This will be very brief. Tuesday was a disaster. I couldn't manage to do anything completely well. Spent too much money on crappy food. Didn't do everything on my to-do list.
I have had lots of days like that. In the past, I have chucked the whole day and just gone crazy--crazy eating, crazy ignoring my body, crazy with anger, crazy in general.
I didn't do that. Instead, I did what I could to salvage the evening. I ate the soup I had mustered the energy to make before meeting with my church basement peeps. I made a batch of bread (running out of bread led to the undesirable Burger King purchase), worked out and ran through the circuit I did with my trainer on Saturday.
Then, I addressed the invites for Bekah's birthday party.
But the coup de gras was that I sat down with a fat file of medical bills and organized them into an Excel spreadsheet. It has all of the information about dates of service, how much is owed, account numbers, payment addresses, etc.
It is a grim picture, but nonetheless I am going to start making phone calls. This list has balances on it that go back to when Doug was born (almost 3 years ago). I am going to see whether the balances are correct or not. Then I am going to start at the top and slowly but surely pay them off one by one. If I have to do it $20/time, I will do it. Any extra money I make will go towards paying this down.
It may take a while. The total is unconfirmed and so I don't feel comfortable sharing it right now. It's a doozy but I don't feel guilty. It's not a number that was accrued from crazy vacations or expensive handbags. It's the cost of trying to keep a family of four healthy while our insurance plan slowly got worse. There is no recourse for medical debt, at least not for us (a bulk of this debt was accrued after our bankruptcy was discharged in 2011). I will spare my readers the political commentary, but these bills have already been negotiated down and they are still unbearable. I know all the tips and tricks and have employed them, save for one bill. I am going to get on the phone and work my magic.
Going forward, our insurance plan actually improved this year. We have a lower deductible, higher coinsurance, a healthy amount in our FSA. Back in 2011, when most of these charges were incurred, we had no FSA, a high deductible, low coinsurance (our responsibility was higher) and our insurance switched that year on 3/1/2011. Any expenses incurred before that didn't apply to our deductible. It was heinous but it was 2011 and we were grateful that Brian had a job and benefits.
I am hopeful that I can pay this off before my 40th birthday--that's almost 4 years away. I am praying that it's much sooner than that. I am optimistic that any medical bills we incur this year will be discharged right away and that will allow us to leave 2014 free of 2014 medical debt. Then it's just a matter of continuing to address our old debts.
Keep us in your prayers!
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