Money Matters
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Hospital not working with us
DH was hospitalized for four days last month. We have gotten part of the bill in at $297. The majority of the bill is still pending insurance and will be close to 2000. We called the hospital and they will not come down on the total at all if we paid in full, and will not do a payment plan of more than three months. If it were only going to be the $297 then a three month payment plan would be fine, but we'll wind up owing a lot more very soon, so that's not happening. What are the freaking magic words I have to say to get them to accept a smaller payment? I do not want to have to put this on my credit card and as of right now we only have 300 in savings as DH lost a lot of income while he was sick and we had to use a lot of the small amount that was in there. If we just send them $50 for now, and more later as we can afford it, do you think they'd still sent it to collections if it's not paid off in 90 days? I have never had a hospital be so completely unwilling to work with me.
Re: Hospital not working with us
Are you dealing with a stand-alone hospital or a hospital system?
If it's a system see if there's another billing office you can deal with.
Or, try to speak to a manager.
Make it very clear that you want to and plan to pay it in full but that you need more than 3 months to do it. Tell them exactly how many months you need. 6? 8? 10? Go to them with a plan and be ready to negotiate on it. As a good faith measure, plan to make a sizeable payment up front to demonstrate to them your seriousness.
Personally, I would do whatever I needed to do to avoid it going to collections. If that means a loan or a credit card payment, then so be it.
Moving forward, work on budgeting so that you can build up an e-fund of at least 6 months living expenses...something of this nature will cover you if something like this were to happen again.
I think the PP gave you some good advice. Call back and talk to a manager. See if they will work with you. If they won't work with you until you get the full bill from insurance call them back and in the mean time pay exactly what you can.
Focus on paying back your debts. I agree that I would put this on a credit card over letting it go into collections. This will be one more thing to add to your debt snowball, but then you need to save for future emergencies like this. If I remember correctly you said your husband ends up needing medical treatment every now and then- or that you had other medical bills. Go back and re-examine your budget. You've been doing it now for a couple months, is it working for you, are there things you can cut? Cut your budget to the bone. Groceries, fun money, gyms, hair, cable- get rid of any extras you can.
I hope your husband is doing better, and is feeling better.
That must be very frustrating! I can't believe the hospital won't work with you. Any hospital we have been to they have let us take out a medical loan thru them with 0-1% interest a month. I do know that if it's more of a specialty place they aren't as flexible with payments or discounts.
The only thing I can think of is pay as much as you can in 3 months and then put the rest on your credit card. I know it sucks but you have to do it. Then work hard on paying that off asap. Then build up your efund.
ETA - forgot to mention that you can ask for financial assistance thru hospitals. they send you an application and you mail it back with pay stubs or tax records if you are self employed. I did this right before my hernia surgery was supposed to happen and they said we qualified for 50% discount, which is good because if it ever becomes and emergency we will need it. It's not covered thru insurance right now hence why I haven't got it taken care of. If you make it sound like you really need a payment plan or you can't afford it , they should surely be able to do something.
I have no idea what kind of hospital it is. I think there is just one, but I'm not sure about that. It's not a specialty hospital, just a regular old hospital.
We can't seem to get anywhere near 6 months of emergency savings (we'd need 35k) mainly because of medical issues between the two of us. Two steps forward, six steps back. We make too much to get any kind of assistance, but not enough to actually get ahead without living in a constant state of deprivation, and I am so sick of it. The doctor bills just keep coming because they don't know exactly what is going on and nothing seems to ever work.
I have never heard of a hospital not allowing a payment plan. I would try calling again with how long you need and how much you can pay up front. Maybe after you find out the total bill. Maybe then they will discount paying in full also.
Just make sure it doesn't go to collections. Collections ruin credit terribly.
give it a few bill cycles, 3-5 months. they dont usually send to collections until 5-6 mo and whe you catch the bill just before it goes, the biling office will typically work with you for 20-40% off IF you pay in full at the time you call. Thats what I have done with the multiple hospital bills we have had in the past.
they wont work out a payment plan for a lesser amount. payment plans are only if you pay in full.
can you get some side work to pay for yor bill?
just keep paying what you have and if you can save up at least $1500 in the next few months that can pay it off probably. Rememebr a hospital bill is no different than ther creditors just they will sometimes work with you
cut up the credit cards and keep working to pay off!
Have you posted your complete budget here before? Maybe we can help.
Include all expenses and give estimates for medical costs per month. Give us your take home pay amounts. All debts (rates, time remaining, balances). Retirement or college contributions.
$35k for 6 months of living expenses means you need $5,800 approximately per month just to live. If you aren't in a high cost of living area, this seems high.
wow, that seems like a lot for 6 months! I can imagine that would seem nearly impossible to save. I agree with the PP that said just focus on the small bill that came in and worry about the other later. I do want to add that I got a bill last year and put a small amount on it figuring they would keep mailing me bills til it was paid. Well they sent me straight to collections and I got a letter from them in the mail. I paid it off right away. Totally didn't expect that.
She has posted her budget on here twice before. She changed it a little based on our advice, but didn't seem to want to listen to the beans and rice, rice and beans advice some of us were giving.
Hamsterdance- repost your budget that you have been living under. Has it been working for you as you posted it last? Obviously with these more debts coming and your husband not getting his full hours the summer isn't going to be as good as you thought it would be for your budget, so we may need to work with the conservative end of your take home pay and see what you can squeeze out of there.
Some things have changed. We were able to get $50 off the cable and internet bill. And we were able to get haircuts down from 100 a month to 50. We have been looking at other options for the phone bill but haven't found anything that would be worthwhile until my contract expires. I met with a guy from my credit union about starting an IRA and he said that we wouldn't be able to start it up until I have at least two months worth of income in savings for emergencies, so that 200 is just going into savings as well right now. It looks like we are going to have to add more to the medical budget though because DH is still having to see a couple of specialists which are a $50 copay, on top of both of our regular appointments, and he is also going to have to do injections for his anemia. At the end of summer I'll be putting Netflix on hold since it's mainly just DD that uses it. She is three seasons deep into Lost right now. We've been staying under our budget on everything else so far but it's reeeaalllly hard.
I will have to go back to the spreadsheet and make some adjustments and see where we're at for now. It looks like we'll still be able to finish paying off DH's taxes early next month, but depending on what happens with the hospital bill that may not be possible.
Do you subscribe to amazon prime? If you do their instant streaming is include. It's basically the same thing as Netflix
I find it interesting that you are willing to pay a cable bill, Internet bill and Netflix bill every month, but not your medical bills. Seems like an odd choice to me. And ive never met anybody who spends that much on haircuts when they cant (or wont) pay for their medical expenses. My husband bought a $20 pair of clippers and does his own, and I get my hair done every 3-4 months (previously was even less often). It seems to me that if you stopped all those things, you would have well over the ~$400 needed for the medical bill in just a month or two. But the key is you have to sacrifice something. You can save money if you don't stop spending it.
life is about choices. we make well over 6 figures combined and have for the last 1 year and were close to or just above that for the last 5 years, but didn't have cable til this past year, still don't have smart phones or Netflix. Have only purchased 2 cars in the last 13 years together. And we certainly don't spend 50-100 in haircuts each month. We chose to put all those dollars into savings accounts, retirement funds and towards paying $2000 in student loans each month on top of our mortgage (which by the way cost $100k less than we were preapproved for because we thought it might be wise to stay under budget). Our frien and family all view us as luck spoiled privileged brats who "have it made" because we dont know what its like to have "money problems".... all as they drive around in their new cars, send messages on their iPhones, go one to their homes that are twice as big as ours when their income is half as much, and post pics of their nights out on the town, pedi/manicures, vacations, flat screen tvs etc all in between their complaints about how they can't pay their bills each month and while poking fun at our old school phones, little boxy tv in the living room that we have had since I started college (15 years ago), and until recently my rusty banged up car that I drove from age 16 until last year.
This is not just about one medical bill for $297. That is a small percentage of what we are going to wind up owing overall. It's going to be well over 2000 total. And I am perfectly willing to pay it, we just need more than 3 month to pay all of it off. There are also going to be more ongoing expenses coming up that we have to be able to pay for. If it was just $297 there would be no issue. I could pay it today and be done with it without a problem. When did I ever say I didn't plan to pay these bills? Please.
I used to have a very short hair cut that needed to be trimmed every three weeks. I have decided to grow to it longer so I can go every four months. I have only found one stylist that does a good enough job with my hair that I can get away with cutting it less often, and her work isn't cheap anymore. DH is blind so he will not be cutting his own hair, but thanks for the suggestion. I have to help him shave as it is. We have exactly zero cars. It's been ten plus years since either of us has ha one. We have never taken a vacation. We use things until they wear out and don't buy things we don't need. Our fifteen year old TV finally bit it last year and it was months before we replaced it. We live in a 550 sq ft apartment and My DD doesn't even have her own room when she is here.
Having a smartphone has been utterly invaluable to me as I spend a lot of time away from home and don't have internet access at work. I can pay bills, order things we need, and set up appointments online while taking the train to work, which saves me a lot of time. When you are relying on the bus system and find yourself hopelessly lost in an unfamiliar area, a non smart phone will not do you much good either. DH's phone is set up to take voice commands and is so much easier for him to use than his old phone. DD doesn't have a smart phone, but fwiw we did not pay a dime for any of our phones. Only for the service and insurance on the devices. For all I use it for, it is worth every last penny to have a smart phone IMO.
your DD doesnt live with you? Are you paying a large child support bill which makes budget so tight?
Id still call the hospital and ask them to settle for a % of the total bill ONCE you have been billed
I do pay child support, but it's not a huge amount. The amount is reduced somewhat because she spends about 25-30% of the year with me and I pay for her health insurance. I pay for the majority of her travel expenses between here and her dad's though, which is almost as much as my annual support amount.
The hospital told me that they could not come down on the amount at all because it was contracted with my insurance company. I don't know if they were telling me the truth, but they absolutely weren't budging on it either way. I paid the 297, that was already due, today. We got the bill a few weeks ago so it needed to be dealt with one way or the other.
I have had this happen before, but they should still help you with a payment plan that you are comfortable with.
I cannot get over the fact that you are so hung up over the haircuts when you have so much in medical expenses coming your way.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO KEEP GETTING YOUR HAIR TRIMMED TO GROW HAIR OUT - YOU JUST USE BARRETTES, SCRUNCHIES AND HAIRBANDS.
AND WHY CAN'T YOU CUT YOUR DH'S HAIR? ITS NOT LIKE THE 20 MIN EVERY MONTH OR SO IS GOING TO TAKE THAT MUCH TIME OUT OF YOUR LIVES.
Look, I understand what it is like to live on an extremely tight budget with no amenities. Hell, I did it in the National Capital Region before there were smartphones and I survived paying my bills, setting up appointments and figuring out where I was when I got lost (nothing like getting lost in Anacostia in the late afternoon to cause gray).
But I went without cable, internet and a smart phone; with a crappy individual HMO that covered practically nothing, never turned on my AC in 90 degree weather so I could save on my electric and ate raman noodles for 3 years to pay off my bills and get ahead.
And I was single, so I didn't even have my husband there to commiserate with,
First of all, Illume- congrats on persevering and I love your siggy pic! Too cute.
Hampsterdance- this is what several of us have been trying to tell you since you posted your first budget. There is a lot of room in your budget to cut it, but you and DH have to decide that you really want to get out of debt. I know if may seem like you have an insurmountable task because of all the unknown medical bills you are dealing with and will be dealing with possibly the rest of your lives, but if you can get the consumer debt paid off, and get an emergency fund built up, then that emergency fund will cover all these medical debts as they come off. How freeing would that feel? Each one would no longer be a huge stressor, you would be able to write the check and pay it off when you got the bill, and go on with your life, while rebuilding your emergency fund.
You misunderstood me. I am only getting my hair cut every four months NOW. I used to get it trimmed more often because it was short and I kept it short. I don't cut my DH's hair because I do not want him to look like $#!@. He has wavy hair, as do I and it's not really that easy to cut.
You know what I don't understand? This idea that because we have some medical debt and have used up some savings we should immediately cut out every last thing that could potentially be considered a non-essential (regardless of how much we would lose in early termination fees, not to mentioned buying different phones) until you people deem me worthy to have decent looking hair and a few creature comforts again. If we had nothing left to work with at the end of the month to pay these bills you might have a point, but that is not the case. Either way I am not a bad or irresponsible person for not living like a pauper just because my DH is sick. We never asked for this.
If we absolutely had no choice but to pay off these bills within a three month time frame it could be done without having to resort to having $#!%%@ looking hair (I work in the salon and spa industry and they kind of expect me to look like I don't live in a cave BTW) but it means having to completely reprioritize everything else, like say getting a good amount of money per month back into savings. I am frustrated as hell because I have dealt with medical debt my entire adult life and I have never had a hospital be so totally inflexible about payments. When I was a single mom who had my kid full time and made around 15,000 annually , it took me years to pay off bills that totaled a few hundred. They never threatened collections on me, they just sent me an updated bill every month. I am also frustrated that future medical expenses for this same health issue are a big fat question mark right now which makes it very hard to plan ahead. Since they don't yet know what is wrong with him it is impossible to get an accurate picture of how much we need to be setting aside for medical expenses for the remainder of the year.
Just to put things in perspective, here are women of the things that have come up since DH and I have been together. First he lost his job and it was three months before he found another one. A couple of months after he started working again he got a bone infection in his foot which required multiple doctor visits each week for almost a year. During this time cat #1 got a UTI and not only did we have the vet bills for that, but he destroyed DD's bed and the sofa which we had to replace. Also during this time I injured my shoulder and was completely unable to work for six weeks. When I went back I could only work PT for a while. Less than six months after DH's foot was healed I had to have surgery. Missed another week of work. I went back to school full time for 9 months because I realized I was never going to get ahead with the income I had. Was only able to work 25-28 hrs a week during school. Right before I finished school cat 2 ate styrofoam packing peanuts and required an emergency visit to the vet. I got the flu which led to bronchitis and it took five weeks to go away. At some point in there my ex decided to get orthodontic care for DD as well, which I had to pah half of. I have been at my new job for a total of three months now.
This is by far not an exhaustive list. Ithink it's kind of remarkable that we're in as good of shape as we are right now.
gah!!!! girl you need to keep those hair cuts
seriously.
Oh, I forgot about the molar I broke, only a week or two before the shoulder injury, which led to over 1K in dental work. I also forgot to mention that all of this happened in a period of less than four years. I'd really love to have just a couple of years of nothing expensive happening so we can actually save some damn money. Is that so much to ask?
Yeah, I'll be keeping the haircuts. And the smartphone. I couldn't care less about cable, but I lost that battle with DH. Why a blind guy cares so much about TV is beyond me, but there you go. At least I got him to downgrade it.
that's what i was wondering, but you can't get rid of something that the other person wants.
Have you posted your new budget since your original and first modified? One that you've stuck to?
I personally don't think you need to cut haircuts or cable/phones, things you have contracts already on just for the medical debt. It really isnt that much debt and once its gone you should be comfortable making those payments again. i dont think its worth cancellation fees or sacrificing something important to you for a short period of payments. If I remember correctly, you were able to put a good chunk into savings.. and your daughter is home now, so you aren't paying child support while she is? Trim where you can, that you feel comfortable doing.. maybe reevaluate what is important to you when your contracts on tv/phones are up, and keep trying to build up our efund because I'm sure there will be more surprises like this in your future.
I would make as large of payments as you are comfortable with once you get the new bill until you figure out if they'll put it on a payment plan. Over 2000 they should. If not, put the remaining on a credit card after the 90 days.
Good luck, let us know how it goes.