I think I’m used to Memorial Day being the end of the month. Over the weekend, I was convinced that June started this week. I was thinking about what was left in my budget for the month and considering working on my Net Worth update. I even opened up the spreadsheet I use to start entering numbers.
Clearly, I was jumping the gun a little bit. May wasn’t over yet, not by a longshot.
May has not been the best spending month. I had to have some dental work done that wasn’t so great on my budget. I’m waiting to see what my insurance will reimburse, but it’s not much. I opted to not get full coverage dental, but my medical insurance will usually give me a little bit of money back for normal dental work. I usually have pretty good teeth, but this year, for whatever reason, I needed more cavities filled than I think I’ve had my entire life. I can’t explain it, but my dentist thinks maybe they’ve been there a while. This is the first time I’ve had x-rays done at this dentist, and he does have a more advanced setup than any other dentist I’ve seen, so it’s possible.
At first, I was kicking myself a bit at not signing up for dental insurance, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’m just sort of stuck. Had this been a normal year for me, the insurance would have cost me more than a normal cleaning. I can choose to enroll in dental insurance for next year, and that’s something I’m going to have to consider.
Do you opt into other insurance? Dental? Eye? Something else?
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
Dental work sucks! My husband and I started work on my teeth as of last year. We had no insurance, but a discount plan which still costs us a lot of money.
I have dental insurance with my company now and it is helping us majorly. I also have a $3k HSA so I am using that.
We have dental to supplement our medical. Since our premium is a set price for the whole family, it just makes sense. We break even with our 2 cleaning each a year. Save money if there’s even 1 cavity to be filled. And with 7 mouths, there’s bound to be at least 1!
I too thought this month was a little short. Weird holiday.
We have insurance but it’s not great – none of it. I understand – you need to choose between paying a high deductible and other out-of-pocket expenses versus a monthly insurance payment.
Bummer.