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Home > Snowflake for medical bills, plus new grocery budget plan

Snowflake for medical bills, plus new grocery budget plan

July 31st, 2013 at 07:27 pm

I noticed that we'd accumulated $47.63 worth of rewards on our regular credit card, the Chase Freedom. So I took it as a statement credit and put the extra money toward my medical-bills snowflake fund. That takes it to $515.85. I'll continue to look for ways to scrape up money outside our regular budget.

I'm thinking about calling the dentist and asking if he thinks we could just go ahead with extraction vs. doing exploratory surgery to see how far up the crack in my tooth goes. A) My tooth is still bothering me, albeit much less since getting antibiotics, and I just don't think it'll ever be up to par again. B) It would likely cut down on the number of surgical interventions, since he's pretty sure it will need to be extracted. C) It will likely reduce the number of bills, and since Monday's surgery isn't even factored into the $6000 (min. $3000 after insurance) estimate, I really could use any reduction in bills.

Basically the only point of Monday's operation would be to see if the tooth is salvageable, but even if it's able to be temporarily saved, it'll continue to bother me and will likely cause problems in the future. So I'm comfortable assuming the tooth is cracked all the way up and just going forward with pulling it if my dental surgeon agrees.

Anyway, on to my new grocery plan. I still want to find a way to make our grocery budget work without further dissecting it into food/house/toiletry categories, since we buy a combination of all of those at the various stores we frequent.

So instead, I want to set a weekly budget vs. semi-monthly; I think that'll make it easier to keep an eye on spending.

I figured out that our grocery budget is $9000 per year (it sounds like so much!) without calculating the CSA, which we pay for separately. Figuring the non-CSA weeks need $30 more, I multiplied $30 by the number of non-CSA weeks (31) and got $930, which I subtracted temporarily from the annual total, leaving $8070. Dividing that by 52 weeks I got $155.

That means that CSA weeks we have $155, and when the CSA ends we'll have $185 per week (adding back in the $30 that I took out of calculations). Just to be safe I added all that up and it comes to $8990, so I think I'm on the right track.

I'll divvy the grocery money up on my spreadsheet by week and keep my family updated on what we have left for the week. This should help us make smarter choices about midweek one-off purchases and whether we can afford them.

4 Responses to “Snowflake for medical bills, plus new grocery budget plan”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    1375295366

    If it saves you time and money and you are okay with extraction and the doctor agrees I say go for it! Good luck finding more snowflakes!!

  2. IndianGal Says:
    1375296872

    I agree with creditcardfree. If you are okay with the extraction, it seems like it would be alright to do since the tooth might continue to bother you in the future too - and perhaps might need to be extracted at some point anyway. Good luck with the grocery planning also.

  3. ceejay74 Says:
    1375302684

    Good news; I called and the receptionist said the appointment was listed as "extraction of erupted tooth." So apparently he was preparing to do the extraction the same day assuming he confirmed the crack went all the way up, not split it into two separate appointments as I originally thought. I'm glad both on the money front (means this appt. WAS included in the $6000 estimate) and on the number-of-operations front!

  4. creditcardfree Says:
    1375303486

    That is good news...and don't forget to confirm when you get there that is what you are expecting.

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