by Tricia
Our net worth increased for October, so I am very pleased. I just don’t want to see it going down just yet 😉
To see the complete breakdown, you can see my NetWorthIQ profile here.
October was the first month without a car payment, and that helped with the overall picture for October. Unfortunately, I will not be able to snowball that payment into the rest of our debt. We will be using that $250/month to go towards obtaining health insurance for me and my family.
I am currently reading Health Care on Less Than You Think (amazon referral link) by Fred Brock and I will have a review shortly on the book. The beginning chapters are sobering, giving examples of individuals that have been devistated financially by medical problems. I know one medical problem can easily undo all of the progress we’ve made reducing debt, and reading those stories really hit home.
That will be my weekend – finishing reading that book and figuring out what health insurance company to go with. Stay tuned to hear more about the book or how I am going about finding decent health insurance.
How awesome! Your networth is growing by leaps and bounds.
The next 2 years are going to be greatly different for you than the past. As your debts subside and eventually disappear and you can finally realize peace.
Keep up the good work – you are almost there.
An increase of 3.5% is great, you should definitely be very happy with that.
Whew. I read the headline and I thought you had lost -$40k this month.
Congrats on paying that debt down.
Be careful what you buy for insurance… make sure they are reputable. There are countless stories of people thinking they got a deal, until they realized that the plan has so many holes. You can check with your state’s division of insurance for complaints or things like that… if they’ve had any problems with them.
Or you could just up and move over here to Massachusetts. In the spring we passed a historic health care reform bill that will really change how people are insured.
We realized that we are all paying for those who just show up in the emergency rooms for care, but can’t pay for it. The hospitals take is as a loss and raise the rates on everyone else… so we took all that money that had to go to hospitals to pay down their uncompensated care, and put it into reall insurance for people… with a sliding scale for preimums for everyone under 400% of the poverty level… pay what you can, with those under 100% free. Periodic care is cheeper than emergency room care. Add to that a state-run office that manages low-cost, but still good value plans for people who don’t get insurance through their employer, and it starts to become a real comprehensive plan… and soon it will be coming to a state near you! Really. We are going to insure all citizens in 3 years. No one else is even close to that, and we’re doing it without much extra money.
back to my point, just be careful what you buy.
Good work with the network there. I really like the aggressiveness with which you are paying off the credit card debt. And from your networth graph..it’s you have been doing that consistently. Good going.
About what John said… I also live in MA and I’m happy that we are tackling the health insurance problem. The scary thing, tho, is I heard that one of the reasons why we can take a stab at providing everyone with health care is because the percentage of residents without insurance is much lower than other or most states! And I think we have 30-40% residents without insurance 🙁
Hi Tricia,
All that is great news- paying off your car, increasing your net worth, and getting health insurance! I think health insurance is, as you mention, very important in anyone’s financial life because even small health problems can turn into very big bills. As someone else mentioned, be sure to get a plan from a reputable provider. Looking forward to your book review too…..