Loosing of Half of our Income: The Journey Back Begins

With all of the financial issues people are having these days I decided to share our story.

For almost 16 years my husband dedicated himself to building a career in a big box store.  He gave, and gave, and gave and never got anything back from them.  They put us through more hardships than you can shake a stick at including not giving him time off when his dad died, forced relocations without compensation, always having to work the overnight remodels, a forced commute when we couldn't sell the house, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and they turned him down for a promotion because of their own stupid rules even though.  He really deserved it, was requested, he would have done well at it too and they were ready to give it to him before they realized his store hadn't made profit sharing 11 months before that. You didn't dare say anything to them because of a fear of losing your job, they fired people for really stupid reasons.  (And then they wonder why they can't find employees willing to do into management with them?)  Talk about stress!

His job paid well and he doesn't like to start over all the time.  He liked the job for the most part until the latest boss arrived and made his life a living hell.  After several years of the same treatment and no changes occurring even when he told their untrained personnel manager (who didn't report this to corporate), he couldn't take it anymore and he quit without having another job in place.  It was such a hostile work environment I really couldn't blame him, though it would have been nice to have a plan in place before it happened.

Since it was ruled that he quit (even though we tried for hostile work environment) there was no unemployment either. Because his job paid well I didn't need to have a job prior to this happening.  (Except for when they made our tenant move from the home he was renting from us, or the time they made us pay hundreds more in commuting when he was "promoted" with no pay raise, or the time they didn't make profit sharing so we had no way to pay off the credit cards we had been relying on to pay for his commuting expenses.)  That made it really hard to struggle through several months of having no income at all.  Thankfully, we had finally gotten enough of a handle on our budget because of our past trials that we had been able to save some money which got us through the jobless period.  I applied for food stamps and badge care right away even though they had treated me extremely rudely the last time I had been in the office.  Our mortgage company set us up on a forebearance plan that allowed us to pay $25 each for both our first and our second mortgages so our main expenses were paying for gas (to see his mom who was failing in health as well as driving for interviews and such) and my car payment.

Now, we need to adjust to living on less than half of what he made last year.  This is where the real struggle begins.  With a couple of months of work at his new employer in place we are really hitting the budget juggle hard.  We have a brand new car that I bought a little over a year ago, a house payment, 2 kids, 2 cats, and we live in the country about 12 miles from town.

So far his new employers have agreed to pay for his gas, we have applied for a loan modification, and are getting the food stamps and medical assistance that we were getting over the summer though we get much less in food this month and now have to pay a monthly payment for our insurance.  We have many more changes to try to do too in order to come up with a balanced budget as well.  Hopefully we will be able to refinance the car to bring that payment down, I am praying that our mortgage company works with us so we can keep our home with a much more affordable payment, we found a less expensive phone plan, and I will be looking around for cheaper insurance.  I also applied for energy assistance though I have yet to hear back about that.

We have already cut WAY back on energy usage, we rarely ever eat out, we don't exchange gifts with adults so we only have the 2 kids to buy for, we don't attend away sporting events unless we can hitch a ride with someone else who is going, we never go anywhere except to buy groceries or the occassional splurge allowed because we sold something, we never buy anything unless it is either used, practically free (those mail in rebates can come in handy sometimes!), or off the 90% off clearance rack (Man, I have had to wear some very ugly clothes because of that one!).

I will fill you in on some other changes we do as time progresses.  Right now I guess we are still on the forebearance program at the bank until they tell me what my loan modification payment is going to be.  I have been through this process before.  You have to pay EXACTLY what they tell you to (not a penny more or a penny less) by the due date or they will kick you right off the program.  It can be extremely stressful for sure!

Wish us luck and prayers for us would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message. I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Pay Down your Debt and Live a More Fulfilling Life

Years ago I used to shop for my entertainment.  We went to movies and ate out, hired a babysitter, the whole 9 yards.  I bought new clothes because I wanted to impress people with my good looks and I wanted my kids to dress nice so they could make friends.  I bought foods made by other people because I didn't ever have the energy to cook anything myself and it was a fast and easy alternative.  While that stuff was nice I always felt unfulfilled.  I mean, I was working all the time, I had no energy for my family, we never had any money, what was the point?

The last several months have been rocky while my husband has been unemployed, but it really has given me a lot to think about.  It has helped me to think about everything I have done to help us to save money, to hone the skills I have developed over the last eleven years.  Would it have been nice to have another income to fall back on?  Sure!  But we're making it, and you can too.

Eleven years ago I quit my full time job and I've never looked back.  Yes, ocassionally I look at my friends who live the kind of life I used to live and feel a tinge of jealousy.  Really most of them say they envy me, and why wouldn't they?  I set my own schedule, I never have to miss one of my kids' performances during the school day, we have plenty of food, I have time to pursue my hobbies, and we were even able to save some money for a rainy day.  How did I do all of this you ask?  I had to give up a lot, but I think it was worth it.  Read on to hear some of the things I did.

1.  Cut the cable.  Seriously, who needs to pay $100 a month to have shows to watch all of the time when there are plenty of free things to watch.  There are only so many new shows anyway, do you need to pay all of that money to watch reruns?  As an added bonus I have a lot more free time than I ever did before since I had to get my money's worth.

2.  Eat in.  Really it's not hard to throw a few things in a crock pot or roasting pan and just let it cook.  Make extra when you prepare meals and package them in freezer containers or can them for a quick meal when something unexpected comes up.  I know there are places I could take my family of 4 and easily plunk down $50 for one meal.  Do you know how many groceries I could buy with that same amount of money?

3.  Have a staycation.  Sure, it is fun to go exotic places and brag about your trip to Disney land but it costs a lot of money to fly to your destination, eat out, rent a car, plus the hotel stay.  Think about all of the money you could save by checking out places close to home, some of them may even be free!  All of the memories with money to spare!

4.  Lose the home phone.  With the prevalence of cell phones think about how many phone calls you get at home anyway.  Does it make sense to pay $40 per month for another phone when you always have one in your pocket anyway?

5.  Forget the data plan for your cell phone.  Yes, I know it's hard not to check facebook while you're out and about, but is it honestly worth the extra expense when you can just use wi-fi to do the same thing?  Money saved $100 per month.  Apparently smart phones "require" you to have data so I had to take the $15 package but that still saves me $85/month.

6.  Check your phone usage.   Unlimited talk and text? Wow, those plans sure are expensive aren't they?  Why pay $45 per month to have a smart phone with unlimited talk when you only use 300 minutes?  I'd rather add a line to an existing plan for $10 a month.  That's a potential savings of $35 per month!

7.  Quit buying frozen and prepackaged foods.  I'm not going to say this isn't a tough one.  It's great to just go to the freezer and zap up a dinner in the microwave, but you pay a lot for that convenience.  With a little planning you could make your own and consume less chemicals and preservatives at the same time.  (Have you ever looked at those ingredient lists?  Yikes!)  Next time you cook something make twice as much and freeze half of it for next time.  Don't forget to label it!  How much you save depends on how many of these you buy, but I know a family lasagna costs about $10 at Walmart compared to a little bit of flour, milk, and salt to make noodles, (or even $1 to buy noodles) a few tomatoes and herbs out of the garden, and some shredded cheese so the same meal would cost us about $8 less.  Not too shabby.

8.  Make your own home remedies.  I'd be lying if I said I have never struggled with this one, the family took a lot of convincing to get on board.  Obviously there are still going to be times when going to the doctor is a must.  Essential oils can be spendy, but they last a long time, a little goes a long way.  You can use them to make your own cleaning products, soaps, lotions, scented candles, and aroma therapy products too.

9.  Turn down (or up?) the thermostat.  Really a few degrees don't make a big difference in your comfort, but it can really help your wallet save a lot.  Usually we run our air all summer, this summer we have only used it for the hot and humid days choosing to use ceiling fans most often instead.  That has saved us about $50 per month.

10.  Grow your own.  Yes, I realize we can't grow our own oranges here in WI but if you can grow something that is normally an expensive part of your grocery budget you can end up spending pennies for things that can end up costing several dollars at the store.  Buy the rest when it goes on sale.

11.  Take advantage of the sales.  We love bacon in our house.  Who doesn't?  But at $5 per package we couldn't afford it very often.  That's a one pound package.  So it cost $5 for one meals' worth of bacon.  Then I learned that there is a butcher who sells their ends and pieces of uncut bacon for $1 a pound when it goes on sale.  So we could buy 10 pounds for what we could buy 2 pounds worth of packaged bacon for?  Sign me up!  Good thing I got the meat slicer for Christmas a few years ago.  We stock up on our favorite products when they go one sale and freeze, can, or dehydrate the extras for future use.

12.  Buy generic.  I used to be a big coupon shopper, but these days I find even with coupons it is way less expensive most of the time to just buy the store brand.  Most of them are just as good as the brand name, except Pepsi.

13.  Make your own.  Yup, you can.  Recipes abound from making your own soap, deodorant,  lotion, shampoo, body wash, face cream, moisturizer, laundry soap, toilet bowl cleaner, you name it you can find it on the internet.  Of course some of them require more work than others, but start slow and find others who make the same things you do.  Compare notes to find the best recipes.  Instead of paying $5 for one bar of soap you can spend that much for enough olive oil to make a couple of batches of soap.  If you don't want to store it all they also make great gifts, which you also won't need to buy!  Double bonus!!

14.  Fix your clothes or repurpose them.  A pair of pants is expensive.  I have seen many people throw them away because the got a hole in them when a simple repair job could have saved you from having to pay another $20 (or more!) on a new pair.  Grease stains can easily be brushed away if you cover them in baby powder, pants that are too short can become great shorts or even bags.  There is so much you can do with this "garbage"!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Dressing your Family for Less

As hard as the times are these days, the kids seem to just keep on growing.  How is a family supposed to stay clothed when you can barely afford to put food on your table every day?  I have a few ideas I thought I might share with you that maybe you never thought about before.

Fancy hem add a touch of flair

Shop the clearance racks.  I often shop off the clearance racks these days.  You can find lots of great clothes at Walmart on the $1 rack. That is where I have gotten most on my clothes recently.  While they may not be the most stylish clothes, they will give you something to wear that is not ripped, worn, too small, and will keep you warm.

I'm usually not to discriminating when it comes to sizes.  Most things can be altered fairly easily.  Like the plain jeans that were way too long.  I added a designer touch at the hem.  One of a kind!
 Use gift cards. I just recently received a $10 gift card to our local Kohl's.  What a blessing!   If only we had still lived in MN I wouldn't have even had to pay the sales tax.  I got these 4 great shirts for my daughter for exactly $10 off the 90% off rack.  3 shirts were $1.60, and one was $5.20.  I think they're rather cute.  Hopefully the preteen daughter won't be too choosy to wear them!








Don't be afraid of accepting hand-me-downs.  Seriously that is all  I really seemed to wear when I was a kid and I survived.  Pass the ones your kids won't wear on to other kids.  Share the love, we can all use a little help these days!


Reuse old clothes.  Quit throwing them away, you can make them into something new!  Stained clothes can be dyed, drawn on, disguised, remade, or otherwise altered.  (But that is a post for another time!)  Pants that are too short can be made into capris, shorts, or even skirts. Shirts that fit well around, but show a bit more skin than you would like can be lengthened by adding some fabric to the bottom, the layered look is in these days anyway.

Shop thrift stores and garage sales.  I have shopped these for years.  They have clearance racks as well!  They also do 50% off certain color tickets each week at Goodwill.  I don't know if the Salvation Army still does it, but they always ran great back to school sales back when I lived in MN.  Despite what you may know about these places, they do get new clothing donations that have never been worn.  My husband does not like these stores because he claims they have a musty smell.  Apparently he hasn't discovered that these clothes can get washed and so they don't smell like that anymore.

Make your own clothes.  Yeah, I know, I know.  This one requires a lot more skill than any other idea, but if you have a pattern and some fabric you are good to go.  You would not believe all of the patterns and fabric I have seen at these places.  It isn't as hard as you might think, really.  (Seems I have all kinds of new post ideas today, huh???)



Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Storing up For the Winter

All summer our gardens are usually bursting with more produce than we can keep up with.  It is easy to imagine being wrapped in a warm celestial embrace in the bright summer sunshine.   I can almost hear whispered voices blowing through the pine trees surrounding my house when the breeze is blowing.  Abundant flowers, fruits and vegetables adorn the plants in my yard providing all of the senses with more stimulation than my favorite scented lotions and candles.  All summer long it is easy to feel loved and appreciated in my imagination because I am surrounded by so many wonderful things.

Rather than letting that overflowing of God's blessings spoil, we can, dehydrate, and freeze the excess in our household.  I know that some of these things may sound scary to the inexperienced readers, especially the canning, but it really isn't as scary as it may seem if you follow all of the instructions and precautions I promise!  When we still have more left we give them to friends and neighbors because that is one great way to show His love for us in how He takes care of us.

Canning and preserving His goodness from the summer helps to remind me of His love daily while the winds are angrily howling and the cold biting winds bite you to the core.  It makes me feel so not alone.  It has helped me to climb from the depression I had sunk into when the times got tough.  I got a sense of empowerment because I was more in control of our expenses, the only thing that limited me was my creativity.

This summer was not as kind as past seasons have been so we were forced to buy more produce than usual which ends up being more expensive.  It's not the end of the world of course, you can still live frugally if you have to buy the items you can stock up when the items are on sale.  Not everyone has the time or ability to garden anyway, God gifted each of us with different talents.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Practical Container Plants

Onions replaced the spikes in
my whiskey barrel

If you've known me for any amount of time, you would know that I just love to have containers of flowers everywhere you look.   Flowers attract beneficial insects to the garden needed for pollination, I view them as an essential part of any garden.  You can also eat many of the flowers or use them for craft projects or medicines

In the past I have used spikes, sweet potato vine, and other items as accent pieces in my flower pots.  The foliage is striking and interesting and it gives a nice contrast to the flowers.  It can be rather expensive to buy these though.  6 packs are much more reasonably priced, but they don't seem to sell these accent plants in 6 packs. Over the last couple of years I have replaced those items with other, more useful items.

Over the last several years I have used many items such as mint, rosemary, onions, fennel, basil, and parsley, but this year I am expanding my repetoire into more new and different things such as cucumbers, mustard and collard greens, and kale.

Shed planter

 My husband built these great boxes for me that sit in front of our shed.  In the past they have been filled with 3 rows of different kinds of flowers.  Last year the back row was made of curly leaf parsley, but I had more parsley than I knew what to do with so this year I am doing something different.  This box shows an alernated back row of both basil and parsley.  The middle row of flowers has been replaces with flowering kale of varying colors.  I asked at the garden store since I have never raised kale before and she told me that this would be a great idea and should last all summer as long as I kept them well watered.

Hanging baskets

My hanging baskets have held strawberries in the past.  Since they have been taken and planted in our berry patch, I will be trying come cucumbers in them.  Of course I will still have the ones out front as well, but they will hold a wildly varied bunch of plants.  Next year I will plant more varieties of basil such as red ruffles because of the interesting looking foliage.  When you limit yourself to what the garden centers grow and have available it makes the selections a bit boring.  One can never have too much basil.

You may recall my hanging tomato planters that I have had in years past.  I have done it with a plant in the top and the bottom.  This won't change, but those bags are rather cheaply made and are falling apart and getting filled with holes.  This year I will be making my own out of 5 gallon buckets.  More on that in a future post.

Ground planter

Planters also abound on the ground around here.  I have grown spinach, lettuce, and herbs in these.  It actually worked really well for me to put the cool season crops into planters last year because when the sun got too hot for them it was easy to move them to a shadier location.

My stevia and patchouli plants did well in containers all summer last year, until they came inside for the winter and my cats mutilated them...  Most of the time you can overwinter tender plants indoors to ensure they come back again next year.  If they are tropicals they would need a warm location, but I think next winter I may try my luck at sheltering them in my garage instead.

This year more tomatoes and peppers followed me home than I have room for in the veggie gardens out back, so some of those will also find homes in those giant pots that you buy trees in from the nursery.

A word of caution about container plants:  They do dry out faster than plants would in they were in the ground because of the added air circulation around the soil, so check them regularly.  That is one reason I won't buy the hanging baskets from the nurseries, they use inferior soils with no water retaining ingredients mixed in.  I like to make my own potting mix and top it off with mulch so the plants stay evenly moist.  This is especially true for the hanging baskets because air circulates all around them.

There, now you can combine both beauty AND utility all around your garden.  Don't be afraid to experiment, just because you've never heard of anyone else trying it out doesn't mean it won't work!

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

I Think our Ancestors Had it Right

The more I have gone through in recent years, the more it has gotten me to thinking about the way we run our lives in modern society. Every thought that I have always seems to lead me back to the same conclusion, ancient folks had it right. Why are we losing so much of their knowledge and skill?

They had no mortgages. Their homes with their own two hands or carved them out of the earth. Who wouldn't like to have that 30% of our income to spend on something else?

They worked for themselves. There weren't huge corporations out there driving them to work 60 hours per week and forcing them to move place to place. Whatever they did, they did because they chose to and for the benefit of themselves, their family, or their neighbors. They had time to help each other.

They knew their neighbors. It is very easy with our hectic lives filled with modern day conveniences not to have ever talked to our neighbors. I am guilty as charged. Living on a 2 acre plot of land out in the country I have never had the need to go to the neighbors and they have never come here. People used to depend on their neighbors and help each other out. There were communities that stood strong together. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't feel that same sense of community where I live. No one will stand up and speak out against someone being treated poorly, no one will lend a helping hand, no one cares what happens to anyone else. So many people are wrapped up in their own little world worrying about their own little worries and nothing else matters.

They didn't need power to entertain themselves. They were creative and used their many talents to occupy their free time. Those extra talents probably earned them a little extra income too. We waste so much time glued to the television watching non sense, seeing ads that don't speak the truth. Our young are being brought up to think there is always going to be someone or something there to tell us the answers. There isn't!

They thought for themselves. As I said before, we watch so much TV that many people lack the mental skill to figure anything out for themselves. When is the last time you added something up without a calculator? Be honest now... They could figure out the exact angle they needed to hit an animal with a rock in order to take it down. They couldn't wait for someone else to tell them, if they did their dinner would be running the other direction.

They bartered for goods and services. Come on, we all know that money isn't everything. If they didn't have the money to pay their doctor bill they didn't set up accounts and pay on a monthly basis $40 per month until the bill was paid off. They fixed his toilet for him or gave him a chicken or some eggs.

They heated their own homes. Many relied on fire, but some discovered the power of the earth's internal heating and cooling systems and sun's heat. They didn't pay large heating and cooling bills to giant electric and gas corporations.

They saved up for the hard times. Who hasn't had a tough go of it in the last few years? I know we have had several times where we have struggled. Unfortunately circumstances didn't allow us to save extra cash to pay for higher medical insurance bills and such. It used to be that when times were plentiful they dried extra beans and meat and stored it up for when the food wasn't so plentiful. What could be more practical than that?

They helped each other. In times past, they helped people who needed help. They didn't ask how much their home was worth, how much they had in their 401K account, tell them to go apply for assistance else where, or anything of the sort. They didn't say that they made $300 more than the income level that they can help you at and close the door in their face. They saw a need and they helped, plain and simple.

I think I'd like to go back to simpler times and live a few of the lessons people from the not so distant past could teach so many of us today.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

I Give UP!!!!

Have you ever felt like you could just collapse on the floor in a huge blubbering pile? Like nothing in the world will ever go your way again? As if you need to take out a white flag and wave it for everyone to see and call a truce? The endless barrage of hardships and difficulties are just too much to bear!

I don't know what has been going on the last 5 years so that nothing will ever go our way, but I am at my wits' end. It just seems like it's one thing after another. As soon as we start to see the clouds breaking up, more clouds roll right in to take their place. It's just one never ending storm after another. I feel empty and hopeless. I am truly at a loss and no one will help us. I feel like I am in a bottomless pit of quicksand from which there is no escape. I have a feeling that the depression is trying to move back in and take back over my life, but I don't want it to.

I am usually a pretty optimistic person. I know it is always darkest before the dawn, really I do. I have made many batches of lemonade out of my pile of lemons, and some earrings, lemon bars, lemon sherbet, lemon bread, lemon meringue pie, lemon drops, lemon chicken, lemon poppy seed muffins, and lovely scented soaps too. But I am running out of things to make with these lemons and I would really like to get something else instead. Did you know that we have had 10 qualifying hardships within the last 5 years? I am sure I could find even more than that too if I tried. Sad. Pathetic. Unnatural.

Why does no one see my pain? Why will no one reach out a helping hand? Why does everyone think my business is none of their business? Even when I ask for help, no one will help. They won't see my need, it's like they put blinders on, plug their ears and sing a merry tune until I have talked so much I can't talk anymore. They change what I tell them to ease their guilt and so that they are able to do their worst to me. I am sick of it.

Bad service, rising expenses, job transfers, job losses, botched rentals, home sale staging, deaths, depression, short sale, foreclosure, credit clampdowns, home repairs, credit counseling, stress, illness, refinancing, medical debt, loan modifications, I could go on and on. All the while I always try to do the right thing and take care of my debts at the expense of our family and our life. It's sickening really. Why won't it stop? Why do these things keep happening to me? I need to put an end to this vicious cycle.

Everyone has a plan, and everyone tells me what to do when they can't help me. When I tell them I've tried that already, they simply tell me that I must have done it wrong or that I need to do X as well. They tell me someone else will help and pretend to act incredulous and disgusted when I tell them that didn't work either.

Can't anyone just listen, support a person, and help them out? Why does everyone feel the need to require documentation of everything even though I have never told any lies about my situation? Why can't we prepare for something bad that is going to happen when we know in advance it will happen simply because it has yet to happen?

Yeah, I know I have a lot of questions. Why can't anyone answer any of them? Doesn't anyone else have these kinds of questions too? Hasn't this kind of thing been happening all over the world? Why is no one willing to help a person simply to be helpful, not just because a law says they have to?

Apparently no business, no government program, and no job performance bonus is going to get us out of this mess. Only God can and only God will. How do I give this all up for him to deal with when all I do is worry about tomorrow? How do I give it all up into God's hands? I want to give up.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Insurance Comparisons

My husband just got a newsletter from his work in the mail. In it, there was a summary of our 2010 insurance's annual reports for both medical and dental. We have gotten new medical insurance companies every few years, but have had the same dental insurance the whole time my husband has been with the company. (13 years at this point in time.) I could not believe my eyes when I read the report. How can our health insurance company keep up with their greedy ways in the middle of a recession? It drives me absolutely insane!

Medical premiums paid by employees of his company for medical amounted to $57,042,365.

Aetna paid out claims equaling $48,567,376.

Premiums - Claims = The profit made $8,474,989. This is just from one company's employees.

Yet they need to raise our premiums on a yearly basis by between $40 and $60 per month why? We certainly aren't seeing that big of raises in our monthly paychecks. Deductibles are high and they do not like to actually cover much of anything and find every excuse in the book to make us pay for each service out of pocket.

Curious, I decided to do some math to figure out how much each family paid Aetna to line their pockets. I know my math isn't exactly right as not all people have family coverage or the best plan like we do, but I thought I'd aim for some ball park numbers just to occupy my mind and satisfy my curiosity. I am also unsure of how much they pay their employees or how many they actually have on staff, but I think my guesstimates are fairly reasonable. Here is what I came up with:

We paid $144.10 per week for our family health insurance coverage.

Multiply that by 4 and we paid $576.40 per month.

Multiply the monthly amount by 12 and get $6,916.80 as our yearly premium.

This is where the math might seem a little fuzzy to you, but I wanted to find out my share of the overcharges. Dividing total premiums received by our monthly premium amount gives us the number of families served if all of the payees had family plans. $57,042,365/$6,916.8= 8,246.93 families.

Granted some of the profit is paid to people who use our money to pay our bills, but now to find out how much Aetna charged each family to earn their profits. I took the profits that they made and divided it by the number of families who paid in premiums.
$8,474,989/8,246.93=$1,027.66.

I wonder how many employees it takes to service these accounts? Is 8 a fair number? That leaves each of them to deal with customer issues for 1,031 families. If they were paid a salary of $60,000 per year (just guessing here...) that would take $480,000 out of their profit of $8,474989 leaving them only $7,994,989. Let's say $100K for overhead stuff (utilities, phone, etc) that leaves $7,894,989 profit. We were each bilked out of $957.32 just so they could make a tidy profit. Does anyone else think that companies should not be in the health care business to make money?

I believe that is where all of our problems are coming from. If you are in it to make a large profit you raise the prices of procedures every year, making insurance companies pay you more for each service provided, increasing the premiums of each consumer involved until no one is able to afford anything at all. No wonder our health care industry has so many problems! People are also dropping insurance left and right because they simply can't afford it. Health care clinics are unwilling to work with people who can not afford to keep paying more money toward their bill every year so more people simply don't pay and end up declaring bankruptcy which leaves the company holding the bag so they increase prices some more to cover their losses. Add to that the people who sue places for millions of dollars just because the lawyer told them they have a case and won and you have a perfect way to bankrupt an entire country.

With everyone out there only to get money for themselves any which way they can and no one looking for the common good of mankind, no wonder we're in such a pickle!

In contrast to our health insurance there is the dental insurance.

We pay $4.92 per week x 4 = $19.68 per month x 12 = $236.16 per year.

We each go to see a hygienist twice per year, we only go to the doctor once a year. Hmm...

Premiums paid to Delta Dental by employees of his company $2,580,841.

Claims paid by Delta on behalf of same employees $2,390,665.

Premiums - Claims = Total profit $190,176.

Taking premiums paid divided by how much we paid in premium is giving me the number of families served. $2,580,841/236.16=10,928.358

Taking the profit of $190,176/families served 10,928.358 leaves each family paying an extra $17.40 per year not counting Delta's expenses.

Sorry, I'm not going to do the math here to figure out how much of that goes to employees and such because it simply isn't worth it to me. Obviously they provide some services and deserve to make a little bit of profit. They also do not refuse to pay things like our health insurance company seems to enjoy doing leaving me to pay most of the bill.

I have a much higher opinion of Delta Dental than I do of any health insurance company that I have ever had.

Obviously dentists make money or they would not be open and running their own businesses. (Not run or owned by corporations I might add.)

The dental insurance makes money or they would not be in business. They treat their customers well or they wouldn't have more customers than the medical insurance company has.

I often hear the excuse that doctors are highly paid because of the number of years they went to medical school, but don't dentists and vets go to the same amount of schooling? Sorry if you buy that line, but I don't! Look at you vet bill and dentist bill next time you go to either one and compare it to your own medical doctor. You probably see the doctor at each place the same amount of time, right?

Is there a lesson to be learned here? I think so! Actually I believe there are several noteworthy lessons here.
1. Treat your customers well, they are not just giant ATM's.
2. Profit can be made without ripping off your customers.
3. Work with your customers, when you help them you help yourself.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

The New American Middle Class

It used to be that people in the middle class owned their own home, had money to buy all of the necessities that their families needed, had decent saving accounts, 401K's, didn't need to live paycheck to paycheck, and were able to take a family vacation every year even if it was just going to a nearby campground just to get away. It seems that picture has done a whole lot of changing over the last few years and I am not really liking the direction that our country is heading. Families do not leave their homes, pack lunches for every family member every day, wear the same clothes year after year even after they are tattered and stained, there is no room for any emergencies as saving have been eaten up by increased expenses, homes are on the brink of foreclosure, there is a lot of deficit spending just to keep the same lifestyle we have always led.

Now more than ever we are all finding ourselves struggling. Some of us have never had to put up with some of the situations we are finding ourselves in, and it can be a scary place to be. We are needing to be creative and make some major cutbacks in our lifestyle in order to keep the same standard of living that we have always had. Some are clueless as to how they can do this and are petrified of having to change their lives.

What lead to this state of affairs? No pay raises for years at a time, increasing costs of living, forced job transfers, not being able to sell our homes, decreased credit availability, declining home values, foreclosures, increased taxes and medical expenses, businesses who have no regard for positions people are finding themselves in, banks who are unwilling to help struggling homeowners, job losses, increased disease caused by new stresses that we are not used to dealing with, shrinking 401Ks as well as other savings avenues, and reduced work hours available are just some of the problems that have contributed to this new reality.

It seems like this problem is insurmountable. It looks like a giant mountain that we are both unwilling and unable to climb and conquer. What is there to do but to throw our hands into the air and give up? Now, more than ever, we need to pull together and make some sacrifices. We need to help those that are in need of help even though we may not think they need it. We need to band together and take care of each other. We need to have less focus on our short term profits and more focus on the gains that can be made in the long term.

Being just one person, what can we do to make the world a better place? I will give you some ideas of things that we have done as well as things that could be done if people weren't so hung up on following the highest profit line they can get. Some of these ideas are things that we can do to help ourselves, while others are ideas that we can use to help those around us which may indirectly benefit us as well.

When I found myself with less cash flow than we have traditionally had, I found ways to stretch our budget. I switched out all of our regular light bulbs for CFLs, turn on less lights at night, turn down the thermostat when no one is home, and run all of our televisions and other electronics on power strips so they do not use electricity when they are not turned on. Instead of buying clothes at the retail stores I used to frequent I found myself buying them at garage sale or thrift shops, same with other household necessities such as plates, books, and pot. Recreating clothing that we already own is a great way to save money. Why not make that shirt with the stains on it into an art project that your children can proudly wear to school? Those pants that are too short can easily be turned into a jean skirt or jean shorts. Making our own foods from our homegrown garden has also been a Godsend to our budget woes. Sugar free blackberry jam in the stores was $5 per jar. Picking the blackberries from the woods and making our own saves us a lot of cash. That $5 easily buys enough pectin to make at least a dozen jars of jam if not more. Who ever thought before this all began that I would learn how to make my own green cleaners, sausage, dog food, canned veggies, frozen soups, broths, and dried herbs?

Businesses can help people too. If you can't afford to give them a discount, at least work with them so they can fit your goods and/or services into their budget. If they say they can't afford the bill and try to arrange things to make everything more affordable for them, believe them. Charge an affordable interest rate and don't change all kinds of extra fees just to add to their misery and to your bottom line. Then the business will not loose customers and the customers can still afford services on an affordable payment plan. I think it is despicable when a business tells a person to sell their home at a large loss or spend all of their life savings just to get paid sooner. What will they do the next time? There IS going to be a next time, you DO know that, right? Why can't we spend more time helping others who are also struggling to get their feet under them so they can then pay that kindness forward? If they can afford the payment then you will not have to worry about these customers declaring bankruptcy costing you even more money either.

Banks can lower a current customer's interest rate. If they are already your customer and they are paying their bills in a timely manner why not try to help them make their payment more affordable if they request your assistance? This will free up some of their cash so they can spend it to help stimulate the economy. This will indirectly help a bank as they have invested their customer's money into various stock markets. Increased spending will increase the value of those holdings earning the bank more income thereby helping the bank as well as it's customers.

Insurance companies don't need to keep adding a 10% increase to their customer's charges every year either. If people feel less taken advantage of they will be less likely to take advantage of others.

I also feel that fraud and lawsuits are destroying our country. People seem to be looking for a quick profit around every corner. Taking people to court costs everyone money, as does charging for services not actually provided. Even those of us who aren't even involved in the situation. That is how prices got as over inflated as they have. Businesses don't eat the cost of these lawsuits and payouts themselves, they divide the cost and spread it out as increases to all of the other customers weather it's insurance or some other business. Why do you think our cost of insurance has risen so dramatically over the last 15 years? Certainly not because the equipment is that much better. Think about it. How much does it cost to go to the vet vs going to the doctor? Both went to the same amount of school, but there isn't insurance in most veterinary practices. What about the dentist? I still pay close to the same amount now as I did 13 years ago when we got our dental insurance. Why? Because people are not abusing the dental insurance plans in the same way as they are abusing the other insurance companies. My health insurance cost on the other hand has increased more than 250% over the same amount of time. Are we REALLY that much less healthy?

Start seeing the sanity and refusing to take the easy road, instead take the road less traveled. Help yourself, help others, stop being greedy, and together we will make it through the rough times.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Helping Each Other

In recent days I have been making further attempts to lower my monthly payments so we can get back on track after all of the recent upheaval. I have learned a great many lessons in these attempts and it puzzles me what some places are thinking. Here is my story...

When I was told that I met the qualifications to get a loan modification from our current bank I was extremely happy, because that 6.875% interest rate is killing us. I was told by a great many places that we would not qualify to refinance because of the foreclosure we had in 2008, my bank said a loan modification would be the only way they could lower my interest rate. Fine, I understand with a score of 640 I can see not wanting to take a risk (although I have both a first and second with them both of which have always been paid on time. Well, except that once when I skipped a payment on purpose because their responses when I asked for help was to say I wasn't struggling since I was making on time payments. Besides why wouldn't I pay on time, we do need to keep a roof over our heads.)

If I had a lower house payment, I could pay my husband's commuting expenses monthly instead of each time he gets a bonus from his work. I HATE having to rely on credit cards as they have this habit of checking your credit report and dropping your credit line even if you always pay them on time. I'm not sure how we would survive if my last credit card did the same thing that all of the others have, what bills would I have to skip paying in order to buy him gas? He has been driving this 110 mile per day commute for 2 years now and frankly I am tired of not having the money in each pay check to cover the expense. No one is buying houses in our price range right now if it is not on a lake, so after a year on the market we took it back off.

I follow every rule during each modification period, I keep meticulous records, I pay the bill with plenty of time to spare so it gets there before it is due, and I do everything that their employees ask me to usually involving sending a more recent fax of pay info or an updated hardship letter. I am not sure what it is they decide between the time the modification starts and when it's over but they keep coming up with excuses as to why I don't qualify in the end. I report my expenses, my bank statements back up my financial worksheets and everything. The first excuse was that I don't pay more than 31% of my income on housing and that I can afford to keep my house, the second excuse was that I can just get cheaper health insurance so I don't need a modification (huh?), the third time I can't afford my house and I need to run a short sale on it, this last attempt I finally got them to approve the modification but they will keep the interest rate the same as it was to begin with and lower my payment just a few dollars. Not sure how putting me through 9 months of hell gets me into a better place than I was to start out with, but whatever. I guess I could say at least I passed this time, but it doesn't help free up the money I need for daily living expenses. Apparently though when it's over they have promised to fix my credit back to showing the on time payments that I have been making. I guess we'll see if that's yet another lie that their employees place in front of me while they try to steal our house out from under us.

I think the refusals come down to corporate greed. They don't want to loose any of their precious money that they get each month from my higher interest rates, so they only want to go with a government sponsored program that will pay them to do the right thing. It's just crazy! Since when is it the government's job to pay a business to make their borrowers into better borrowers? Wouldn't they rather a borrower has the foresight to see a problem arising and try to head it off before the bank has to deal with it directly in the way of a foreclosure? Why can't they take the proof provided and not make up monthly income that we do not receive? Why can't they just help a person who needs help? Don't they see that freeing up some of the money I pay to them in interest rate charges could be freed up to help spur the market into economic recovery?

I have run into that very same problem in the health care industry. Our deductibles make us pay thousands of dollars out of pocket every year before they cover any expenses. We have accounts with 2 different clinics that we are paying monthly payments to from previous years of medical bills, they each have an arrangement with the same bill collection agency to get 10% interest to stretch the payments over 3 years. We currently pay $78 to one of the clinics, and $40 to the other. Each is trying to say adding our new balance to the old one will "only" raise our monthly payment $6-12. That's all fine and good, but my husband has not had an hourly pay raise since either the late 90's or early 00's, I told them we can't afford to pay more on a monthly basis. They asked me to send in bank statements, monthly paystubs, and all kinds of other stuff which all back up what I am saying. Instead of looking at what we bring home each month, one of them looked at the amount he gets per year with the once yearly bonus. We use the bonus to pay down our debt, we no longer have that to pay extra bills with. They say we make plenty of money so we don't need their aid in getting our bill paid, I need to arrange with them to pay the bill in full. Apparently they can only help people who fall into guidelines set forth to them by the government. Ah, another place looking to get paid to do the right thing. Don't they think I know our finances better than they do? I am hopeful that I don't run into this same situation with the other clinic since my son has a surgery scheduled there for December.

My husband has also recently been informed that our work sponsored health insurance cost is going to increase another $40 per month to cost us $661.12 total for the 4 of us. That's more than 10% of our gross yearly income and I think that is outrageous. There is NO way we are going to be able to afford that. Since other attempts at less expensive health care has turned out no one willing or able to help us simply because of my weight, I decided see if I qualify for the Wisconsin sponsored health care insurance. Apparently I not only qualify for that, but also for reduced price meals for the kids, food share, and help with our utility bills during the winter months. I only pray that we get an answer fast enough so we can drop the insurance before the open enrollment period is up.

How is it that government can see a need and offer assistance to someone that businesses deem unworthy of helping? Is my doing the right thing and paying my bills on time the thing that makes me unworthy of their assistance? If so, that is totally messed up. It is my opinion that people should always try and do the right thing if it is in their power to do so. I have cut back in every other area of my life, we rarely go anywhere, I only buy clothes off of clearance racks at Goodwill or garage sales, I can and make my own foods, I have one little lamp on at night with a cfl light bulb, turn the heat down at night and when the rest of the family isn't home, my kids can't even afford to eat school lunches so I pack everyone's meals daily before sending them off, I make my own soaps and cleaning supplies,... Housing expenses and health care are the only places I can seek shelter in until our other debts are paid off. I am praying to God that he helps these business people to see reason and they help people who request their aid, not only for myself but for anyone else who is standing in my shoes in similar circumstances. We can't all rely solely on the government to get through this crisis, if we all can do something small in the life of another person we can change the world and make it a better place for everyone to live in.

Why shouldn't we stop and help someone less fortunate than ourselves? Why not buy the homeless person a cup of coffee? Why not donate our kids' used toys to the someone who will use and appreciate them? After all, we don't want to end up like Scrooge do we?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Doing What we Can to Save the Earth and our Health

Our wonderful friend Jan is once again hosting the Gardener's Sustainable Living Project in which we can share what we are doing to protect our environment. Check out her link for all of the details on this wonderful project that helps encourage us to even just do one thing. Thank you Jan!!!

This is my post from last year's event in which I won a cobra head weeding tool in the drawing she had once the project was completed. It is a pretty neat little gadget, though I don't get many weeds to pull with it. This is in part because of my mulching efforts that save me a lot of back breaking labor. It's always very nice to have a backup plan though, just in case.

In addition to the composting, reusing plastic water bottles, canning, buying gently used items in place of brand new when possible, my gardening methods, and the conservation efforts that help to conserve our precious resources I have added some new activities to my efforts over the past year.

1. I have tried to limit my use of commercially prepared products. Not only because the packaging that these products come in, but also because of the way that chemicals and preservatives may affect our health. Some of the things I have begun making for my family include making tooth powder, cleaning supplies and laundry detergents, soap, and pet food. I may have forgotten a few things, but you get the idea...
2. Using less disposable bags. Not only can I use the bags that you can buy at the store for putting my purchases in, but I have also made some of my own bags. I just got done making some reusable produce bags out of a sheer fabric remnant that I bought about 6 years ago. The remnant that I found downstairs in my fabric stash only cost me 75 cents for almost 4 yards of fabric. So far I have made 4 of them, but I am sure that I will need many more than that before my garden veggies start ripening this summer.
3. Reusing creatively. Many of you may know about ways to reuse paper and cardboard, but what about those styrofoam packing peanuts? We used ours to revitalize a flattened pet bed. Word to the wise, if there is any scent on them at all do NOT put them in a beagle's bed... My husband had planned on throwing these away so he put a piece of aluminum foil that he had used on the grill on them. I thought I avoided all of the pieces that came in contact with the offending aluminum foil, but apparently he must catch a whiff of something and tries to tear the bed apart.
4. Replacing paper towels and paper napkins in most circumstances. This is a no-brainer. How often do we instictively reach for a paper towel when we go to dust? You spray the cleaner on the surface, you wipe with a paper towel, and when the towel starts to fall apart because it is too moist or whatever, we throw them away. What if we only used paper towels for something really nasty and gross (like a cat's hairball)? Do you know how much less waste we'd be sending to the dump just by using cloth instead?
5. Ditch the wrapping paper. Okay, it is fun to rip wrapping paper off of packages, but is it worth garbage bags full of trash to the dump? How many households are there? Even if you "only" send one garbage bag per holiday celebration, how many bags of trash will each country send? I made cloth bags simply because they're more durable than the paper version, but it's the same idea. I tried to make the bags more fun by using cartoon characters on my reusable gift bags. I will also add a draw string to the top of each bag to eliminate peeking as well as feeling the need to use reams of tissue paper to hide the gift inside. This picture shows my Finding Nemo gift bags, cloth placemats and napkins, and the produce bags I made.
6. Less plastic bottles. Not only can we reuse our bottles for water, but we can also use less bottles when we drink soda. We all know we really shouldn't drink soda because it's not good for us, but I know many of us give in to the urge once in a while anyway. I got this great solution for Christmas this year. Carbonate your own water in a reusable BPA free plastic bottle, add soda flavoring, and make your own. Not only does it have less environmental impact in the number of bottles, but the cola has only 35 calories in an 8 oz serving. If you compare that to Pepsi which has 150 calories in a 12 oz can you can see it's also "better" for you. Let me do the math for you. 150/12=12.5 calories per oz 12.5*8=100 calories in an 8 oz serving. It also has less than 1/3 of the sodium and less caffeine as well (it's lower on the ingredient list). If you want the true Pepsi taste though, this isn't it since the cola has more of a coke taste to it. Most people won't really notice the difference though.
7. Using less canned goods. Alright, I know it's not quite as "easy" as canned good vs dried, but there isn't the amount of salt in the dried goods either. To keep them fresh I store them in airtight containers. The dried good also cost less than canned goods do. If you buy a 15 oz can of beans, you know you're not getting 15 oz of beans, you are also paying for the liquid that the beans are packed in. If you rinse and drain the beans then that money is also being washed down the drain. Add to that the effort you go through to dispose of the cans those beans come in and it's another no-brainer. As an added bonus if you run out of seeds for your garden, you can plant these beans and grow some more food. You can't plant a canned bean because they have already been heated and will not grow into a new plant. Once the dried beans are rehydrated the beans will weigh more than 15 oz too, usually at least double the amount of the beans in a can.

What are you doing to help? To join this project create your own post. For a chance to win her awesome prizes you'll need to leave a link to your post on Jan's web page.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Home Made Tooth Powder

In my quest to be more chemical free, I found so many interesting things that I could make with the same base of ingredients that I thought why not try to make some of these things. The problem is to actually find the products that I am looking for. I mean one recipe calls for powdered calcium carbonate. What the heck is that, why do I need it in my tooth paste, and where do I find it?

It turns out that calcium carbonate is in lots of stuff. It's in the lime we use to neutralize the acidity of our soil. I don't think I want to use that though... Those OTC antacids have it in there and they are already flavored so that's a bonus. That's what I ended up using since my choices are limited around here, but ideally I wanted to use something without any additives. I hear you can get it at health food stores so I may have to look into that next time I'm out and about.

The recipe in Home Made, Best Made from Reader's Digest called for 13 TBSP calcium carbonate (used as an abrasive to clean the teeth), 4 TBSP baking soda (detergent), 1 tsp salt (? more abrasive perhaps?), and essential oils of 12 drops cinnamon and 25 drops mint (to cover yucky taste and to soothe sensitive gums).

Well, I don't like to be wasteful so I used my berry flavored antacids. I used my pill crusher to turn it into powder. Somehow I don't think that would go well with cinnamon or mint, so I skipped that. It took a lot of work so I wouldn't recommend that unless there are no other alternatives. By the time I was done crushing all of the purple ones I had 4 TBSP of powder so I cut the recipe by 2/3. At least you could use the tums for their intended purpose though if you would choose to use them. I think I will also skip the salt next time. It does not taste the best though, so I will be doing some tinkering with the recipe. I also used too much baking soda in it. Blah!

It works well as far as cleaning the film off your teeth goes. I have used it twice. The first time I wet my toothbrush before I dipped it into the powder. Don't do that, it's messy and may leave clumps of nasty stuff in your powder. It is stored in a tightly sealed container and it's supposed to keep well. That's one of the reasons I made the powder first.

I think next time I may try to make a paste so I can add the fluoride that I keep forgetting to use. Save your smile says it's the most important ingredient in toothpaste. It's not required in the recipes I found, but it is supposed to help strengthen and protect our tooth enamel.

I will also need a humectant such as glycerin if I am going to make toothpaste. I would chose glycerin because it is also used in lip glosses and lotions so I would have it for more than one purpose.

I will not use a thickener, preservative, sweetener, or a coloring agent though. I am thinking that as a flavoring agent I may use some dried sage or mint from my garden. What would you use?

The actual paste in the book also called for wights of items, a few ounces of this,... so I want to get a digital scale before I do that. It will also help me make my soaps more accurately.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Soaping 101

I finally got around to making my own soap last year. I have been thinking about it and researching for quite some time, but I was rather nervous to try because I see so many warnings about the caustic elements of soap making. One day when the kids were off somewhere and the dog and I were home alone, I decided to try my hand at it. I set up shop out in our garage this summer and took my first run at it gearing up with all of the equipment the books suggested. These included gloves, long sleeved shirt, goggles, face mask,.... When I say everything I mean everything!

Some people might think I am crazy for doing this, after all isn't it just easier to go to the store and buy a few bars off the shelf? That's really not the point though. There are some very good reasons to make your own soap.

The reasons I wanted to try it though are the following:
1. I can control the quality of ingredients in my soap.
2. I know what ingredients went into my soap, nothing is missing from the label of ingredients.
3. Knowing what is in my soap allows me not to worry about toxic chemicals that I'm cleaning my family with.
4. I can provide my family high quality soap for a very low price.
5. Naturally occurring glycerin is kept in home made soaps, it is normally removed from commercial soaps. This is a natural emollient which makes the soap easier on your skin. (info from The Complete Soapmaker)
6. It is an enjoyable hobby that provides me another chance to take better care of my family.

I got my recipe from The Everything Soapmaking Book. It's a very simple recipe that makes castille soap. It was made with only three ingredients; lye, water, and olive oil via the cold process method. One of the problems though, is that home made soaps don't always turn out in the way you expected it to. The picture on the top shows that my first batch turned out crumbly and did not hold it's shape well. While paging through the trouble shooting section I found that problems may occur because of wide temperature variations, that's my guess for what went wrong with this batch. Luckily my soap could be rebatched though. This included shredding and melting the soap in a pot of water and then molding it into soap molds. This is called hand milling.

This batch of handmilled soap did not turn out. The soap would not harden, you can see where I pressed on the soaps to check for hardness. I will have to melt these again and try over again. The book I got from the clearance shelf at Goodwill told me that. (Making Potpourri, Colognes, and Soaps)I think it may have been the addition of coffee and/or green tea that contributed to the inability of this soap to set as I did not have a recipe and I just threw a few things into the batch. I guess there isn't a way to be completely sure.

This batch was made with essential oils that are supposed to help with symptoms of depression. The information on essential oils was found in The Everything Soapmaking Book as well. I followed a recipe from a library book that called for specific amounts of shredded soap, water, and castor oil and just went out on a limb with the addition of the essential oils which are added after saponification has taken place. I also like the silicon mold that I used for this, it made it very easy to remove the soaps from the mold. I hope that I will find some more of these on clearance sometime since they aren't cheap.
Once the soaps come out of the mold they are trimmed to make the surfaces even. The extra soap pieces will be used to make some laundry soap for the family in the (hopefully) not so distant future. It made my skin feel very soft when I tried it and I didn't even have to use any lotion or anything.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've gone blog hopping again. I have really been missing hanging out with my cyber buddies, but the recession we are in has caused me to do a lot of looking for more ways to cut our expenses further than I already have. Of course the bank has not helped us at all, so I've had to be very creative in my searches.

I have searched for home health remedies to move us further away from the world of chemicals (for cleaning our house and healing our bodies), recipes for eating healthy without having to spend an arm and a leg on prepackaged (and preservative laden) foods, soap recipes (and yes, I did finally make some soap), and new insurance providers (for everything but our life and dental insurance which are the only products that haven't raised their premiums through the roof). If things stay on track with our finances and we have no other increased or added expenses we should manage to come through this storm in just a few months, then I can concentrate more on getting our health on track (which I have spent considerable amounts of time researching).

I decided about my recent thoughts on how companies who have to do with our health really don't care about the customer, they're way more concerned with making money in the short run. They need to focus on the future and they too could even help us get out of our economic recession.

When my husband and I got married we paid very little (maybe $100? I can't remember for sure) for our health insurance and it was excellent. It included 100% of maternity costs being covered, free yearly well visits, and we only paid 20% of the trip to the doctor costs up to our deductible and insurance paid 100% after that. We also never paid more than the stated office visit copays for other visits.

Fast forward 15 years...

Starting in January we will be paying over $600 per month for our health insurance through my husband's employer who pays half of the cost of this insurance. We still get yearly well visits, but somehow our well visits are never viewed as well visits and I have to fight with the insurance company them to get them to pay. Any trips I make to the doctor almost always comes completely out of my pocket. I have never actually gotten to the point of paying our deductible and then having them pay 80% because we rarely ever go to the doctor.

Besides the monthly insurance cost, I am also paying $78 per month to one clinic and $40 to another for past visits , labs, mammograms (plus 10% interest because I can't afford to pay the bill in full) that my insurance didn't feel the need to pay. Add to that our monthly prescriptions and we are well over $800 per month just paying for our health. That's crazy!!!! Who has any money left for food once we pay for that AND our mortgage? If we could just reduce those expenses for each and every American family by $200 per household, we would all have a whole lot more money to spend on other goods and services.

Any rational human being can see that by having a family pay less money for health care costs, the family could afford to buy healthier foods and health club memberships with the money they are saving. This would reduce the overall medical cost to the health insurance company giving them greater profits within several years.

If people are healthier it would also reduce the number of visits needed to doctor offices giving the doctors more time to concentrate on helping their patients to get healthy and reducing the numbers of malpractice claims. The doctor wouldn't have so many people to take care of that they don't spend the time to get all of the information they should have had. This would give the doctors more money because they wouldn't have to spend so much of their money on malpractice insurance. It would also save the clinics money because they wouldn't be so over run with patients that they need 4 receptionists to check patients in and verify their insurance plans.

Prepackaged foods are very inexpensive, but they are also not very good for us. They have few nutrients in them and lots of added chemicals and preservatives. Spending all of our money on paying drug companies, insurance companies, and clinic and doctor bills leaves us with less money for taking care of ourselves. This actually makes us LESS healthy because we are forced to buy more inexpensively produced foods in order to have enough food and skipping the health club memberships because it's not something we really "HAVE" to have. These foods add to our inability to loose weight, our feelings of tiredness, and lack of motivation to exercise compounding the problems that we already have.

I don't think people in the health care system should be large for profit companies. If everyone could stop being greedy for just a moment and just use the brains that God gave us, they could actually spend some time and energy to help people live healthier lives we would be a healthier, wealthier, and happier country.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Loan Modification Lessons Learned

I am not a banker, I have never worked at a bank or as a financial advisor, nor have I had any schooling in these areas. That being said, I seem to have become somewhat of an "expert" in this area having tried to get my loan modified three times. I have learned many things that first time loan modification applicant may find helpful. Here's a little background information.

The first time we applied for a modification, they wanted us to undergo a forbearance. This is a plan that does not guarantee a modification but helps you to pay off outstanding debt by reducing your mortgage payment so you can apply the additional money you would be paying to your mortgage company to pay down other debt. I did not want to do that because I was leery about having the $5,482.97 needed at the end of the plan arrangement and chose not to agree to their plan because a modification was not guaranteed and my bank has pulled a whole lot of stunts on me in the past that caused me not to trust them or their motives.

The next two times I prequalified for the federal loan modification and went through the entire process twice, getting disqualified in the end because they took into consideration the fact that we get a couple of bonuses a year and added that into our monthly income.

I'm going to make one final attempt at a regular bank backed loan modification with my bank since that seems to be my only option. Why try again? I have learned some lessons from the first few times that may help me to get a non-federal loan modification.

Now, for the tips you were searching for.

If you are trying to get a federal loan modification, I just want to make sure you are clear on the point that keeps hanging us up. The 31% of income that your home payment should not exceed is taken on a before tax basis, so do the math yourself before bothering to attempt it. It also only includes p&i, property tax, and insurance no other expenses. Even if you meet all of the other qualifications this one will get you thrown out of the program.

My other loan modification tips are good for any type of loan modification you may be seeking.

Loan modifications create a bad payment history for you with your bank as well. Here's how: you pay less than the payment agreed to on a time table set up for you by your bank. They hold the funds you send them (on time according to your agreement) in a non-interest bearing account and only apply payments once they are enough to pay the original loan amount. If refinancing may have been an option for you before attempting a loan modification, it probably won't be by the time you are done. Believe me, I've asked. I also can not get rid of my escrow account because of that same problem.

In general they want you to update your income and expenses every month. Even if they don't ask, you should keep them updated anyway. If you don't, they may call and try to update your information over the phone. Guesstimates will get your prequalification thrown out because your statements are not in keeping with the facts that they discover. They research the stuff and catch you on anything they can so they don't actually "have" to give you a modification.

Keep meticulous records. I started keeping all of the letter and communications I have gotten from the bank because it not only helps me to keep track of what happened when, but it has also helped me when they tried to claim I didn't pay the proper amount for my payment. I was able to come up with proof of how much they asked me for even though their records may have stated otherwise. This means keeping copies of letters, paperwork, fax transmission confirmations, and documentation that you send to them as well. It does become quite a lot of paperwork to keep track of, but it gives peace of mind that even though it may take a while to find the information I'm looking for, I'll have it.

Get the name of every person that you speak to at the bank, record major points of discussions with each person, as well as the date and time of the conversation. Every time you are transferred to a different department, get the new person's name. This may seem like tedious work, but it can help to save you many headaches in the future. Unfortunately I did not do this at the beginning which is what caused my lack of trust in my bank. They do not always document all parts of your discussion in their records and if you can't even come up with a name then they won't believe anything you say even if you've been a good customer of their for over 20 years with a spotless payment record.

Even though the bank says they want you to have a balanced budget, with a little bit of money left over each month, be careful. This doesn't mean to lie about your finances or anything, I refuse to be dishonest to get the help I need. I cut all of the corners I possibly could before seeking help from my bank and I was "only" short by about $40 per month according to my records, so apparently I just need to cut a few more expenses and don't need a modification. They don't seem to understand that employer sponsored health care has this thing called an open enrollment period which prevents us from changing our coverage whenever we "want" to.

I hope I have provided you some helpful information and insights. If you are looking for a loan modification I want to with you the best of luck with your process.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Cindy

Obama's Loan Modifications Are a Joke

As many of you may know, I have been attempting to get a loan modification for over a year. We meet all of the qualifications for the federal loan modification. We have gone through the modification process twice. They send you tons of paper work to fill out to see if you qualify. You send them a hardship letter as well. The bank then comes up with a payment for you based on the information that you provide along with documentation to prove that you aren't just making something up. You are also required to meet with a credit counseling agency to make sure that you can afford to pay your bills.

After you have went through that circus, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops out of fear that you won't be modified if you don't follow the instructions to a t. The requirements that my bank told me to follow included purposely skipping one payment and then paying ONLY the modified amount to a special address with pre-printed coupons that they send me. I was supposed to keep sending my modified payments to that address until the modification process was completed. They require you to keep your information updated and I was just recently told that I should be faxing updated information in to the bank every month even though they don't even ask for an update. Sounds like an awfully expensive requirement if you ask me...

The first time it took at least six months for them to complete the process even though we were given a three month trial period. Somewhere along the way my information got changed from what we actually make monthly to what we make yearly divided by 12. Yeah, of course we wouldn't need a modification if we brought that home every month. Are they that big of block heads that they can't get it through their thick skulls that we don't get huge bonuses every month? I mean, don't they do the very same thing with their employees? Hello!!!!!!!

So we went through the whole process a second time and prequalified again. This time our payment was even lower than the first time. This time the bank was asking for about $6 less in the payment, but I kept paying the first amount anyway. After the "trial" payment period was completed it went in to negotiations. Again, my income was modified even though we sent in documentation of our income on June 25, 2010. I was then informed that we did not qualify for the federal loan modification, but the bank would review my information to modify my loan. The bank decided that based on information we provided we could not afford our home and we either needed to sell our home in a short sale or give them a deed in lieu of foreclosure. What??????

I am now so confused and frustrated that it's not even funny. Time is running out. My husband is getting a bonus this week which would allow us to pay the money to the bank, but we were hoping that amount would have been modified into my loan (since it's interest charges mostly anyway) and I would use the money to pay off the credit card bills we racked up when we fixed up the car my mother in law loaned my husband for his now much longer commute. These bills add to the hardship anyway, so wouldn't it make sense to be able to get rid of these?

The day before my birthday we got several letters from the bank informing us that if we didn't pay all of the "missed" payments within one month, they would begin foreclosure. Nice gift, huh?

I have called and talked to them twice since then. They said they would only accept full payments from now on and would accelerate my foreclosure if I did not jump to do what they want me to do.

Is this really the way the federal loan modification was meant to work? What a joke. Total waste of our hard earned income paid to a government that is supposed to help make our lives easier. I would have been better off if I would have ignored the modification process in the first place!

Hmm, and I wonder why I'm battling depression and hypothyroidism and can't loose a single ounce of weight no matter what I do.

What have your experiences with loan modification been like?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy

Moving Again?

Well, it's official. We've put our house on the market. I know that now is not the best time to sell and if my husband didn't have such a long commute we probably wouldn't even consider selling right now. I am hoping that all of the hard work we've done here isn't lost on someone trying to snatch up a good deal. We have decided to put it on and wait and see what happens, we just have to have faith that everything will work out for the best. I really don't know what else to do!

It wouldn't be a big deal having a long commute if he worked an 8 hour day or something. There are some days that he works open to close, that's 14 hours. Add two hour commute to that and I get to see him for about 5 minutes before bed. That's not the kind of life I want to lead forever. Something needs to change!

We are going to go out today and see what kinds of places are on the market down in Antigo. I am not worried about finding something we like since we always change whatever we find anyway, I guess you could say it's a hobby of ours. I am more worried about selling the house we live in right now. I will not end up like we did last time!

I guess I'm telling you because I could use a few prayers that our situation will work itself out. Also looking for home sale tips and house hunting ideas. What do you do?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy