new policy

May Financial Update

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After not wanting to know the details of March’s expenses because Mr. ODA threw me a surprise party, I was pleasantly surprised to see our spending in April. Now, with that said, while my categorization of expenses cover April 1-30, my stories here go through this date in May. And May has been a doozy.

We changed our insurance carrier as of May 1. We put a concerted effort into getting some routine things out of the way before our insurance changed because we weren’t too confident in the new policy’s coverage. Mr. ODA got a physical. I got an eye exam, which is more expense ($116) due to the contact fitting, and became more expensive when we moved on to acknowledging the astigmatism that we’ve ignored for the last 5 years because it’s so slight. Then that leads to buying contacts ($300). I do need to submit the reimbursement request for the contacts that I paid out of pocket for, so at least some of that should come back.

In mid-April, I started having chest pain. That lead to us wiping out the deductible. Such unfortunate timing. We could have walked away from that policy only needing a couple of hundred applied to the deductible, and then I didn’t take care of myself while sick, so the virus attacked the wall of my heart. Lovely. My first office appointment was at a new clinic, and they said if I paid in full, they’d apply a 10% discount. I’ve had to learn to navigate the world of medical billing (even more in depth than I already had due to poorly executed claims) because of the deductible concept. So the lady’s statement was correct – I still owed about $3000 on my deductible. That’s what she billed me. That’s a normal statement for me to hear. What I hadn’t thought about was – but who will get there first? If her claim wasn’t first in line, then my deductible payment wouldn’t go to her. Narrator: she was not first in line. So now I’ve paid $3k to this company, but I only actually owe her about $900. Meanwhile, the one who was first in line now wants their payment, understandably. I’m trying to hold off on that until after the 20th so that it’s on the next credit card cycle. And through all of this, I also need to fix my log in to my old insurance account to be able to verify that they’ve even accounted for my deductible correctly because I swear I’ve overpaid my deductible the last two years due to too many claims happening at one time, but it’s convoluted and I’ve just given up tracking it both years (I know, this is against everything I tell you to do, but shew, it’s been quite the year or so around here).

On top of that, Mr. ODA works at Lowe’s, and they have a spring holiday period where employees get a 20% discount. So now there’s a ton of Lowe’s transactions on our credit card that’s inflating our spending. While the details of that will be in next month’s update, it is reflected in the net worth calculation I have here since these are current numbers.

RENTALS

We got one house rented as of May 1. That was an anticipated project, and the tenant who left had lived there for 6.5 years. We were gone the first week of April, so we ended up losing the month of income, but the actual work to turn it over took very few hours (at least compared to most of the turnover we do). There’s one more house outstanding to know if she’s renewing, and there’s one house that will turn over at the end of June. That woman moved in over the winter on a 6 month lease. She’s been extremely difficult, and I’m not sad to see her go. For instance, it’s the 22nd, and she still hasn’t paid May’s rent. The good news is that the turnover should go quickly since we did a massive effort to spruce it up at the last turnover.

NET WORTH

The market has recovered a bit, so we’re trending up again instead of stagnant on the net worth. I categorized our spending for April, but since we took a trip, the ‘entertainment’ category is taking over the graph.

I took out the expenses related to our trip to see what was left. Entertainment is still high because we spent $785 on season passes for skiing next year. This also include our daughter’s gymnastics and our gym membership. Just funny that the graph didn’t change because our proportion of spending was the same.

Over the past few months, I’ve worked on increasing our monthly cash flow a bit with rent increases. This isn’t a money-maker, but just trying to stay on top of the routine cost increases (e.g., taxes, insurance) that are coming our way. Once all the increases go into effect, it’ll be another $400 per month. But that’s also contingent on what we get the house that’s turning over rented at. That seems like a lot, but you’d be surprised at what our cost increases are. I usually do a post comparing all those changes in the Fall.

This month our cash went down too because I had to pay the health insurance costs and three houses worth of taxes. I updated our home values now that it’s the spring market; I update these numbers about twice per year.

Post Employment Health Insurance

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We have been financially secure for Mr. ODA to quit working for years. In fact, the plan was that after he met the requirements for his paternity leave taken (which was essentially work the number of hours you took as leave), he would quit. That goal was met back in early 2023. The hold up for him quitting was always health insurance. Him working wasn’t a huge detriment to our life and things we wanted to do, and he was getting most of his health insurance cost covered by his employer.

Well, at the beginning of 2025, the deferred resignation program was introduced. While the first round was very questionable, our life was greatly affected by his employment and the government over the next few weeks, so it was a no-brainer to take the program during the second round. His last day of work was at the end of April, but he was considered employed and paid through September 30th.

As part of his separation, his health insurance was covered for about another month. He had the option to extend his current insurance for another 18 months after that, and that he’d be responsible for paying the full premium. At the time, it was about $1700, and the 2026 premium is $1900 per month.

MRS. ODA’S INSURANCE OPTION

Meanwhile (just coincidental timing), my current employer was investigating a new insurance policy for their employees across 4 offices. They were originating their insurance through the Ohio office. It was a really expensive policy for them. For the 5 people who were taking advantage of that insurance policy, they could have covered 23 employees on this new policy. We learned that Ohio is one of the most expensive states to originate insurance out of it, so we moved the policy to Kentucky.

Anyway, through that process, the insurance sales person was completely incapable of answering basic insurance type questions. Mr. ODA asked for the brochure of benefits. He said, “I emailed you the summary of benefits.” Mr. ODA pointed out that the summary of benefits was a summary of a much larger document, and we wanted those details. He said that didn’t exist. Mr. ODA called the actual insurance company, and that lady laughed and said they definitely have that.

The policy also required a gap coverage policy. The information given to me did not make me feel like it was going to be a smooth process. It sounded like the doctor’s office would submit the claim to my main insurance company. Once it was processed, I’d have to take my bill and EOB and submit it to the gap coverage company for payment. So I’d have to manage the paperwork processing and the payments between everyone.

Their quote for the family policy was about $1750. I told Mr. ODA that it wasn’t worth all that extra effort and the concern that this insurance policy would even work right (because this sales person was not able to answer questions or quell concerns), just to save about $150.

FINAL DECISION

So in the end, we decided to keep the enemy we know. All of our doctors are now solidly in place since we’ve been in Lexington for 3.5 years. I didn’t want to risk needing to switch to a different doctors office because of eligibility and coverage. I didn’t want to risk the coverage being a fight even more than my current policy creates. But mostly, in case something did end up going awry with this new policy option, we couldn’t get our old policy back. So while adding $1900 to our monthly expenses while losing Mr. ODA’s income isn’t the most ideal situation, this is where we’re at in life.