Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

I am dreaming of my paycheck. I have a huge surplus of cash right now, which I am saving for the bachelorette party this weekend. I also need to have a surplus going into the next pay cycle when I send off a huge payment to one of my credit card companies. Without reserving a little from the current paycheck, I will be short on the next paycheck. I hate not having a little something in my checking account.

Also, I cannot, for the life of me, find my Lasik receipt. Since I couldn’t see a damned thing for a few days, I put it on my table with a lot of other crap. I thought I had filed it away with some other things, but I cleaned that up over the weekend to prepare my taxes and get organized, but it did not turn up. I’m going to have to call for a copy of the receipt. At least I found the reimbursement forms at work now. (HR with my new company can be a pain in the neck.)

Once that’s done and I get reimbursed, I will be able to cut my credit card balance down by about 25-30%. Woe unto me for my bureaucratic apathy! I’m paying finance charges and interest! That my children, is the cost of laziness.

Here’s a few more thoughts on the matter.

#1: HC made a great point about waiting for your first paycheck to arrive. Sometimes, you get caught short for a month when you start work because you’re waiting for direct deposit to kick in, etc. I’m rethinking how I budget stuff due to changed pay cycles. I used to get paid every two weeks, which meant I got the fictitious ‘bonus’ check twice a year because you end up with three paychecks a month in two different months. (My stance is that it’s not a bonus. You worked 80 hours for it. It’s yours.) With my new job, I get paid twice a month. It’s taking me a while to get used to it since it’s a radical departure in how I manage my finances. I used to give myself an allowance on paycheck Fridays, but now that payday is a floating day, I have to pay closer attention to my cash flow, lest I run out of money in my checking account. (I generally keep very little in my day to day checking account.)

#2: Remapping the lunch plan. I work in a place with a plethora of food options. However, I have noticed the pricing on lunch is MUCH MORE expensive than before. Because I had access to in-building cafeterias at my old job, the pricing was rather low. Because they were self-serve buffets, I also could control my spending and my calories by dishing out exactly what I planned to eat with no waste. The new dining options pose a HUGE problem for me since I can no longer exercise stringent portion control. This doesn’t seem like a huge issue, but it is. Before I could eat a complete and balanced meal for $4. Now I usually spend about $7 and it’s too much food or else not very healthy. The guys at the office are conditioned to get $2.50 sandwich specials from the local supermarket, but I hate sandwiches and have a preference for hot food. Long term, this will be an issue. I will eat more and spend more. (And no, I will not be packing my lunch. My evening plans are often so variable that I cannot count on cooking anything to take to work the next day.)

#3: 401k plan. Because much of my company’s HR is self-serve, I’m having a devil of a time signing up for the 401k plan. I’m going to have to spend some time making phone calls to get that figured out. Annoying. This also means that instead of the 6% I initially planned to contribute, I have to bump it up so that I can average out 6% over the course of the year since there will be at least two checks with no contribution at all. Frustrating, but not insurmountable. I only mention it because it does represent a kink in my SMART goals.

#4: Public transportation is not reimbursable. I was hoping for this. Most Federal contractors in DC will provide Metrochecks so you can get Metrocards (farecards) as a tax-sheltered benefit. Apparently, that is variable at my company depending on the contract terms with the client. So at this time, I’m spending the equivalent of gas money in Metrocards at the increased fares that began in January 2008. Because of this, I’m thinking I might keep on driving to work as the parking garage fee is only $100 a month and that’s equivalent to Metro. I’ll have to crunch the numbers, but sadly, reducing my carbon footprint might still be a pipedream. (I don’t plan on taking my motorcycle to work in pantyhose. Are you nuts? My co-worker and I were talking about taking our bikes to work, but seriously, it’s a bad idea for me.)

#5: Medical FSA contribution problem. This year you can contribute $5100 a year. Going back to point #1 and the shift to semi-monthly paychecks from bi-weekly, I will now be contributing a lot more to FSA per paycheck. Instead of $192 a bi-weekly check, it’s more like $250+ semi-monthly. I get paid more overall, but since I only have 20 more paychecks left in 2008, I am going to have less cash per check than I initially budgeted.

#6 Medical FSA reimbursement problem. I already had my big surgery this year before my benefits card arrived. Now I have to send in forms. It’s going to be a while for a check to get sent to me. It’s annoying, but at least I am not suffering for the money right now. I could have delayed surgery further, but the timing was good to get it done early during my job transition while my project ramp up was delayed.

So that is all for right now. Sorry for the randomness of this entry, but I’ve been dwelling on these issues in the back of my mind the last few days without much chance to write them down. It’s half a post for you and half a TO DO List for me.

Max out the 401k or pay down debt? (It’s Dilemma #1 in that story)

For me, that’s been my struggle in deciding what to do about this dilemma in 2008. Because clearly, I put a lot of money into my 401k plan in 2007 and hardly paid down debt though I did a good job tackling the dental bills which my insurance declined to cover instead of creating more credit card debt.

So dear readers, I understand that I should both save and pay down debt because I can. Now my problem is that I want to know if I should max out the 401k or not. Matching is all well and good. Basically with matching, I can save 12% of my salary with the minimum contribution to get it. That’s easy. My problem is that to get a grip on all that credit card debt and still live without racking up more debt, should I max out at 20% at the beginning of the year and ease off to have lots of cash to pay off debts in the second half of the year? Hm. That’s a new strategy I hadn’t considered yet. *ponders*

Goal Plan A:
1. I could max out my 401k contribution at X%.
2. I could halve my credit card debt in 2008 with ~$750-800 a month in payments.

Goal Plan B:
1. I could put in the minimum to get corporate matching which would still save me about 12% of my salary annually.
2. I could put $1200 a month towards credit cards.
3. Build back my Emergency Fund to $4k.

*******

I simply hate budgeting. I only hate it because I can’t keep track of what I actually spend. Even if I pay for it all by credit card and download into Quicken, I still seem to lose track of stuff. I am trying as best I can to move simply to paying for stuff with cash or by debit card only. Budgeting, as a discipline doesn’t actually bother me. I think I make enough and realize how I frivolously spend money to know I can stop buying stuff and not feel deprived. Heck, I checked Quicken and in the last 3 months, I haven’t bought any yarn for me. I didn’t even notice it. (2007 Rhinebeck spending was either ‘Gifts Given’ or ‘Vacation’ budget line items in Quicken, and not ‘Crafting’. The handmade soaps I bought there went over well with my knitting group last night.)

Now, I have to wait till my 2008 paychecks start rolling in, but I think I can get all my monthly fixed expenditures down to one single paycheck. (I usually get two per month.) That means, I can divide the second check in two parts. About $600-700 more to credit cards, and the rest into my pocket to spend on everything else, the variable monthly expenses, savings, etc. so I don’t rack up more credit card debt. Is this a better budgeting path for me?

I dreamed that scenario up because I wanted to see how I could make Plan B work. I am having the absolute worst time figuring out what to do.

The only good thing is that all of this includes doing laser eye surgery as built-in cost for the year with Medical FSA funds. Without question, I have the money for it. My last dental crown will be about $1000, but I’ve decided to wait a tad longer so I can get my teeth whitened first.

The last check for $766.50 to my oral surgeon left my hands this week. For a 41 lowly cents, the US Postal Service will take it to their offices in Gainesville, VA and I will call them next week to find out if they have posted the payment.

I made a photocopy of the check and will see if I can use that last payment to zero out my Medical FSA fund for the year. (I couldn’t buy enough bandages without looking ridiculous or getting ready to be a mummy for Halloween 2008.)

I still have one permanent crown to put in, but I would like to pay cash to have my teeth whitened and then put in the last crown. I’m looking at June 2008 as a possible target date for finishing up the work.

Either way, most of the costs have been handled, wrestled down to the ground, bopped on the head, and conquered!

Did you know that you can use your Medical FSA funds to buy first aid supplies for your emergency kit?

I know all about this since I got a rather bad burn on Thanksgiving while cooking turkey. Don’t ask. Just know that I have a 2nd degree burn on my arm and I didn’t have to make a special trip to buy first aid supplies because I already had what I needed at home to get me through the first week.

Typically, it’s good to buy extra gauze and tape, the 1″ wide kind. I like sterile gauze in packs, but can’t stand paying $7-10 per box out of pocket at the drugstore. But if I have medical FSA funds that are going to go to waste if I don’t use them up, I’m all about the expensive sterile gauze. Lots and lots of it! I would rather have too much than too little and start cutting it up into smaller and smaller pieces to ration it out. I find that for a wound like a burn or something extra bloody, it’s good to have lots of extra dressing available. A burn usually needs to be kept moist and changed daily, if not twice a day. I have found that I prefer to change it twice a day to ensure that it’s kept moist with burn cream or Aquaphor. I honestly prefer Aquaphor because my old roommate (the SICU nurse) told me it’s what they use on burn patients in the hospital, and because it did a great job on a second degree burn I got once before. (It healed so well that you can’t tell where the burn is without straining your eyes.)

The great thing about this stuff is that it doesn’t expire. Unlike over the counter medicines like allergy meds, analgesics, acidic stomach meds, etc, which you might end up throwing out anyway, bandages and dressing supplies last years if stored properly.

Suggestions for your first aid kit:
Non-stick pads
Gauze pads
Rolled gauze for bendy places
Micropore tape - paper tape that is breathable! It’s great for sensitive skin, i.e. your elbow pit or inner forearm. Trust me.
Waterproof tape - for dressings that might get wet but still need to stay on till you change it. I usually get this as a 1/2″ tape instead of 1″, but they do make the wider one.
Hydrogen peroxide for cleansing without stinging (or “less stinging” than alcohol, but this does have an expiration date usually.)
Burn cream for first aid. (It’s not really for healing scars. It basically numbs a burn when you first get one. Look for creams with Lidocaine. And this usually also has an expiration date as well.)
Neosporin/antibiotic creams (Expiration date here too!)

I’m not a medical person by training. I have only some basic understanding of first aid, so if anyone out there has more knowledge they’d like to share, please do. This is just the stuff I know I like to have around because I go camping, live hard, ride motorcycles, etc. (The old burn scar is from an exhaust pipe.)

Greetings!

It’s that time of year again. Open Enrollment. I dread it because it means lots of changes to insurance. Make sure you gear up and make some time in your schedule to attend an Open Enrollment session by your HR department. It could save you a lot of money.

This year, I got a lovely canned email from the CEO telling me that he’s in the High Deductible Plan and that new for 2008, our company will double its contribution to your the Health Savings Account. Fab. What’s the incentive? Who cares? Well along with those changes, I will now have to pay more for my PPO plan.

I’m seriously considering the change since I didn’t have much medical stuff happen to me this year. However, I do want to wait until I run the numbers and see what this is really going to cost me. There are some other benefits like more generic drugs in the formulary will be cheaper in the High Deductible Plan, which is good. I paid a lot for Augmentin in 2006. It was going to $70 bucks because I forgot my prescription card. When I went back with it, instead of being $5, it was a $15 prescription. So I presume if I need heavy antibiotics again, I’d be paying $5 for the Augmentin under the high deductible plan. Of course, I would hate to be sick again. (Whimpering in pain. If that is what Lyme disease is like, NO THANK YOU.)

Yeah, if you’ve ever wondered why I don’t write about HSA’s, it’s because I don’t have one. I use a FSA instead.

Tomorrow: 401k Plan Changes!

So I’ve been thinking about reducing my 401k contribution so I could pay my bills off faster.

Then there was this rigamarole about cutting back to 5% just to continue receiving the company match, because that sounded like I was giving up free money. And then I remembered that my company does a 401k true-up. So I called my benefits department to confirm this and they said yes, they do. Therefore, I’m going to cut back my contribution to nothing and let my company pay me the true up amount later. Because I need the cash now.

How does this impact my finances? Well more than I thought. Yes, I will be losing the tax benefit from the 401k contribution, but by paying off the entire bill right now, I may be able to get a couple of items of medical work completed by December 31.

To create a deductible item on my tax return, I need to spend over 7.5% of my salary on medical expenses. Now, I’ve figured out that I need to spend about another $3K to hit that mark. This means I can get my last permanent crown and eye surgery all this year. Yes, it’s spending to save, but I am going to look into it. I get the health benefits immediately rather than later and financially, I think taking the deduction now instead of next year when it won’t be deductible at all. There is a time-value component to these expenditures and I’ll have play with a few scenarios to figure out if the present value of the money is worth it.

Plus if I do all the medical work this year, it means I can put A LOT less into my medical FSA account and I can do four things in 2008:

1) Return my 401k contribution to 20% and max that puppy out.

2) Fund my traditional IRA more quickly than before. (Though I am reaching phase out stages, I think.)

3) Beef up my emergency fund again.

4) Fund a Roth IRA.

I know this dental financing topic has wandered all over the place, but this has been hugely challenging and life changing for me. I admit, I was a bit stung by CleverDude’s post about hygiene and missing teeth. (I think he should buy me a beer next time!) One of the new crowns I need is towards the front of my mouth. It’s not glaringly obvious unless I smile broadly, which is the kind of gross display of happiness I usually avoid, so I prioritized it last. I wanted to put the rear molar crowns in first because it was impacting my ability to eat. (HEY. Wait a minute. I must be getting fat because I can actually CHEW my food now!)

UGH UGH UGH. Tough decisions here. Balancing the want of eye surgery, the need for safety while motorcycle riding, the desire for tax savings and fiscal responsibility. This could be endless scenario planning. I wish this was easier.

So this week, some congressmen decided to introduce some legislation for dental heath care for Medicare patients, particularly through S-CHIP. That’s wonderful. Unfortunately, my dental plan really sucks. If I am going to get any more work done, I am going to have to find another job for dental insurance.

You think I am kidding, but I just got denied about $3000 in charges from the dental insurer. So I have to pay about $2900.00. But I have depleted all of my savings and will have to break all of my CD’s. That’s what an emergency fund is for, right?

Um, I’m not so sure. I’ve been a bit of a spendthrift this summer and I am going to have to chalk up the money from somehwere. A goodly portion of it will come out of my FSA funds, luckily. But I only have about $900 left since the initial $3K also came out of FSA. The total surgery was about $6K this year. I am saving the maximum $5K in my Medical Flexible Spending Account, but I have some other stuff like eyeglasses that also deplete those funds.

I have to do some serious scrambling here. I will be fine. I just shake my fist at myself and remind myself that I shouldn’t have slacked off on the saving. I think I’m going to have to tell my mom that she can’t have my bonus next year for her house project. The more I think about it, the more I want to keep the money as an emergency fund.

But the good news is that if I decide to skip my wishes for laser eye surgery, I won’t have to save $5K in FSA next year. *sigh* Forgoing my wish to have all my major medical conditions permanently resolved really stinks, but I am going to have to wait two more years. Crud. If I do that, the surgery no longer becomes cost effective and I’ll have to ride around with prescription eyewear.

Remember kids: FLOSS. FLOSS. FLOSS.

Medical FSA receipts are missing. Crud.

My desk is a mess right now and it’s showing in my finances. It’s terrible. I dislike going on vacation sometimes because it really throws my routine off. I don’t think I’ll be visiting CA again without my own computer. It was a mess trying to get access with secured laptops. You turn around to watch the baby and boom, locked out and requiring a finger swipe for security.

And now I can’t find my eye exam receipt for FSA. I had the forms. I thought I faxed them, but now it’s AWOL.

*sigh*

Get your organizers. Put stuff away. It takes 10 minutes a day. Set a timer. Get it done.

I got my second permanent crown placed last week. It was quite an ordeal. It should take an hour, but it took about 90 minutes. The main thing is that I had my teeth yanked out last year in one efficient surgery. I couldn’t afford to put in all the implants at once, so I waited a year to add in two. These two are in the very back of my mouth and one toward the front, under my nose.

The one in the rear was being done first and the dentist had advised me that my upper tooth would grow downwards into the empty spot where my lower molar had been removed. Sure enough, my dentist was trying to put in my permanent crown when he encountered a small issue. I couldn’t close my teeth. Now, this is to expected somewhat since the crown has to be ground down to fit your bite. However, my porcelain over gold crown was being ground down to the metal under the porcelain! I wasn’t going to have much of a crown left!

What’s does the dentist do? He tells me to scooch down the chair and open wide. He’s going to ground down my upper tooth!

5 minutes later, I’m able to close my mouth completely, but it still feels funny. It does not feel nearly as good as my first implant. I am going to probably have to have it adjusted, i.e. grind down the upper tooth some more. I’m not very pleased with this, but he did warn me about this being a problem. Now I am worried that my last implant will involve the same issue. The final implant is under my nose and it takes about 4-6 months to heal because it’s so close to the nasal cavity. I should be able to get the last one put in in a few more weeks.

I just hope to god the dental insurance covers the implants, because they are being all weird about it and denying coverage on some stuff. I am all out of Medical FSA funds for the year, so no more getting sick for me. All of my stuff is out of pocket from now on. Expensive for the teeth, but what’s done is done.

But at least it was a free visit and I got to talk to the dental assistant about her love life. Gotta live vicariously through young, attractive people since I’m apparently, literally, a little long in the tooth.