each year ($750) which I also don’t understand, but oh well. The company my spouse works for was talking about raising that limit for next year so we are going to look into that, but if they don’t, this is my plan to get the teeth out without going into further debt:

• Use all of the money in the FSA for 2008-2009 for the procedure. That should leave about $900 left for us to pay out of pocket. We did this for hospital expenses for both my pregnancies so we know we are okay without the FSA to dip into all year.
• Save $2000 in our emergency fund between now and September instead of $1000 so I can use the difference to pay for the procedure.

No, this is not an “emergency” because I know about it, the saving it in the emergency fund is just a convenience feature so I don’t have to set up a new account to save for the dentist. I intend to start saving $150/month towards this in March, which means I would save $1050 by September when I have the procedure. Maybe my spouse’s FSA will go up in August and we’ll be able to use more of that towards it and less out of savings. That’d be great news.

I’m thankful I can at least plan for this. I got the news about the teeth in the midst of the car repair drama and I needed to just let it sit in my head and process for a while before I could formulate a plan. Sometimes too many things hit at once. But now, I have a plan.

Bye bye wisdom teeth. Well, 9 months from now, and without further added to our debt total if all goes according to plan. My spouse has his 6 month checkup tomorrow… hopefully no more bad news.  (Update:  not only does he get to keep his wisdom teeth, he didn’t have so much as a cavity.  )

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So, it has been a week and a bit, and I have spent hours a day searching online for new work-from-home employment opportunities. I have been looking basically in three sectors:

• Legal document coding: what I was doing before, basically.
• Data Entry: Pretty straightforward and I have experience in it through the document coding
• Tutoring: I have a PhD in Genetics and I have tutored in the past so I thought this might be an avenue to explore.

I have really gotten nowhere with the document coding and data entry avenues. There just isn’t work out there available right now. Maybe ever. From some research I think a lot of this type of work is being outsourced - I found a number of companies I could apply to if I was located in India. Really. I did put applications in at a few places but none of them were currently hiring in the US, I was just added to their database of available applicants in case something opens up.

Tutoring however, I have made a little progress with. After some back and forth with one company I got approved to take their subject exams to proceed with my application. They have a list of all their exams, and the ones they actually need more tutors for are marked. You can take any exam (or all the exams) but to proceed with the application you need to pass at least one that they need a tutor in right now. Well, all the easy ones were not needed (middle school grade level) but they had a number of high school courses still open. I chose algebra, thinking I would ace it no problem…. and well… it was a disaster. Apparently I have forgotten more math than I ever thought I knew. Heh. So, I didn’t pass that and can retake it in 90 days. With a lot of refreshing on my part! Heh. Funnily enough, I did pass social studies (which I was so not expecting because um… I’m a scientist not a social historian) which they need tutors in so I can officially move on to the next step in the application.

I am going to brush up on my chemistry and geometry over the weekend (other classes they need tutors for) and try those subject exams before I proceed to the next step. But it is nice to have one under my belt that they need tutors in. I also took a few of the middle school exams to get my confidence back after Algebra crushed me and passed 4th-6th grade math and 6th-8th grade science. I’m afraid to take 7th-8th grade math after the algebra disaster. Heh. They don’t need tutors for those right now though, but maybe they will in the future.

So things are looking promising in that arena. If I can get onboard as an online tutor that should help the income out a bit. I need to submit a writing sample, so I need to figure out which post here is my best writing, heh. I write endlessly so no need to write a new thing I think! (All suggestions welcome by the way )

I also have been working at optimizing the advertising on the blog - not adding more specifically but just getting the most out of what is there. I think I may be starting another blog too. Not specifically for income but to have another place to talk about the parenting aspect of my life specifically. Income doesn’t hurt though ;).

Things are moving forward. Even my spouse is pleased and he is a pessimistic bird at heart.

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As I said this morning, November will be a three paycheck month for my spouse. He is paid biweekly which means that two months out of the year, he gets paid three times instead of the normal two. In the past, that money has somehow gotten frittered away on things, the winter one on Christmas related stuff and the summer one on, well, who knows what. This time it is different. I have a plan and a strategy and I am hoping it works.

First off, I need to let go of the idea that it is completely an “extra” paycheck. Although none of our bills are based upon using it, our everyday expenses (gasoline and food primarily) will continue to go on, and a portion of every paycheck is earmarked for the two weeks of expenses it is supposed to cover. I think one of the problems I’ve had in the past is I was a bit too ambitious - I saw the money as “extra” money completely and then when I needed to use some of it just to pay for groceries or gasoline or other “normal” expenses in that two week period, I got discouraged. I used to be an “all or nothing” type of thinker, and so if some was being used, might as well just use it all and try again with the next “extra” paycheck. Not this time.

Basically, after taxes, 401K, health insurance, etc is taken out, my spouse’s “take-home” paycheck every two week is around $1350. I am splitting that into three parts. The first part is the “$350″ part. That is going to be snowflaked directly to the credit card debt. Boom!

The remaining $1000 will be all put into our emergency fund savings account. However it has two purposes. $500 of it is for Christmas presents and other Christmas-related expenses that can’t be absorbed into our budget (mostly travel, we travel by car about 2000 miles round trip over the course of the Christmas holiday to be with family). The other $500 is reserved for paying any “normal” budgetary expenses that come up if needed (hoping not to have to touch that at all). At the end of December (when all Christmas-related stuff is done and paid for) anything remaining from this original $1000 will be snowflaked directly to debt. Even if it is only $1.75. Hopefully it will be considerably more than that. I am waiting until after Christmas for the entire amount in case my $500 for Christmas turns up being not enough and I need to use part of that other $500 for that. We usually spend more than that on Christmas all told but I am hopeful.

If I do have to dip into the emergency fund in October (still hoping for not), bringing the emergency fund back up to $1000 will be the first priority with any leftover funds, and then the remainder from that will be snowflaked to debt.

The only question that remains is which paycheck I treat as the “extra” one. I am going with paycheck #1. That means that we’ll have to get to November 16th (paycheck #2) to pay most of the monthly bills, which should work out okay. But if we are in a significant shortfall situation in October as may be the case, I can change this and paycheck #2 will become the “extra” one. As long as I decide before November actually starts it should be okay either way. Treating paycheck #1 as the “extra” one just works better for adjusting in future months since the first paycheck will come closer to the middle of the month then and slowly adjust back towards the beginning.

So I have a plan. Have I thought of everything? I hope so.

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I decided it was time to publicly set some firm interim debt reduction goals for our family. We still have the overall goal of eliminating our credit card, student loan, and car loan debt by December 2010, but I wanted to set some goals for December 2007, 2008, and 2009 on the blog to help monitor our progress a little more and keep us on track.

I’ve revised the number I think we can pay to debt each month. My past calculations were based on $975/month to debt, but I think we can manage $1025. It will be a little bit more of a stretch, but that is my new goal number. It actually would have us out of debt in October of 2010 but I am not going to revise that date yet.

I also am going to at the end of 2007, look at the actual numbers we paid to debt each month and see what on average from July to December that number is. At that point, I am going to print another calculation based on the snowball calculator and start tracking our actual debt totals vs the projected totals according to the snowball sheet from month to month. I think at this point, it would end up revised too often to be useful since we are still figuring out what a reasonable yet ambitious number to pay to debt actually is for us. By December we will have 6 months of data to look at so I think that will give us enough to work with to make good assumptions.

And of course I’ll be posting and discussing that data here.

Without further ado, on to the goals!

Goals by end of 2007:

-transfer credit card balance to 0% interest offer (ASAP - hopefully done by Labor Day)

-credit card balance under $4000 (snowball calculator projects $3980 lol)

Goals by end of 2008:

-credit card paid off (target August 2008)

-spouse student loan under $10000 (calculator projects $10030)

Goals by end of 2009:

-car paid off (expected March 2009)

-spouse student loan paid off (calculator projects December)

-my student loan under $10000 (calculator projects $10120)

So, the goals are ambitious (I used $1025 as my monthly payment number and that is slightly more than we have hit it July or August) but I think reasonable and attainable. Barring anything unforseen… and of course there will be a few of those I am sure! But we can always readjust. As long as we keep focused on moving forward.

~J

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We’re In Debt is holding a book giveaway and to enter, you have to give advice to teenagers on your blog.

Well, I’m not qualified to give any advice, but, in the frame of mind I’ve been recently, I’ll say what I wish I had known back then.

My tidbit of advice is, don’t be embarrassed if you don’t understand something that relates to your finances and just go with the flow. Be it student loans, retirement funds, life insurance policies, savings accounts, credit cards, whatever it might be… if you don’t understand, ask. Go to the library and read some books, research on the internet, talk to your parents or another trusted adult, but don’t be in the dark about your future because you didn’t know what you were signing up for.

It never hurts to ask. And understanding the long term implications of financial decisions can really help your future self get ahead.

Oh and the corollary to this advice is don’t sign up for a credit card just to get a free t-shirt.
~J

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