Fiscal Friday: Poor, Sad Net Worth

I think our net worth is going to increase by a whopping $100 or something this month, if at all. (Still waiting to get info on our investments before doing the final tally.) And the irony is, we had a pretty decent month, income-wise.

But then our health insurance bill was high because CodeMonkey had to add me at the last minute, so we paid my premium for August plus the September premium for both of us.

And then, like an idiot, I misunderstood the person helping me at the insurance company and paid the high premium twice. Whoops. They're giving us an account credit, but I ended up spending $1450 this month on insurance instead of $475. That $475, by the way, gets you a plan with a $10,000 per person annual deductible, which means it basically just covers the risk of something really expensive and catastrophic happening. We'll need to cashflow any medical expenses until I get a job that (hopefully) offers decent insurance for both of us. The current plan is: don't get sick.

I had a medical emergency back in February and used an ambulance to get to the hospital. Lesson learned: do not let the nice 911 people (I called to ask if I should be going to the hospital given the symptoms I was experiencing) send an ambulance unless you are hemorrhaging in multiple places. TAKE A CAB. Because, holy shit that ambulance costs. Yes, this is stupid and naive and I should have known better. That was a $900 bill*. Insurance covered $300. After multiple rounds of back-and-forth with the hospital's billing department, including using a medical negotiator to try and get the bill down (it failed), I finally just paid the $600 outstanding. Bah, humbug.

Then we overspent on groceries, just to top everything off.

*For comparison: the cab ride home from the hospital was $10, WITH TIP. The ambulance was not 90 times better at anything. Obviously an ambulance is different than a black car, and is staffed by two people with significant qualifications rather than a single fellow with a driver's license, etc. But we were both floored to realize it was 90 times more expensive.