Total Money Makeover

I've been reading The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. It's a good read and I do believe that his system can work (live a completely debt free life, including your mortgage, and build significant savings) for someone willing to make some MAJOR changes and sacrifices. He tells countless success stories like this: a family of 4 on an income of $40,000 a year is debt free, owns their home outright and has $70,000 in savings all by age 35. As he says in the footnote on every page "You have to live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else". I get it. I'm just not sure how willing we are to "live like no one else" for a couple of years. Meaning...get rid of the car and buy an old beater, sell everything in our house we don't use, cancel the country club membership, get 2nd jobs, etc. That sounds rather materialistic of me, and I truly don't intend to, I'm just being honest. That said, we certainly have room for improvement in the finance department of the Elser household. So I am motivated to take on some of Dave's principles, add a few of my own (time to become a coupon clipper!) and work on our version of a Total Money Makeover.

With money on my mind, I've been doing some financial busy work during Jackson's naps. Last week I called our credit card company and successfully negotiated a lower interest rate. This week I talked to our mortgage lender and we have decided to refinance our house.

Which brings me to the real reason for today's post. Today, I paid all of the hospital bills from Jackson's delivery. That process has made me realize how truly fortunate we are. Fortunate to have health insurance that is. I realize our country's health care system is broken, to say the least. And I'm not going to get political here. I am just feeling extremely grateful that Drew & I have jobs that afford us quality insurance. Insurance that allowed us to obtain health care at the only hospital in the KC area with a level III neonatal intensive care unit - a unit that, as it turned out, we just happened to need for our little man. I thank God that we were there.

I truly had no idea what to expect of our hospital bills. I knew that Jack's stay in NICU would add some significant change to that bill. I expected our out of pocket expenses to be in the thousands. Here's how it broke down:

Pathology - $38.56 (Lab work)
Anesthesia - $270.10 (This was the epidural. I would have paid 10 times that for that sucker!!)
Hospital - $93.40 (This even includes NICU)
Deductible - $250
TOTAL = $652.06

The actual cost, with no insurance, would have been $16,566.36. Yikes.

So after all this financial busy work, I'm feeling grateful today. Grateful for insurance. Grateful that we have a roof over our heads and thus a mortgage to refinance. Even grateful for the journey I'm about to take in the quest for a Total Money Makeover.

At least until next week...when I do the taxes.