[quote=AN]I agree, divorce is the one thing you can’t really plan for. So, I’ll concede on that point. However, death can easily be planned by with a large enough life insurance plan.
WRT health problem, of course if you’re self-employed, you’d have to pay for your own medical insurance. Which is why freelancers make more than W-2er. Why do you have to get HDHP? Why can’t you get a HMO? WRT to $8k/year. I save more than $8k/year ever since I start working.[/quote]
For me (I’m relatively healthy), my 5000/3000 HDHP (PPO) is $318 mo and a Blue Cross/Anthem HMO would be $610 mo and a Kaiser HMO would be about $534 mo.
Why won’t I sign up for an HMO? I have a good (formerly healthy, athletic) friend of 28 years in SD who has an employer-paid “Kaiser” plan and has been admitted to the hospital 11 times in 2012 for the same problem. Kaiser botched her surgery and it had to be redone. Her home-healthcare alloted nurse time is thin for her wound-mgmt. She STILL has to have corrective surgery in March 2013. If it were not for her co-workers collectively donating over 900 sick hours to her, she would have lost her longtime position and coverage. Understandably, she has become depressed over the situation because she has very little mobility.
She’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve been to two funerals of coworkers who Kaiser Hospital surgeons and other personnel “killed.” And they have been well-known in the past in this city for performing the “wrong operation” by mistake.
My premium has gone up 12 times since 2004, and, unlike an “employee,” I alone paid the entire cost of the increases.
None of those “rate hikes” were due to my “usage.” The ins co had various and sundry reasons for raising them, from “costs for our insured in your subgroup are rising” to “we now have to (by law) include maternity benefits in your (CA) plan” (LOL) to “procedure costs are rising in your region,” blah, blah.
Who cared whether I had “maternity benefits” when it was my turn to use them??
Which begs the age-old question: Since I qualified medically for the plan long before “Obamacare” was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, why should I have to pay for the sins of others? Why can’t my policy be priced on my own merits as a customer??”
Healthplan pricing is out of my (and everyone’s) control and I am “grandfathered in” and stuck with it. I would be a fool to change policies now.
There are 1000’s of folks in my position.
AN, you likely “save more than $8K a year” because your employer pays the majority of your family’s healthcare premium, your spouse brings in income as well, you do not have a long daily commute, you have relatives nearby to help with childcare and you do not live in a high-cost area (w/high-priced RE and HOA/MR).
You are an anomaly among your Gen Y peers because you have decided to live within your means.
