About Those Medical Bills

Being a family of five with three small children, we get our fair share of medical bills. Since we depend entirely on one income, I open them with with great dread, anxiety and a hundred other negative feelings. Our youngest child was born with a heart murmur, not a serious one, but it does require monitoring by a pediatric cardiologist until it is closed. Wouldn't you know, we had just met our insurance deductible when the year ended and he had another appointment in February. Thankfully, we were able to pay our new deductible but now are responsible for a percentage of the latest bill.

I am not one to ever question anything, usually. This time, however, I decided to at least try to get it lower. Honestly, I didn't expect it to work, but "it never hurts to ask," right? So ask I did and was pleasantly surprised at the response. The billing department graciously agreed to take 25% off our bill if I paid it in full. Obviously, I didn't hesitate to that arrangement. So instead of a $200 bill, we are paying $150. Hooray!!!!

Hopefully this post will be an encouragement to someone to at least ask. The worst response would be a simple "No," and it really isn't so embarrassing when that happens. Who knows you may even be as fortunate as me and save $50!

A Cheap Solution for a Cheap Mattress

When our family expanded into a family of five this past year, our two oldest children began sharing a bedroom. We bought two twin beds and mattresses for them. If you have ever priced furniture of any kind, I'm sure you would agree that usually it comes at a great price (by "great" I do not mean wonderful). Being the conservative spender that I am I decided on the cheapest mattresses at the store. When the saleswoman showed them to me they were leaning against a wall and so I just ran my hand over them instead of actually sitting on them. Big Mistake! Of course I knew they weren't pillow-top quality, but honestly, how bad could a new mattress feel?

The delivery men brought our girls' new beds and we were all so excited. When we sat down though it was a different story. They were so springy and I don't mean springy as in airy, I mean springy as in several large metal springs poking in your back. Obviously, I realized my mistake but it was too late to get different ones so we were stuck with these affordable yet incredibly uncomfortable mattresses.

My first idea was to buy two mattress pads. After all, how expensive could a little piece of foam be? It turns out, quite expensive! The ones I priced cost as much as the mattresses did and I just couldn't bring myself to spend that much.

Recently, we had an unexpected cold front and I was changing our girl's sheets and putting their flannel ones back on their beds. When I opened a drawer to put their old sheets away I thought, "I've got to find a better place to store all of these blankets, there just isn't room in here for everything." Then it hit me, why not pad the mattresses with all of our extra blankets? So that is exactly what I did. I layered blanket upon blanket until a desirable softness was obtained, then placed a fitted sheet over it all and finished making the beds. Granted, the mattresses probably aren't Sleep Number quality, but our girls are sleeping much better these days.