Violet's Money

I am confused! I decided to check out the health care marketplace site. My husband recently took early retirement because they did away with his job. In 2017 our income will be about $25,000. So I see that we would qualify for coverage. I entered my info and it say's I have 38 choices to choose from. Except my doctors are not list in any of them.

Seriously, so how do you get medical insurance?

My husband recently retired at the age of 60. I am 58. My are currently insured through a COBRA insurance plan the is a high deductible plan. We pay $900. per month and that will go to $1000. per month in January. I know that we would be eligible for something on the healthcare plan in 2017. The healthcare.gov stuff does sound scary to me but I would be interested in hearing from someone that has experience with it.


Anyone else here too young for Medicare and have any ideas on medical insurance. We rarely go to the doctor.

Without saying anything to me, my doctor changed my diabetes medicine. She called in a new prescription for me. I got a message in my email that a new prescription was being processed. I checked online to see what that was all about. A new prescription for Actoplus Met XR was ordered by my doctor. I googled the name and came up with some frightening serious side effects. Then my phone rings and it is the pharmacy calling to get an approval to charge me for the drug. They said it was $1289.33 . I currently pay $10.00 for a three month supply of my Metformin diabetes medicine. I nicely declined the new medicine!

Does the "favorites" on our sidebar not work? If I go to my "setting" their is a place to add my favorite Saving Advice blogs, but it doesn't seem to work!

Does it work for anyone?

I thought I would share a little way that we save on our gasoline expense.

I have a Chase credit card. Each quarter they offer 5% cash back on a certain category. Two quarters per year, one of the categories it is gasoline. We also have a Speedway gasoline rewards card when we earn points to received free rewards. So I combine them and reap double!

Each year during January, February, and March. Chase offers the 5% on all gasoline purchases. So I use my Chase credit card to buy $800.00 worth of gift cards. I will get $40.00 back from Chase. I also use my Speedway Rewards to get 8000 bonus points for buying the gifts card. Then each week when I get gasoline, I pay using the gift certificate and get more Speedway Reward points!

In other words, I purchase enough Speedway gift cards while the 5% promotion for gasoline is on to last until the next time that promotion is on in July, August, and September. I get 5% cash back from Chase, get Speedway Rewards points for buying the gift cards and then also get rewards when I pay with my gift card. We usually redeem our Speedway Rewards for a free $100. gift card about every 13 months!

I own 52 EE US Savings Bonds. They earn mostly 1.42% interest. I earn a total of about $4.00 per month on these savings bonds. I am trying to decide if it is worth it to keep them. I could just cash them in and put the money in my ING ( Capital One) savings account and earn .75%. The difference is about $20.00 a year. Not much difference and I would have one less account to keep track of.....not that it is really much trouble! LOL


What would you do?

Since I am just getting my money blog started I thought I would start by logging my current assets.

1. Assets

Cash accounts $23,049.99
CD 2,608.59
Retirement 292,029.30
Taxable Investments 23,820.52

TOTAL $ 341,508.40


2. Liabilities $ 0.00


Hubby is 58 and works full time. I am 56 and have never worked outside the home. We live in our home that is paid off and I would guess it is worth about $225,000.00

Hello,

I am starting my blog on here today. I have always been interested in money, budgeting, and investing. I am 56 and my husband is 58 years old. I am a full time homemaker. Our children are grown and married with families of their own.

I have enjoyed reading everyone's blogs.