Posted on: June 17, 2009 by Matt
I have been thinking a fair amount lately about the US and why we do not have a universal health care system. The thoughts are probably coming from recently watching Michael Moore’s film Sicko along with my own personal need to get out and see a doctor for a check up. I have not been to a doctor for a routine physical for about 10 or 11 years now and currently dread the idea due to having out of pocket costs. I have recently opened up an HSA to set money aside for doctor visits and do have insurance but it is designed to only cover expenses after a $2,000 deductible is met. Overall my whole experience with health insurance has been pretty jaded. Even when I had “good insurance” that included low co-payments the policies were overly complicated, riddled with loopholes and required the use of certain providers. I have also heard stories of denied claims and families unable to cover the costs of covering all members.
Something about being denied access to your health or the health of a family member really just rubs me the wrong way. Insurance companies benchmark the “success” of a medical director based on the number of claims that they can deny to increase profits – ridiculous…. I just can not believe it. Health care should be as readily available to people as emergency services – the fire department does not let your house burn down because your home owner’s insurance did not pre-approve your claim. Why should anyone have to put their health at risk or suffer simply because an external company (or lack there of) decides they should?
I know that to many people out there that the socializing of health care is a pretty scary thought. People are worried about increased taxes, more national debt, decreased health care, outdated technology, inadequate facilities, etc. The fact still stands that we are the only wealthy, industrialized country that does not offer our citizens universal health care. So here is my question: If every other industrialized country in the world can offer universal health care to its citizens then why can’t we? The majority of these countries offer free to very low cost health care to citizens and have longer life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates and generally healthier people.
My answer to my question above: Greed. I think that insurance and pharmaceutical companies along with most of the health care industry and even our own government have let their want for more money to take a higher priority than the health of the nation as a whole. For those of you that disagree and think that we have a wonderful system in place I say just wait until it effects you personally. Eventually it will and even the most conservative will end up seeing the flaws with a for profit health care system. I am personally glad that I have not been effected yet and am hopeful that my family and I will never have to face a medical condition that goes unchecked.
Posted on: June 15, 2009 by Matt
For the past couple of months I have been looking to find a piece of software that would allow me to manage my money in one central location. I looked at Mint.com but was disappointed to discover that they do not offer services for my bank. I also had used Microsoft Money in the past but it looks like Microsoft will be discontinuing Money later this month. The copy of Money I have is from 2005 and is on my desktop computer that now lives in my girlfriend’s office. I do not spend a lot of time working in her space and therefore (due to the OEM license) do not have a copy on my laptop. I began to search for alternatives by looking down the Quicken product line and discovered the free option of Quicken Online.
I created an account and figured I would give it the quickest test I could think of: trying to add my checking account. My checking account is at a small local bank and the folks over at Mint.com do not have my bank as an option for adding the account. Despite submitting a request to add the bank nothing has happend over the past couple of months that I have tried. Considering my previous luck I did not expect that Quicken Online would have access to my bank but when I started to set the account up I was pleasantly surprised to see my bank listed!
I went through the process and set up all of my accounts without issue and began to dig into the product a little bit. Overall the product is very similar to the offering from Mint.com but appears to have less in the way of sponsored services / ads. The interface is clean and intuitive and offers most features that you need to manage your finances on a basic level (exactly what I was looking for). The service offers the ability to view all transactions for all accounts lumped together or for individual accounts only, trends for spending, income and savings and a “goals” section to plan a budget. Additionally – the Quicken service offers the ability to manually add items like bills to your accounts which appeared to be missing from Mint.com’s offering.
Overall – I am fairly impressed by the quality of the “free” service offered by Quicken. They have access to all the information that I need to have rolled up in one place and the ability to view that data in several different ways. For me it seems like the most cost effective and robust choice available and I will probably use this as my new personal finance software (for now anyway). The ability to have access in multiple locations and the broad range of features (including SMS alerts) will be enough to hold me as a customer for a while.
Posted on: June 10, 2009 by Matt
Every month my cell phone bill drops into my email. I log into my provider’s web site and pay the bill via the online payment options - rarely do I look at the details of the bill because the price falls in line with what I expect to pay. However last week my girlfriend reminded me that she needs a new cell phone (as I accidentally washed her old phone) and asked if we could look online to see what was available. When we looked we discovered that we were both eligible for free upgrades and opted to take advantage of the new phone offers. The deal resulted in each of us getting a new cell phone with free activation and free overnight shipping – the total was about $550 in free stuff with a two year commitment to the provider.
On Monday the new phones arrived and activated without issue. While I was in the process of getting the phones activated I decided to run through our plan and see what was offered and if there were other plans that might help us save a little money. The new phones are designed to make text messaging easier and we were hoping to use the feature to stay in touch better. The problem was that I thought we had to add text messaging to our plan in order to do so at an additional cost of $20 per month. However – while looking at the phone add-ons I noticed that my girlfriend’s phone appeared to have a text add-on as part of the family plan but neither of the other two phones included this add-on. I reviewed a bit further and noticed that she appears to have unlimited text messaging based on the usage details whereas my phone was showing $0.20 per message.
After calling customer service and telling them what I had discovered they were happy to add the family text add-on to the other phones in the plan as well as adjust the bill for any text charges for the past 2 months. So by simply running a basic audit of our plan and phones we were able to:
- Get an additional feature tied to all of our phones saving us $20 per month.
- Get $5 or so back in credit to the account for previous charges.
- Confirmed that we are getting the best rate for our usage requirements.
In order to keep up on making sure that we are still getting the most bang for our buck I will probably plan on running an annual audit of our cell phone plan.
Posted on: June 9, 2009 by Matt
A couple of carnivals mention My Financial Recovery this week, head on over and check them out at:
Posted on: June 8, 2009 by Matt
Last night my girlfriend and I were watching a show called Taboo that featured a segment on the Freegan lifestyle. Freeganism is an anti-consumerist lifestyle choice that focuses on living as inexpensively as possible. From what I could gather – they lifestyle consists largely of not buying anything and gathering your belongings and food from other people’s trash. The segment included clips of people foraging through dumpsters digging up all sorts of food including:
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Meat
- Breads
- Soda
Basically – you name it and they were dumpster diving for it. It was like frugal living taken to the extreme.
Now – to be totally honest: I have on occasion picked a couple of items in the past out of the trash. Mostly a piece of furniture here or there that was left next to the dumpster. My first entertainment center came from a neighbor that was throwing one away. I figure if something is in good condition and I have a use for it then why not? One person’s trash is another person’s treasure right?
However – the thought of digging through dumpsters looking for food never really crossed my mind. The folks on the show seemed to pull quite a bit of decent looking produce out of dumpsters and they claimed that they have not ever gotten sick from the food. They also noted that they do wash all food that they gather through a bleach mixture prior to cooking and eating just to make sure any nasty bacteria are killed off. I found the idea rather intriguing but also a bit dangerous with some possible serious health risks (hazardous or medical waste in the dumpster with your food? Not for me).
On the other hand – I did start to think more about how wasteful we are as a culture. We throw away a lot of food on a daily basis that is perfectly good for consumption and I would like to see that diminish a bit. The concept is great for those that do not mind gathering their meals from the trash and I think the concept is somewhat admirable – just not for me and my family.
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