Healthy-N-Balanced

Your Money Minute: Your Money and the Unexpected

hnb4life ♦ May 16, 2012 ♦ Leave Your Comment

Another GREAT tip from Money Management Queen Heather Legg!

 

 

To say it nicely, STUFF happens. The car WILL break down. The HVAC needs to be repaired. Your child breaks his arm. Your husband needs surgery…

Lots of STUFF happened to us two months ago. And now, ALL of the bills are rolling in.

My husband went to see his doctor for a routine physical — and a week later was in the hospital for what was to be an outpatient surgery that turned inpatient. No, it wasn’t anything life threatening, but it did need to be fixed a.s.a.p. Soon thereafter, we found ourselves registering at the hospital and being asked to pay almost $1,000 upfront. That’s quite a chunk to have to hand over, especially when we weren’t expecting it. (Of course, that was just an estimate of our charges, from the hospital only. This was NOT including the bills we would receive a few weeks later from the doctor, anesthesiologist and others.)

But the good thing was: we had the $ to cover it. In our Emergency Fund. Hallelujah.

I know what some of you may be thinking: Heather, I DON’T HAVE AN EXTRA $1,000. I can barely make my rent.

But what you should know is: I’ve been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt.

Here’s where you start:

Save a little. Save what you can. Eat beans and rice for a while. Sell some stuff on Craigslist or eBay. Because, to paraphrase my favorite financial guru, Dave Ramsey, Murphy’s Law will happen and will move into your spare bedroom, usually at an inopportune time.

Be prepared. As you can. And as you start saving, little by little — $5 here, $50 there — it all adds up. And pretty soon you’ll have that start of your emergency fund. Make $1,000 your goal at first. Then work on getting more in that cookie jar. I guarantee you, at some point you WILL need it.

*Note: After the surgery, another $900 in bills came in from various doctors. I spent just fifteen minutes on the phone with them and got some of them to give me a 10% discount just for paying in full right then. It pays to call!

Heather is a full-time stay-at-home wife and mommy who manages the family finances and wishes she had more time to blog. Her amazing husband, 5-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter are the joys of her life and take all of her time and energy. But she is learning to be content where she is in this season of her life because she knows it goes by all too fast — so she’s enjoying every moment of it.

Your Money Minute: Make the Call

hnb4life ♦ May 9, 2012 ♦ Leave Your Comment

Here’s another great guest post by Money Management Queen Heather Legg

I hate paying bills. Correction: I actually LIKE to pay bills. I get a weird satisfaction from it. But I hate giving those bills our MONEY. But, alas, such is life. When my son was three years old, he used to say mommy was paying the “bulls.” He wasn’t far off… But I digress. What I really LOATHE is the fact that we pay an exhorbant amount of money every month to things like internet, tv and phone. Yes, we could be those people who have none of those luxuries, but we LIKE them. I would like to think that our family could cut the tv off for good — and think of all the extra $$$ we would save! — but I think my husband and I would get a divorce. TV is our escape in the evenings when the kids have gone to bed. We enjoy it. It gives us something to look forward to. It gives us something funny to talk about. We just like it. Good or bad. I’m just keepin’ it real for ya. So…if we are gonna have it. We might as well see how we can SAVE in the process.

And, apparently…like good ol’ James Taylor says in his song “You’ve Got a Friend”…All you’ve got to do is: CALL.

Let me take you back to January of this year when I opened our Directv bill and about had a heart attack. $100 a month for tv? Yes, just tv. No internet. No phone. No bundle package. Just 5,000 channels of which we watch about 10. We have been customers for 3 years. And our new customer promos have been long gone…but I’ve been known to call a time or two, just to see if they can give me a better deal. And you know what? THEY CAN. And they DO. You just have to call. Be honest with them when you call. Tell them you’ve see Dish Network’s ads for better pricing (or whatever company’s). Tell them that you would like to keep their service but just can’t justify the cost. Is there anything they can offer you? And then BE QUIET. Let them tell you what they can offer. Usually it’s something like free HBO or other movie channels for free for a couple of months. But I could care less about that. So I ask if there’s anything else they can do. THEN SHUT UP. Because I waited I wound up saving $25 a month. For you math people: that’s $300 a year back in my pocket. Just because I asked. The total time I spent on the call? About 15 minutes. Pretty good return on my $$$ if you ask me.

I also did similar things for my phone and internet. And within one hour or less, I had saved $700. Not too shabby.

It PAYS to ask. Make the call.

Heather is a full-time stay-at-home mommy who manages the family finances and wishes she had more time to blog. Her 5-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter (who doesn’t like to sleep much) take up much of her time.  She is learning to be content where she is in this season of her life because she knows it goes by all too fast, so she’s enjoying every moment of it.