“That’ll be $187.”
I just blinked at the pharmacy technician. “And you ran that through my health insurance?” I asked. “Yep. That new medicine isn’t available in a generic yet.” I mentally started running through ways to carve out an extra $200 a month in the family budget to cover my son’s new asthma medicine without upsetting our carefully planned budget. While in shock over the out of pocket price, I was still thankful that he only had to take medicine for 6 months out of the year. Some families aren’t so lucky. I’ve had many patients over the years who have had to make the hard choice between paying for medications or paying for utilities and groceries. Prescription drugs can be brutal to pay for, even with decent health insurance coverage.
These days, I often find myself providing in-depth lessons on how to get the most out of your medications thanks to the ever-rising cost of healthcare. Here are a few tips I give my patients.
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A four-year degree really isn’t necessary for success in life, but spending the money and going to college is the right decision for most people. You will do much better, though, if you plan ahead, and make an effort to lower your costs.
Some of the essentials, if you want to minimize the amount of money you borrow in student loans, include working toward scholarships, applying for grants, saving money in a 529 plan, and even getting a job. You can also find other ways to save money as a college student. As you do these things, though, you can also make plans about where you will attend college. Sometimes, where you go matters quite a bit in getting the best bang for your education buck — and keeping you from crippling student loan debt.
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Let’s try a little experiment. Make a list of all the words you can think of that begin with the letter R. Now, come up with a list of all the words you can think of that have R as the third letter in the word. Based on your lists, which is more common — words beginning with R or words with R as the third letter?
If you said words beginning with R, you’ve just fallen victim to the availability heuristic. This phenomenon describes how our brains assign more probability to an outcome that we can more easily think of. It’s much easier to come up with a list of words beginning with R, so our brains believe that R words MUST be more common. But it’s simply not true.
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Back in the days, you may hear about the sizzling returns of a stock whose company you’ve loved for years, or the gambler mentally in you urges you to try buying a few speculators. It could have started even when you learnt of your best friend’s massive profits from the stock market just a few short weeks ago. Whatever the case may be, it’s safe to say that buying stocks is how many people are introduced to investing.
When we are young with relatively few assets, investing in stocks is fun. Even if we fail to make money, it could set ourselves up for success. But like many people, they approach their thirties and sometimes even forties with only stocks in their portfolios. A quick check with wildly accepted wealth management theory says that this is no big deal though, because we want to have most of our assets in stocks when we are young to capture the greatest long term appreciation. But stocks bring volatility, and…
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In theory, making all your holiday gifts sounds great. Not only will you save money but your recipients will be charmed and love that you put so much thought and effort into your gifts and not only that, you’ll be striking a blow against materialism and consumer culture.
Except when that doesn’t happen…
No matter how good it sounds in theory, not every homemade gift will be loved and appreciated. Sometimes it’s because the recipient is an ungrateful brat. Sometimes it’s because the holidays are hectic and things get overlooked. And let’s be honest, sometimes it’s because the homemade gift giver just didn’t put enough thought into it. It’s also far from a given that it will wind up saving money and keeping you out of the store.
To give your homemade gifts the best chance of being loved and appreciated and frugal, ask yourself these questions first.
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If you ever kept a gym membership long after it has become clear that you are not now and will never be a gym rat, then you have felt the effects of loss aversion. This particular effect of behavioral economics explains why people are more likely to work to avoid a loss than they are to earn a gain. Loss aversion is the wiring that makes us feel more depressed at the loss of $100 than elated at winning the same amount of money. No, it’s not rational, but it does affect how you handle your money.
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