Week 2 income/expense review

Every week, I'll be posting my expenses and income for review and analysis.

2/10/08-2/16/08

Income:

$1023.37

Expenses:

$241.03

Total:

$782.34

The expenses came from:

• $30 on personal


• $150.53 on medical


• $39.00 on transportation


• $17 on dining


• $4.50 in fees

The personal expense was getting my brows waxed. Pricy, but it's a once a year expense that makes me pretty happy. Transportation was about twice as much as usual this week, but I went to see Barack Obama speak, which was worth it. The medical was just payment for my ob/gyn visits that wasn't covered by insurance. So if I exclude that expense, I met my spending goal for the week and then some.

Debt Review and Plan

My debt breaks down into two categories.



I have $24,946.00 in charged off debt from a couple of years ago. I need to pay it off, but for now, it's not the highest priority. I'm not sure where 20% of this debt came from, my suspicion is that it's a duplicate listing. I'll be sending a letter to find out where that came from. More than half the rest came from my losing my apartment and car when I had the major medical problems. The remaining portion is from credit card debt, some of which I accumulated from standard consumer purchases (I did spend somewhat frivolously) and some from trying to pay medical bills that insurance didn't cover. All totaled, there are between 8-9 oustanding accounts (depending on the one I'm unsure of the origin.)



I also have $40,391.31 in hospital/medical bills from medical care given to my daughter (I have insurance, but it doesn't cover dependents, the adoptive parents would have done so if she had survived.)



My goal is to be completely debt free by 9/5/2014. I don't think it will necessarily take that long, but I want to enter my 30s without debt.



So how am I getting there? First, I am contacting all the hospitals and doctors about the medical bills. They have all sent me forms that I am filling out to request assistance, reductions, and payment plans. I am also including a letter explaining my situation. Second, I will verify and validate all the consumer debt - confirm how much I owe and to whom. This will allow me to form a completely accurate and up to date calculation of what I owe. Third, I will begin putting at least $500 to paying off debt every month starting in March. I expect to be able to pay off 4 of the 8 or 9 consumer debt accounts within 2 months. I am hoping between working with the hospitals and paying off those small debts, I will reduce my debt to $30,000.

Some health thoughts

WhiteCoat Rants was kind enough to link back to my site based on a comment I made on one of his posts. It's refreshing to see doctors like him, ones who sincerely care about their patients and do what they can to respond to their patients' concerns, even when they have nagging doubts. Between that and the comments on my last post, I'm not giving up on my search for a doctor just yet.

So with that bit of inspiration, today I set up an "interview" of sorts set up for a new doctor for next Wednesday. He's part of the "concierge" medicine trend, where I'll pay an annual fee but get 24 hour access for him to essentially manage my entire care. The initial meeting will be free, and won't be a diagnostic or treatment session, but will hopefully allow me to explain my condition, what I'm hoping for in terms of treatment, and see if this is an appropriate choice. $1,500/year is quite a bit, but I'm rather desperate at this point. If he turns out the way the last appointment turned out, at least I won't have spent any money for it.

I'm not looking for drugs, really!

I'm not a good patient. I know this. I have an insanely rare, genetic, congential disorder. It's not curable. It brings along a whole host of secondary conditions, most of them degenerative. I have chronic pain. I'm young enough that joint replacement surgery is a bad idea, I've got enough problems that surgery is it's own problem, and yet my joints are mostly destroyed. But still, finding a doctor shouldn't be this hard.



I stopped seeing doctors regularly about a year and a half ago. I was frustrated, depressed, and they weren't helping, so I just stopped going. Then I got pregnant, and I went to my ob/gyn for that, but wasn't doing anything for my own problems. But now I'm finding that I won't be able to continue to function if I don't take care of my own health, so I'm in the market for a doctor who can help me manage my joint issues, my chronic pain, and whatever else happens to pop up.



I'm finding though that doctors are falling into one of three camps. The first won't see me because I'm too complicated. The second only wants to prescribe the drug du jour, regardless of it's efficacy. The third kind assumes I'm just a drug seeker because I'm in pain and would like to manage that pain.



I don't have unrealistic expectations. I don't expect to be pain free. I haven't been pain free since I was 12, I wouldn't know what it felt like. But I don't think I fit the profile of a drug seeker - I've not taken any prescription drugs in over a year, I voluntarily quit methadone and oxycontin because of the side effects, I've never gone doctor shopping to get more drugs, etc.



Beyond all that, though, my experience is that people who will decide that I'm drug-seeking before ever meeting me demonstrate a worse problem. In my last visit, the doctor informs me the minute I walk in that she doesn't believe in drugs for pain. I'm fine with that, if she can offer me non-pharmacological relief, that's fantastic. She repeats this several times throughout the visit. At the end of it...she writes me out two prescriptions. One is for an extremely mild narcotic, one is for a drug that won't address my real problem and is a drug I've already taken before and had a bad reaction to (and I discussed this with her!) So for all her self-congratulating speech on not using drugs for pain, her only solution is for drugs that won't do anything for me. Great. I paid $495 for that visit. I didn't even bother to fill the prescriptions.



I have an appointment with another doctor on the 13th. Maybe eventually I'll find one. In the meantime, I'll take those prescription forms to the new offices, invite them to call the prescribing doctor, and hope they'll believe that I'm not looking for more pills. I just want help.

Debt versus Pain

Dealing with chronic pain is an area that seeps over into all aspects of my life. Tonight, my living arrangements are the problem. I'm renting a basement in a townhouse. It's $650 a month and right on the bus stop, which is about 2/3s the cost of what everything else in the area is. The problem is that my landlord doesn't like keeping the heat on. I've talked to her and asked her to do so, but she turns it off except for a couple of hours in the evening. It's 25 degrees outside and the cold is killing me. I have circulatory issues, so my fingers are currently blue and numb (typing is an experience when you can't feel your hands!) and my joints are on fire.

I don't know that I can afford to move, or that I could find a place that would rent to me if I did do so. But I don't know that I can continue staying here.

Mint Contest entry

Mint, an online financial site similar to Quicken is holding a contest, inviting entrants to submit a video or story about getting into debt. The winners will get $5000 towards paying off their debt. My entry is here:

http://www.contest.mint.com/minthome.jsp?stid=4477

Week 1 income/expense review

Every week, I'll be posting my expenses and income for review and analysis. Since this is the first week, I'm doing a little bit of an extension to capture the first of the month.

2/1/08-2/9/08

Income:
1023.37

Expenses:
1405.17

Total:
(381.80)

Obviously not the best week. Where did the money go?

• $650 to rent
• $88.42 to dining
• $35 to entertainment
• $23.43 to household
• $35 to transportation
• $580.06 to medical

$161.85, or 11.5% of this week's spending was purely discretionary. I went out twice. Had I not done that, I would have saved $85 the first night and $43 the second night. The first night was a planned expense, I had not gone out in several months, and I wanted to do something nice for a friend as a thank you, so I combined those two choices. The second night was unplanned, but it was work related and semi-obligatory. I also bought a headset (the household expense) to use with my VOIP service. While technically this wasn't a required expense, using my computer to make phone calls will be significantly cheaper in the long run than using my prepaid cell phone.

$670 (47.7%) was mandatory, $650 in monthly rent, and $20 in transportation costs to get to and from work.

The rest, entirely consumed by medical expenses, were for lab tests, X-Rays, and one doctor's visit. Depending on how my insurance company evaluates my deductable, I may receive $396 of that back. I'm not counting on it, however.

So looking ahead to next week, I will be paid again on the 15th, and should not have the vast majority of these expenses. I will have some transportation costs and some dining costs. However, I intend to try to keep my spending to under $100 for the week.