Money & Life Report: July 2024
August 7, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $295 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
I’m getting an FSA account of my own! This doesn’t change our planned spending, it’ll just reimburse us for that planned health spending that isn’t covered by the first one. There’s the increase in dental fees for our dentist going out of network, at least $600-800 we weren’t previously charged and a number of my brain therapy sessions that aren’t covered by our first FSA. That’s a help. If it works! I’ve been fighting with United Healthcare for weeks and months trying to get them to pay out the very valid claims I’ve submitted repeatedly.
I finally got fed up and asked PiC to call them and find out what the hickory sticks was going on. Would you believe they kept him on the line for almost two hours fiddling and hemming and hawing? They claimed they couldn’t identify the problem claims and that the claims submitted at the start of the year were only “courtesy” approvals. Lies.
So I’m furious and report them to the Department of Labor. Turns out they have a whole department specifically to handle these types of complaints. Magically, when we got on a conference call with them and he introduced himself as a rep from the DoL, you could hear the shift in attitude in that long moment of silence. There was hardly any hot potato at all, they only transferred us once. When he asked the exact same question that PiC did: why are these being rejected when the same type of receipt was provided in Jan and Feb and approved without issues, they paused for a long time, put us on hold for almost an hour, and then came back to say that they sent all of the claims back for reprocessing. That hold time really ticked off our rep so he’s ready to open an investigation into them if they still don’t resolve this within the required amount of time.
Edit to add: This is the Employee Benefits Security Administration – they specifically deal with complaints like this for ERISA related plans. They can’t do anything with medical denials unfortunately which really really needs a department for that, but they can deal with fiduciary-related fails.
Spending
The T-Mobile Tuesdays app: their 10 free prints at Walgreens and credits at Rover.com are useful. I don’t use the Puma 35% discount every time it comes up but it did stack well with other sales fourish years ago to get 4 pairs of sneakers for about $100. Their standing 15% off Hilton is useless, unless I’m doing it wrong, the prices didn’t differ at all from what I can get as a Hilton silver card member when I did a test quote for a room.
PiC’s worn holes into his main population of shirts so I hit a sale from Primary. We love their clothes for the kids, they’re soft and good quality, so I figured we’d try their adult line. Update: They’re happy colors and the shirts fit! Yay!
New floss for JB! They need a special kind of flosser to work with their braces. These platypus flossers are genius, sure wish I had them growing up ($10).
I never warmed to the idea of treats because my inner voice doesn’t think I deserve treats but this bit of genius resonates with me! For morale is a valid acceptable reason to this brain. (Vacation spending update to come: for morale!)
Not spending
We scored 2 free carseats for Smol Acrobat. They’ve been using JB’s from 7 years ago which was coming up on its expiration date. PiC spotted a giveaway listed on one of his parent groups and snagged them. Then it was a marathon of vacuuming, wiping down, washing the soft parts, and drying them in the sun. Great savings!
Comcast fell over and quit a few times this month so I put in an outage credit request and it was automatically approved at $5. Not much but it didn’t require much legwork either so I’ll take it.
Giving
We have worked really hard and been very fortunate that our hard work paid off in significant ways that I only dreamt of when I first started this blog. Though we have not reached our FI number where I can feel like all income is gravy, we’ve always felt it was important to lend a helping hand. Many people say they’ll give back later, when they’re financially set. I say that if we don’t practice and prioritize giving now, we won’t give later either.
We donate to organizations that help people and animals in need and do direct aid.
The Lakota Giving Project is year-round now and we always welcome donations to support Lakota families. See how you can help at the link.
I bit off just a bit more than I could chew this month. I knew this month would be rough so I aimed to cover basic household goods (instead of shopping for clothes) for three separate families. It would have been fine but there were problems with the shipments of the latest order overlapping with my busiest weeks and whew my brain was on brink. By the end of the month, I still hasn’t finally the third family’s shipments so I’ll report back in August on both months.
Saving and investing
My 401K will be active soon and that’ll be a big shift for us. I have to get accustomed to Fidelity. We’ve always had an account with them but it doesn’t feel as intuitive as Vanguard does (which is funny because some money friends feel exactly this way about Vanguard and thus prefer Fidelity). I do hate that I can’t pick my own funds with the 401k though. I know what I’m doing (mostly), stop limiting me to your picked funds!
Net worth
Nothing very exciting here. Cash is down a little. Real estate is the same. Brokerages and investments are up a little. Total net worth is up a little.
On Life
The husband of our friend who passed away last Christmas just passed away. 💔
Otherwise I took some time off to spend with family that actually likes me and it was so restorative. It feels like the first time I’ve breathed deeply and relaxed in a full year even despite my constant throat pain.
Health.
I’ve been fumbling or just dropping things a lot lately. It’s starting to get to me a bit – is this a new brain thing?? I hope it’s just a temporary high stress thing.
Pretty sure I gave myself a stress sore throat by midmonth when all the deadlines hit at once and I was juggling absolutely everyone’s stuff.
TV.
Supacell on Netflix was really good.
The Umbrella Academy on Netflix is weirdly, despite the violence and dramatics, quite relaxing background noise for me to work to. I used to read it early on when it was comic book format only but it’s so long ago I don’t remember much of it so this is like fresh material for me. I think it’s their musical selections, they’re engaging in a soothing way while they’re meant to contrast what’s going on on-screen. I’m less distracted from my work than listening to music.
Reading.
I was initially annoyed to discover that I bought the Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses, that I read last month. Why did I do that? I (incorrectly) remembered it as a free book in some way. Looking at the receipt, most of it was paid for by an Amazon Product Voucher and I have no recollection of what that is. This gap in my memory is a little disturbing.
I can’t remember what this quote is from: “I wonder if mothers feel this way with disobedient children, drowning in frustration while loving every moment of it.” But no, no not at all for me. It’s undiluted frustration when I’m frustrated.
Jayci Lee’s Nine Tailed. A little spotty in areas but I love a good mythical tale.
Piper Drake’s Wings Once Cursed and Bound. Again, a little spotty but myths and folklore, right up my alley.
Stephanie Burgis’s Scales and Sensibility. I love a good dragon story and my mental shelf needs to replace the Mercedes Lackey that I’ve removed.
Charlie Holmberg’s Still the Sun. I did not see those twists coming, well written.
Mur Lafferty’s Station Eternity. This was a good blend of mystery and a touch of drama. I liked it.
That’s amazing re: the DOL. I didn’t know you could do that!
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Neither did I! Of course it feels like they got back at us by making it impossible for us to log into the account to see what’s going on. Some sort of tech issues anyway, so we’ll see who comes out on top in the end.
For morale! That is brilliant!
I sincerely doubt that this is your issue AND feel compelled to say – my sister has noticed that when she’s extra clumsy, she’s dehydrated or pre-menstrual – or both. You have so much going on though, linking it to stress seems very reasonable to me.
I’m so sorry your friend’s husband passed away.
AMAZING work getting the Department of Labor involved in your claims. I hope you get those paid soon – talk about a morale boost!
Right? It pleases me greatly.
It would be very interesting if it was a dehydration problem, I’m going to pay closer attention. I know that my fibro pain flaring up was linked to my menstrual cycle, so I’ve just skipped them entirely for years now. But if it was a hydration issue, I’d be really happy.
Thank you.
Fingers are crossed!