Bearing witness to Emergency Funds

[elessar78]

Bad news has been piling up for about a week now.

Long story short, since last Saturday my wife passed out for no reason Saturday morning. ER visit clears her of anything immediately threatening, but we follow up with our PCP come Monday. MRI is done and a specialist says she needs surgery ASAP. Herniated disc that is impinging her spinal cord. I'm jumping around for the sake of brevity.

Today she goes to HR, and they tell her that she must be terminated from her job because she is within a probationary period (first 3 months, and she's only been working 2 months). The fortunate thing is that her supervisors and the hospital admins love her as an employee and as a person and promised to hold her job until she recovers. She'll have to reapply, but her boss told her not to touch her desk 'cause she'll be back!

(I'm kinda annoyed at the bureaucratic, by the letter (not the spirit) approach of her HR dept. They said she couldn't fulfill her duties because she couldn't hand write. But she's been adeptly typing since the "injury" last Saturday).

The timeline the neurosurgeon gave us is 2-6 weeks before she is back to work post-surgery.

In a matter of five days, we went from cruising along in a delightful part of our lives, with jobs we both love and felt were very safe. To one in the short term where half our income suddenly vanished.

Good thing we have money in the bank. This would wreck us if we didn't.

Another good lesson to take away from this... don't switch insurance until you're past any kind of probationary period at work. When my wife started 2.5 months ago, we were contemplating switching because of lower copays and contributions. But in a combination of dragging our feet and bureaucratic delays we missed the deadline. We'd probably be SOL right now. Not sure what laws are on coverage but I'm sure it wouldn't be as simple.

Any advice on how to proceed? I assume cover the necessities like housing, and electricity? How should I approach our debt type bills? Student loans, credit card, car payment? Just pay the minimums for now, right?

Thoughts and prayers always welcome . Thanks for listening to me vent.

[riverwed070707]

Sorry about your wife. How scary!

Do you have an e-fund in place? If you have the recommended 3-6 months EF, then I would just scale back your frivolous spending and not make any adjustments to bills/debt. I mean you don't need to go crazy and cut cable and cell phones if you have money to cover those expenses.

OTOH if you don't have money in savings and this is going to be the difference in paying bills vs not paying, then I would definitely have a hard look at your budget and see what can be cut, talk to CC companies and see if you can work something out until she's back to work, etc.

[elessar78]

Yeah, we have money available so I'm thankful for that.

[MonkeyMama]

So sorry to hear.

Having always had a decent amount of cash, I am a big believer in an ample/large efund. There is a lot of disdain for cash savings in this day and age. & people have tried to sway me to save less. HA! I could give you a sob story a mile long about the difficulties of the last decade, but having been financially prepared, it didn't turn out too bad. (My husband had a brain tumor removed surgically last year, being somewhat the biggie - and I Can relate to what you are going through. One day all is well - the next you are having MAJOR surgery).

Ample insurance (disability, health, life) is probably even more important than having an efund. Too many people make the mistake that they are *healthy* and therefore invincible. Our own issues aside, I know a LOT of very healthy people dealing with very random and serious health problems at the moment. Some have passed on very quickly, others are permanently disabled. They were all young (age 10 - 30) and healthy as can be.

I actually ended up with surgery (thyroid tumor) almost a year to the day of my dh's brain surgery. A lot of family, friends and acquaintances seemed ultra concerned about our finances since I am the main breadwinner. Prolonged loss of work would have been hard, but disability insurance would have easily got us through. I think I was more concerned about who was going to care for our kids when my spouse was down for 6 weeks (potentially down for months - I know others who had similar surgeries and were more permanently disabled - thankfully we both recovered very quickly and fully).

You are certainly not alone. Hang in there! Here is to a speedy reovery for your wife.

[elessar78]

Thanks MM, yeah I pooh pooh'd disability insurance in the past. But I'll definitely give it an earnest look once we get through this one.

[disneysteve]

Sorry to hear of your troubles.

Definitely pay just the minimums on the debts until things get back to normal. And trim any discretionary spending as much as possible to stretch out that EF.

Make sure you get itemized bills from the hospital and any other medical providers and check them line by line to make sure they are correct. I've seen estimates as high as 90% of hospital bills containing errors. When my wife had surgery a few years ago, I found a $1,000 error on the hospital bill.

Hope everything gets straightened out quickly and that she is okay going forward.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Pay minimums definitely and stockpile cash in case you need a longer recovery. Me too I've heard of a lot of young people in problem situations. Friends of ours this summer the guy had testicular cancer and was out of work over a month. They had an EF, but their parents helped them out too. Ugh.

[elessar78]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

Sorry to hear of your troubles.

Definitely pay just the minimums on the debts until things get back to normal. And trim any discretionary spending as much as possible to stretch out that EF.

Make sure you get itemized bills from the hospital and any other medical providers and check them line by line to make sure they are correct. I've seen estimates as high as 90% of hospital bills containing errors. When my wife had surgery a few years ago, I found a $1,000 error on the hospital bill.

Hope everything gets straightened out quickly and that she is okay going forward.

Thanks. That's life right? We're just trying to keep sane through it all.

Do we just ask the provider/hospital for an itemized bill? Will I know, as a lay person, if anything is out of the ordinary? Obvious? Or will I need to go over with them what each line item was for?

[photo]

I'm sorry to hear about your wife. How is she doing now?

Originally Posted by elessar78

Do we just ask the provider/hospital for an itemized bill? Will I know, as a lay person, if anything is out of the ordinary? Obvious? Or will I need to go over with them what each line item was for?

Yes, they will provide it if you ask. It will probably be difficult to know exactly, but you can look for things like drugs or procedures (scans or MRIs) that you know your wife never had. The itemized bill will probably be fairly extensive, so I doubt if they'll go through each line, but if there's something you don't understand, you should ask the billing person what it is.

[elessar78]

so I shared your advice with a friend who just had a hospital visit and below is what he said:

"...so i called the different places. the bills we received are our deductible. no further discounts can be made. the only thing they can offer is have me pay it off over multiple months. at least they don't charge interest."

Now how does this work? In our situation, we have covered our deductible for the year. So any bills we would receive would be for the 10-20% that according to our plan is out of pocket. Is this the amount we look at itemized bills for?

[Mr Nice Guy]

Sorry to hear but thanks for sharing.

Will send prayers upward

[photo]

Originally Posted by elessar78

In our situation, we have covered our deductible for the year. So any bills we would receive would be for the 10-20% that according to our plan is out of pocket. Is this the amount we look at itemized bills for?

I don't know what the "norm" is, but here is my experience. Usually, with insurance companies, there is an agreement about exactly how much can be charged in your area for a certain procedure or visit, often called "reasonable and customary charges." So, if a doctor charges you $200 for an office visit, and the agreement between the doctor's office and the insurance company is $150, then the amount you pay after the deductible is a percentage of the $150, not the $200. Then $50 would be what is informally called the "write-off" (what the office "writes off") or "adjustment."

It's my understanding that the itemized bill does not contain any adjustments, but it's best to ask the office about any charges that appear on an itemized bill -- if those charges are original amounts or adjusted amounts or the amounts due after insurance paid their portion.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by elessar78

Now how does this work? In our situation, we have covered our deductible for the year. So any bills we would receive would be for the 10-20% that according to our plan is out of pocket. Is this the amount we look at itemized bills for?

You want to look at any bills for which you are being charged, even if you are only paying a percentage. Any errors you can find will come off what you have to pay.

Let's say the bill is $1,000. Your insurance allows $700 and pays 80% of that amount or $560. You're responsible for $140. But you review the bill and find a $50 mistake. That full $50 comes off what you owe since insurance already paid. So you'd knock down your $140 to $90.

Will you understand everything on the bills? Nope. I'm a physician and I don't always understand everything on the bills. But you can always call the billing department and ask. The simple things to look for are tests or procedures that got double billed - two CT scans when you only had one - or things that got billed that were never done at all. Maybe the doctor ordered a test but later cancelled it but the order was already in the system and the charge was already generated.

[Jennsnoopy]

Hi. I rarely post here but read a lot. Hope your wife feels better soon. Last yr our daughter was diagnosed with leukemia and it has taken quite a chunk from our EF. Being 1 year into this, I would suggest trying to stretch the EF the best you can from the get go. Also, always check your insurance bills. We have been double bill many of times and it is part of my Stay at home mom job to be on top of this. If I had not caught things we would have paid an extra $1300 so far. Tests here and there add up. Take care and my best to your wife.

[elessar78]

Just to update....

According to the surgeon, my wife's procedure went "very well". She is down to one pain pill a day from one every six hours for the last 3 weeks (pre and post surgery). An hour after the surgery, when she woke up the arm that had been affected (all strength basically gone), had it's strength back.

The recovery is very tedious, no lifting, twisting, etc. It just takes a lot of discipline but she's been doing well for about a week with one more week to go before our follow up. Hopefully we get cleared.

Now I'm just praying that the recovery goes well and that long-term she is well and pain free.

Financially, it's probably gone as well as I could have hoped. Aside from our medical costs (co-pays, prescriptions, ancillary stuff), which haven't been high, we haven't really spent any money. To me, it's quite shocking how little you can live on when you go into a very conservative (read: conserve funds/resources) mindset. Hopefully, it's one of the things that can carry over when we're past this phase.

Yeah, we're still waiting for the big bill from the hospital, surgeon, and various specialists but I think it will be manageable.

[MonkeyMama]

That is great news - fast recoveries make these things easier. Reminds me, we often don't see hospital bills for months or years. So maybe she will be back at work before you even get any big bills?

[graceful]

Sorry to read about your wife's problem. Glad the surgery went well. Hope she recovers and feels better 100% quickly.

[Cyrus1]

Nice discussion, i hope i will do this too same, thanks for sharing this idea
with us....

[nick__45]

Originally Posted by elessar78

Just to update....

According to the surgeon, my wife's procedure went "very well". She is down to one pain pill a day from one every six hours for the last 3 weeks (pre and post surgery). An hour after the surgery, when she woke up the arm that had been affected (all strength basically gone), had it's strength back.

The recovery is very tedious, no lifting, twisting, etc. It just takes a lot of discipline but she's been doing well for about a week with one more week to go before our follow up. Hopefully we get cleared.

Now I'm just praying that the recovery goes well and that long-term she is well and pain free.

Financially, it's probably gone as well as I could have hoped. Aside from our medical costs (co-pays, prescriptions, ancillary stuff), which haven't been high, we haven't really spent any money. To me, it's quite shocking how little you can live on when you go into a very conservative (read: conserve funds/resources) mindset. Hopefully, it's one of the things that can carry over when we're past this phase.

Yeah, we're still waiting for the big bill from the hospital, surgeon, and various specialists but I think it will be manageable.

I have almost always live in a conservative mindset because I was born and grew up dirt-poor. I make very good money now but that hasn't changed my spending habit. I do have 1 bad habit or eating out with close co-workers and I treat them for their help. It does cost dearly but in my situation, it pays to be nice to certain people and show them you appreciate their hard work.

Congratulation on the good news. **** happens to people and you planned and executed well. That separate real champs from chumps. Thanks for sharing.

[elessar78]

Originally Posted by nick__45

I have almost always live in a conservative mindset because I was born and grew up dirt-poor. I make very good money now but that hasn't changed my spending habit. I do have 1 bad habit or eating out with close co-workers and I treat them for their help. It does cost dearly but in my situation, it pays to be nice to certain people and show them you appreciate their hard work.

Congratulation on the good news. **** happens to people and you planned and executed well. That separate real champs from chumps. Thanks for sharing.

No prob. I think we always talk about these things in the abstract, because emergencies really do rarely pop up. But invariably they will, it's just a matter of magnitude.

I think an additional lesson I take away from this is to REALLY beef up my emergency fund.

The building back up of the EF hopefully happens quickly as we have been planning to be out of debt for about two years now (pleasant set backs... like a new baby).