I’ve had some health issues too but thankfully nothing too serious and I have a whole lot to be grateful for especially my niece and her husband who took me in, fed me and loaned me their car to look for work and eventually get to work when I had nothing – flat broke and jobless. I don’t know where I would have ended up without them – it could have been a homeless shelter – I shudder to even think of that. If it had not been for them and a good friend and the good fortune of selling my house with the help of a great real estate agent, going to settlement two days before the foreclosure, I could have ended up on the streets.
But with their help and me not giving up, I eventually got a new and better paying job last July and two years ago moved into my own apartment and bought a car so things are looking up. As much as I didn’t want to do it, tried to avoid it, the bankruptcy was the best thing at the time. It was such a relief just to have the harassment stop.
I had incurred some medical debt because my previous employer moved us to a high deductible health plan with an HRA that had a $3,000 deductible for a single person and Rx’s didn’t even count toward the deductible. And the employer only funded half of the deductible through the HRA. High deductible health plans with an HSA or HRA are great but only if you are young (and at 50, I’m not so young any more) and healthy, don’t go to the doctor’s much and have time to accumulate funds for future use.
Unlike an FSA, with an HSA or HRA you can only use the funds that have been actually deposited to your account. So if, like me your employer moves you to one of those plans and shortly afterward, you incur medical bills, you have to pay out of pocket and wait to be reimbursed as the funds accumulate. In my case, early in the first year of the new plan, during a routine physical my doctor didn’t like something he saw on my EKG and ordered a nuclear stress test (and wow, was that expensive!) and some lab tests. Thankfully I was given the all clear and I’m glad I had it done to make sure there wasn’t a serious heart problem but I put some of the charges on a credit card as I only had about $100 in my HRA at the time and thought I’d be able to recoup through the HRA and pay off the CC debt – then I got laid off and then, rather than go on unemployment for the first time in my life, I took a job with a former supervisor but as an independent contractor – no benefits. Big mistake and something I’ll never do again.
Even though my finances had been good, I thought I was a “saver” and pretty frugal and had a good paying job, debt, any debt is a killer! No matter how much you think you have saved for that “rainy day” when it’s starts pouring it’s often not nearly enough. And unfortunately many companies farm out their debt collections to third parties, some of whom barely operate within the law and a few flagrantly violate them like the one I mentioned.
Today I live very simply and very frugally, more so than ever before. I have no debt, only have rent, utilities and car and renter’s insurance. I put as much as I can into my 401k and into a savings account. I have one credit card with a $500 limit that I opened to reestablish some credit and occasionally I use it for gasoline and then immediately pay it off. I cut coupons and bargain shop and the last major purchase I made was for a new TV and I paid cash for it. It took me a year to save for that and meanwhile I was watching TV on an old tube TV that the color gun had gone bad so I watched TV in B&W for the last two years. And that wasn’t all that bad : ). Just having a roof over my head, a working car and meeting my basic necessities and not being supported by someone else is great.
And most of all I learned what’s really important in life. Money and material things, while nice, are temporary and transitory. Family and good friends who stand by you through thick and thin are worth their weight in gold.
BTW, this story might be of interest to here who don’t believe that debt collectors can be unscrupulous.
Excerpt:
* * * It is illegal for debt collectors to make empty threats about serving people with a lawsuit or seizing their home. And it was especially galling to Mey, who says she is debt-free.One of my favorite radio shows is Dave Ramsey Where people call in with debt collection horror stories and also shout out "I'm debt free !" LOL !"They threatened to take legal action against our property and it wasn't even our debt," Mey said.
Millions of Americans are victims of this kind of mistaken debtor identity, partly because of a new breed of collectors called "debt buyers." They purchase old debts for pennies that the original creditors have given up on and then try to collect them for a big profit. Critics say debt buyers sometimes use outrageous tactics to get the money where others have failed. RFA is a debt buyer. * * *