Due to health care costs rising, we are going to have to pay a portion of our family's health insurance beginning in January. I must stress that we were given a choice and we chose to continue with our current insurance and pay a portion of it instead of switching insurance. We really appreciate that our insurance includes medical, dental, mental, vision, and more. We are thankful that Ram's employer is still paying a much bigger percentage than we are.
But due to paying this next year, our finances are going to be tighter than they have been. I was glad that we had several months notice before this took effect. I began by trying to figure out a family budget including this. Since I did it several months ago, I have had time to get more exact numbers and make corrections.
We rearranged payments for our life insurance and stuff like that. We used to pay the boys life insurance quarterly and now we will pay each boy's once a year. I prefer this because instead of paying 3 bills each quarter, we will pay 1 bill each quarter and get a break 1 quarter. That will save on postage and checks too as this was one that was not withdrawn from our bank account. Some of our other payments are withdrawn but we chose to not make this one automatic.
We contacted our cell phone company and changed plans. We are saving a lot of money with our new plan plus we get unlimited talk and text now.
We told the church the amount we wanted to be deducted from Ram's paychecks for our HSA. We contacted our tax lady to get an idea of what our taxes will be next year. When all this was done, my budget turned out much better than I thought it was going to be. We will need to continue being frugal, but our new budget was not impossible.
I remember my mom often saying that you have to have money to save money. What she meant by this was if there is a good sale at the grocery store you need to have enough money to stock up on that item when it is on sale. If you don't have enough money to buy it while it is on sale, if it is an item that your family needs, then you'll have to buy it later when it is more expensive. I have thought of this advice often while I was shopping the past few months. Recently when there have been good sales I have stocked up a little more than I used to. I ordered 60 lbs of chicken from Zaycon because it was a good price. Even doing this, I have been under budget on my groceries the last few months.
When Ram got the car serviced they said the battery could make it longer, but he should start thinking about replacing it. He told them to replace it immediately because we have the money now and it would be one less thing to worry about next year. We have done other stuff like this recently.
When I realized our property taxes had a slight increase I added that amount to my December mortgage payment. I don't want to get behind in monthly mortgage payment amount. We did that a couple of years ago and it was awful!
We have done our homework and planned well for this. We are ready for January 15, the first paycheck when this takes effect!
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