|
Knyteguy posted:ufsteph: we're using the insurance company's estimate of the expected birth cost @ $10,000. We're going with the cheaper hospital in town also. All of our hospitals are good here so it shouldn't matter. So you took a financial estimate from an insurance company which presumably has every incentive to lowball that number and went "yup, that's good" and can't see why everyone in this thread has been saying for months that you need to be prepared for the worst, not the best? Based on the graph ufsteph posted $10K would have just, JUST barely covered a 100% normal delivery five years ago. But sure, let's just go ahead and assume $10K will be the number. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Edit: Whoops, it would have just barely covered it in 2008. By 2009 you're already behind. So seven years ago your $10K would have been okay. Referee fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Dec 30, 2014 |
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 19:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 01:55 |
|
|
Doesn't his insurance have a max out of pocket? That is basically all he should need saved up. Ours is $7500 per year so as long as you stay in network you are only going to pay that much money. Maybe their insurance really sucks or something? I am just pretty confused on how they came about the costs needed.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 19:36
|
|
|
I'm sure your wife plans on a natural, drug free birth with chanting and calming water fountains in the background, but they are called birth PLANS for a reason. There is a not-insignificant risk she will have a c-section ($$$) and be unable to go back to work after 8 weeks. Your current budget comes nowhere close to covering this outcome. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 19:41
|
|
|
spwrozek posted:Doesn't his insurance have a max out of pocket? That is basically all he should need saved up. Ours is $7500 per year so as long as you stay in network you are only going to pay that much money. Insurance is insanely complicated and even the insurance companies make tons of mistakes. If you don't fully understand your policy and what is/is not covered, you could get bills for things that should be covered. I think taking their "about $10,000" estimate without a very detailed explanation is asking for trouble.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 19:49
|
|
|
ufsteph posted:Insurance is insanely complicated and even the insurance companies make tons of mistakes. If you don't fully understand your policy and what is/is not covered, you could get bills for things that should be covered. Oh I totally agree with you. If planned all in network I just don't understand how it can be so much money. I feel like a lot of details are missing.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 19:51
|
|
|
I had something big typed up, but instead of all that here's our actual health insurance: https://cache.hacontent.com/ybr/R515/02524_ybr_ybrfndt/downloads/131972.pdf Page 1 is the overall benefits, page 4 has pregnancy details. Plus our HSA contribution of $5,000 / yr starting January 2015 (we've already met our contribution limit for 2014). April I didn't realize that an epidural costs more (the Knyteguy story). My wife is going to try to go natural as well, but we're realistic that she may want one. I just found more information on her maternity benefits, so we'll have some more information to draw from tonight when we draw up everything. Might need some help with the budgets though - I don't expect us to get this right on the first drafts.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 20:11
|
|
|
spwrozek posted:Oh I totally agree with you. If planned all in network I just don't understand how it can be so much money. I feel like a lot of details are missing. The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask / Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Knyteguy's Ambiguous Financial Thread - I feel like a lot of details are missing Also thinking how in KGs new budget perscription formula ($300/mo) is the worst case scenario, when the birth is at best going to cost a few grand more than he thinks, and at worst triple.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 20:11
|
|
|
I had an uncomplicated natural birth. It happens. I also had good insurance and we ended up payingntge out of pocket max for me + child. My deductible and oop max was lower for only covering myself as an individual but as soon as baby is both and my insurance changed to me + kid, those things increased since I then had to choose the self + children insurance option. I'm very frugal. We have a fair amount saved in both liquid savings and retirement accounts. We make way more then we spend. Except for the first 12 months after baby. We did so much more convenience food and eating out/take out that we easily spent what we made every month without adding much to savings. It just was much more important that hubby and I could sit and do nothing and have food brought to us. And pre baby we were budget masters. We are just now starting to get back on track and our kid is 18 months old. We could handle this because we both make a good salary and were in a very sustainable pattern of living/spending below our means and saving before that. I know you have no idea what's coming, because you can't know how huge a change a baby is until it happens to you, but you should be worried. Also, we got rid of our birds. Our dog who was the baby of our house and loved on and doted on is just a dog again. He gets some attention and is well taken care of, but not nearly what he got pre baby. And I too was one of those "not much will change with my dog and what we do with him! It is crazy to think people do that" types before baby. LOL.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
Your family oop max is $12k. Your deductible is $3k. You coinsurance is 30% Let's assume $15,000 for a relatively uncomplicated vaginal birth. You are paying $3,000 + 30%(12,000). Best case scenario, you are paying $6600. Has she been billed for prenatal care each visit or does that get lump billed at time of delivery? (Mine lump billed at delivery time). That's at least a few thousand more you are paying 30% of. I'd just plan to pay about 9-10k oop after all is said and done. Or $12k if she gets a c-section. Edit: if you are really interested I can go to my insurance website and let you know what everything cost me when literally the only things the hospital and staff did was check to see how I was doing every hour or so, give me a room for a few days, and catch the baby when he came out. No IV, not even fluids, no ibuprofen in the days after birth, nothing. I'm not saying this to brag, just to say my birth was literally as bare bones as you can get and it was still five figures easily. Edit again: cost of living for my area is below the national average too so presumably my expensive bare bones birth is still cheaper than what yours will be. Final edit: my bare bones delivery was almost $12,000 total. That does not include prenatal/pregnancy care costs which were an additional $8,000. sheri fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Dec 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 20:22
|
|
|
sheri posted:Your family oop max is $12k. Your deductible is $3k. You coinsurance is 30% Hm well your post above this one has me a little concerned, because we aren't masters at being frugal (obviously). We'll keep the extra food expenses in mind when we're drawing up a budget. Regarding this post: alright well I think we should plan for a $12,000 birth then. I'll be fighting the c-section as much as I can since that's what my wife wants me to do, but it'd be wise to plan for it. Also if you had pretty much the ideal birth and it went into five figures, then there's really no other choice I don't think. The delivery doctor fees are being bulk billed at the time of birth. Edit: Just saw your final edit: yeesh. Alright thanks for the info.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 21:06
|
|
|
I had to sad laugh when I was looking at it because the hospital charges both me and my son for "lodging" or accommodations or whatever they called it....we stayed in the same freaking room. What a racket.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 21:10
|
|
|
Holy poo poo a 12,500 maximum out of pocket for families? I thought 3750 for individuals at my job was outrageous but haha I guess not. I'm just baffled today by all this  that not only did I think everything was like okay enough but that knyteguy did I"M FREAKING OUT FOR YOU MORE THAN YOU"RE FREAKING OUT FOR YOURSELF.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 21:28
|
|
|
You should call your health insurance company to verify that the hospital, and any hospital-services they use, are in-network with your plan. Even if they list it on the website, you should call and talk to a person and keep notes on the date/time/person you talked to and be very clear about everything at that hospital being in-network, the doctor being in-network, etc. I would then call the hospital billing department and verify the same thing, and take similar notes. The point of doing that is so when everything gets all screwed up and the insurance bills them as out of network, or the hospital says some BS like the anasthesia person is out of network or whatever, you can figure out who lied to you and take appropriate action if necessary to get them to pay. If stuff doesn't get processed correctly as in-network it can be a huge mess because of the way medical billing works (e.g. the hospital will bill you $35000 probably, and your insurance company will knock it down to about 5 grand based on their contract. But that only happens if you are in network).
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 22:00
|
|
|
Droo posted:you can figure out who lied to you and take appropriate action if necessary to get them to pay. Lol good luck with that. It's still not their problem and they still won't pay. (Insurance companies are assholes)
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 22:08
|
|
|
Droo posted:you can figure out who lied to you and take appropriate action if necessary to get them to pay. Good luck. I had relatively horrible insurance at my last job. I cut my finger dicing potatoes for breakfast one morning and it wouldn't stop bleeding on it's own after neosporin, invisible bandage, regular bandaids, and about every other home remedy I could look up online. I finally bit the bullet and realized I might need the stronger medical grade adhesive they have at the doctors or maybe even stitches. I went to my insurances website (a portal through my employer) and looked up the closest urgent care facility. I called them directly asked if they did stitches and if they accepted my insurance and it was a yes and yes. I went in for a relatively quick visit where they checked me out and he was able to just put some strong medical invisible band-aid on my finger, stopped the bleeding, and gave me a tetanus shot since I was overdue. The "maximum" was I supposed to be charged for an urgent care visit was a $50 co-pay (which I paid at the time of the visit). I however later received a bill for $450 for "surgery" as it wasn't covered. Long story short I went back and forth with the insurance, contested the bill, fought every way I could. Literally at one point I had the lady on the other end of the phone look up the urgent care facility that was listed on their website and she still told me there was nothing they could do about it. I finally paid the stupid thing after 6 months because I was changing jobs and just didn't want to deal with it anymore. Insurance companies are 100% looking out for themselves and give very few shits about your well-being.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 22:47
|
|
|
Well I'm not sure what you guys are doing wrong, but in the last couple years by taking the steps I listed above and following up diligently, I have: 1. Gotten Humana to reprocess 14 physical therapy claims that they originally processed as out of network and pay the physical therapy people about 2 grand 2. Gotten Humana to pay the full bill for an ENT doctor that they processed as out of network, who apparently wasn't in network at all but they claimed was on their website 3. Rescheduled (two weeks in advance) a shoulder surgery my wife had done because the stupid doctor's office scheduled it for a facility that was not in-network. The total bills from the in-network hospital it was actually performed at totalled $35,000 so that would have been fun if I hadn't caught it. 4. Got Humana to tell a provider to gently caress off by referring the provider to Humana's balance billing department. The provider was trying to charge me for something Humana had denied. I think #3 was the one I was trying to highlight for KG.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 23:10
|
|
|
ufsteph posted:Lol good luck with that. It's still not their problem and they still won't pay. (Insurance companies are assholes) If it gets to this point, then the next step would be (at least in Nevada, which is where KG happens to live) to report them to the state insurance board and open a case. When you open a case, wouldn't it be nice to have all your notes and detailed phone records available from all the due diligence you did in advance with the insurance company and provider? Bugamol posted:I went to my insurances website (a portal through my employer) and looked up the closest urgent care facility. I called them directly asked if they did stitches and if they accepted my insurance and it was a yes and yes. From my dealings with Humana, I learned that a verbal confirmation from them that a provider is in-network is MUCH more important than what is on their website. Basically, the 14 physical therapy claims I got them to fix (which took i think 9 months by the way) would not have happened if I hadn't called in advance to verify the physical therapy location. This is actually a perfect example of what I said in my original post, which is basically KG should call and get verbal confirmation of everything from the insurance company instead of relying on their website and the doctor's say-so.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 23:14
|
|
|
Droo posted:From my dealings with Humana, I learned that a verbal confirmation from them that a provider is in-network is MUCH more important than what is on their website. Basically, the 14 physical therapy claims I got them to fix (which took i think 9 months by the way) would not have happened if I hadn't called in advance to verify the physical therapy location. This is actually a perfect example of what I said in my original post, which is basically KG should call and get verbal confirmation of everything from the insurance company instead of relying on their website and the doctor's say-so. You're probably right. For me it was only $450 and I was changing insurance providers and just didn't feel like dealing with it anymore. It also probably comes down a little to getting the right person on the phone or the right person handling your claim information. Also the insurance company in question is going to wildly affect it (I had CIGNA) at the time
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 23:23
|
|
|
Droo and sheri, your posts are gold, thanks for taking the time to post that info. It's helpful to more than just KG.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2014 23:53
|
|
|
I'm so glad I/gf don't want kids. Thank you for reminding me, Internet. My mom had both my sister and I without drugs, and my sister was born at home (I would have been too but I didn't want to leave it took 3 days from water to birth), and not because they're poors. I don't get why Americans want to use hospitals and drugs.. But it seems like a good way for the 'non-profit' (lol) hospital industry to make a lot of money. Veskit posted:Holy poo poo a 12,500 maximum out of pocket for families? I thought 3750 for individuals at my job was outrageous but haha I guess not. I'm just baffled today by all this
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 00:38
|
|
|
If you hurt yourself at work that should be covered by your employers workers compensation insurance.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 00:55
|
|
|
sheri posted:If you hurt yourself at work that should be covered by your employers workers compensation insurance. That depends on where you live.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 01:03
|
|
|
So I called my HR department again to get more info on the leave. So it isn't actually maternity leave, it's "IRT", which is Incident Recovery Time. I have a seven day wait period in which I have to use my PTO and then they cover the last 5 weeks ( assuming I have a regular birth) or 7 weeks ( c-section). The coverage is 80% which will be paid to me via direct deposit on my regular pay periods.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 01:11
|
|
|
Janus Owl posted:So I called my HR department again to get more info on the leave. So it isn't actually maternity leave, it's "IRT", which is Incident Recovery Time. I have a seven day wait period in which I have to use my PTO and then they cover the last 5 weeks ( assuming I have a regular birth) or 7 weeks ( c-section). The coverage is 80% which will be paid to me via direct deposit on my regular pay periods. During this period do you have to pay your health insurance directly? What is the premium price for spouse+child?
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 01:18
|
|
|
Janus Owl posted:So I called my HR department again to get more info on the leave. So it isn't actually maternity leave, it's "IRT", which is Incident Recovery Time. I have a seven day wait period in which I have to use my PTO and then they cover the last 5 weeks ( assuming I have a regular birth) or 7 weeks ( c-section). The coverage is 80% which will be paid to me via direct deposit on my regular pay periods. I'm not sure I understand. If you have a baby in week 1 (let's say c-section), and you're out for let's say 12 weeks: You use your PTO until week 2, and then they cover the last 7 weeks at 80%. Do you mean the next 7 weeks, so you'd be paid at 80% until week 9, at which point you'd be without pay for three weeks?
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 01:24
|
|
|
ufsteph posted:During this period do you have to pay your health insurance directly? What is the premium price for spouse+child? Ask about this specifically because it will screw you. At my job you have to pay it yourself, meaning sending the payment yourself and if you don't they'll cancel you lickity split.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 01:25
|
|
|
Janus Owl posted:So I called my HR department again to get more info on the leave. So it isn't actually maternity leave, it's "IRT", which is Incident Recovery Time. I have a seven day wait period in which I have to use my PTO and then they cover the last 5 weeks ( assuming I have a regular birth) or 7 weeks ( c-section). The coverage is 80% which will be paid to me via direct deposit on my regular pay periods. Your (or maybe your husbands) bar for a lovely retail job is pretty skewed. You have reasonably priced medical insurance and you get employee paid maternity leave? Come off it already. Keep your job. If you really want a "better" job then put in the time after hours go achieve it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 01:37
|
|
|
Horking Delight posted:Do you mean the next 7 weeks, so you'd be paid at 80% until week 9, at which point you'd be without pay for three weeks? Bugamol posted:Your (or maybe your husbands) bar for a lovely retail job is pretty skewed. You have reasonably priced medical insurance and you get employee paid maternity leave? Come off it already. Keep your job. If you really want a "better" job then put in the time after hours go achieve it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 02:12
|
|
|
Just read the whole thread on a slow day at work. Great job everyone!
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 04:33
|
|
|
Knyteguy posted:I think my wife and I will evaluate what we can cut so some small savings can be made. There's some room in pets, and there may be more room than I realize if we start buying food online and such. I'm sure with better planning we can cut groceries (but we need some readily available food to stick with a lower budget), we can probably cut some household expenses, absolutely on eating out, etc. However as before I think it would be wise if we don't try to stick with something that is bound to fail, such as taking a rice and beans approach again. Just like to point this little snippet out. I think you've got lots of options to make major savings, but they probably won't be easy. I would say that given that you're looking down the barrel of a big tax bill, unknown birth costs, and still unknown leave arrangements for Janus Owl you are still on very unsure footing. If I were you I'd be living like a monk at this point.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 05:09
|
|
|
sheri posted:If you hurt yourself at work that should be covered by your employers workers compensation insurance. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to find a video montage of scenes from Frisky Dingo where various characters are left in the lurch because Killface hasn't paid workmen's comp/unemployment/health/fire/auto/rental car/renter's insurance. No luck. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 05:29
|
|
|
RheaConfused posted:Ask about this specifically because it will screw you. At my job you have to pay it yourself, meaning sending the payment yourself and if you don't they'll cancel you lickity split. Agreed, definitely follow up on this to confirm the exact payment amount and due dates. Because of a glitch I never received the letter from my company that my payment was due and if I hadn't been on top of things and called them I imagine it would have been a nightmare. You will be going to the pediatrician a lot in the beginning and you do not want a loss of coverage, especially if your baby's well check-ups are covered 100%. Another factor to keep in mind is that for us, even though the well check-ups were 100% covered, certain labs (blood tests) and vaccinations were not. It felt like every time we went in a bill was due - not a lot of money each time, usually less than $100, but it adds up and with a tight budget you might want to be prepared.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 18:47
|
|
|
OK, we'll take the advice on the insurance companies. I'm also glad stuff posted is helping some others in here. Worker's comp is covered by the company here in Nevada. We also both have a little disability insurance through my wife's work. I'll post details on that if I can remember when we post the budget. Didn't get to the budget last night as I spaced the fact it was our anniversary when I posted that. Unfortunately our January budget won't get made until tomorrow. Bugamol: my wife isn't complaining about her job, it's me. It's not that it's just "a poo poo retail job", it's just that I think that most retail jobs suck due to the hours. Flex scheduling sucks, weird days off sucks, working on holidays sucks, etc. I've almost always worked jobs with none of that stuff, except as an ice delivery driver, but at least there I'd get so much overtime I was making like $1,000 a week take home, and I was a single 18 year old kid so it didn't matter so much. My wife's new net paycheck this period is $623. To put that paycheck into perspective: since roughly September of 2014, her net paycheck has been $250, every 2 weeks. That will help me be a little more tolerant of her job, even if the only reason it's higher is because the HSA contribution is split over 12 months instead of 4 months. Oh and January is a 3 paycheck month for her. No HSA contribution at all on that 3rd paycheck. Woohoo. Her monthly HSA contribution should be enough to cover any hospital bills for the delivery with what we'll have to put down (a little more than est $5000/$12000), and medical bills less me beyond that should be covered by hitting the out of pocket maximum for the delivery on both of them. Again though we'll need to budget everything to see where we really stand. We're going to do our best to budget out to May or June.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2014 21:35
|
|
|
Knyteguy posted:April I didn't realize that an epidural costs more (the Knyteguy story). My wife is going to try to go natural as well, but we're realistic that she may want one. Epidurals are expensive but this isn't!  Hillbilly Epidural.  (i hope you have a safe and healthy pregnancy)
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2015 00:19
|
|
|
Budget done yet? Fix your W-4.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2015 19:21
|
|
|
Bugamol posted:Budget done yet? Fix your W-4. No, tomorrow! I'll ensure we take care of it first thing. Thanks for the W-4 reminder. It took about an hour (since you posted to just now), but I finally got my work laptop hooked up to the printer at work. Handed in the W-4 and I'm officially now claiming married 1. E and thanks for the well wishes CuddleChunks.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2015 20:11
|
|
|
Knyteguy posted:No, tomorrow! I'll ensure we take care of it first thing. How about a December reconciliation. Where'd you land? Did you spend more than you earned?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2015 01:07
|
|
|
Bugamol posted:How about a December reconciliation. Where'd you land? Did you spend more than you earned? We did pretty poorly in December, mostly from getting too much take out. We had some legitimate times where this was necessary (we had an ant problem in our kitchen that took a few days to fix with Borax and honey traps), but also some times where we had no good reason at all. We stashed away about $1,200 net in December, but we broke budget by about $200-$250 on holidays, takeout, and shopping at the nearby grocery store that is way too expensive. However the numbers do legitimately show that if we simply could beat this restaurant spending, that we would rarely go over budget on anything at this point. To try to remedy this my wife went grocery shopping today with some planned meals in mind. We're going to stock up crockpot meals literally tomorrow for the impending birth, and we bought a bunch of frozen pizzas so those are on hand if we get the urge to order take out, As far as the grocery bills go we're going to cut meat out of our diet all but 1 meal a week to help save. We're going to try to go pretty extreme with food savings for now. We also added a restaurant/takeout line to the budget to help us track exactly what we're spending there so we don't blow our discretionary money for it all. I think we'll be less likely to spend it since it's a shared discretionary (we just took $50/ea from disc.). We haven't spent more than we earned since moving. Totals are $6,300 in checking (after paying rent), January fully budgeted including a $510 baby line that will be saved for when we need it, and some of February saved. Actual savings is @ $4,200 and that's with $1,000 earmarked for the impending tax payment. And again we're just about a month ahead. That's with 1 more check coming for me this month, and two more for my wife. We're waking up at 5:00am to get started on the budget planning, and getting our son's room together. I don't feel like he needs a room of his own yet but I guess it'll be nice to have. I'm not going to post the numbers we're thinking about until we're 100% decided, so save judgement/criticism on any going forward stuff until I post that information concretely. Should be tomorrow. This post has a lot of broken-up thoughts since I'm rushing it at work, so if anyone wants clarification or something doesn't make sense just let me know.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2015 01:36
|
|
|
As much as you both have struggled through this whole process I do feel like you both get what you should be doing. You might not come to the conclusions we think are best but you are trying really hard. I look forward to seeing where you stand and the plan you come up with. Hopefully we can help with any adjustments that you need. E: Go Lions Sunday! Stafford needs to play unlike himself though... Which is usually terrible under pressure.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2015 01:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 01:55 |
|
|
It would be really difficult for me personally to suddenly go from the 10-12 meals I have with meat per week down to 1. Is it as big a jump for y'all, and is that realistic?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2015 03:34
|
|