EPISODE 20 ~ SAVE MORE: Credit Score: Raise Yours By Asking Your Creditors For A Simple Favor
This one is also about credit, namely how to raise your credit score by asking your creditors for a favor.
Our credit scores are based on the information in our credit reports. If your overall payment history with a company is good and you make one glaring mistake, you may be able to get the bank or credit card company to delete it from your credit report. Your chances are best if you’re a longstanding customer and it’s clear that the late payment or other blunder was out of character. All you do is call up the company and ask. If the first low-level operator says no, ask for a supervisor.
Simply explain that your overall history with the company is good, point out you are a loyal customer (especially if they make a lot of money off of you), and ask if they would do you the courtesy of removing the offending item from your three credit reports. Creditors have the leeway under the law to perform favors like this.
While you’re on the phone with your new call center friend, ask why the company isn’t reporting positive information about your account that could help your score. Some card companies don’t report credit card limits. Others only report to one of the three credit bureaus. If your account is in good standing, it would be a tremendous benefit to your score if that bank reports the account to all three bureaus. Some of the bureaus may not even know it exists! Scan your three credit reports for discrepancies like this and politely ask –on the phone and in writing—if the bank will delete out-of-character negatives and report helpful positives.
Having a high credit score helps you save money by snagging low interest rates on everything from credit cards to cars to a house.
EPISODE 19 ~ SAVE MORE: Online Grocery Shopping Versus In-Store Shopping: What Saves You More?
Now let’s talk about how shopping for groceries online might actually save you money compared to shopping in person. Yes, despite the delivery fees.
When I tackled this topic for the Washington Post a couple of months ago, my first question was are online and in-person grocery prices the same or different? Frankly, I was worried that there might be a markup on online products. So I compared online and in-store prices at Giant and Safeway, two of the largest nationwide chains, both of which have delivery services.
I checked 10 popular products that most families would buy and found that the total at both stores’ brick and mortar locations was about $45. I’m delighted to say that their online store totals were within a dollar or two of that. Some prices were a few cents higher, but some were lower, so it came out almost even. I only checked the 10 products but when the website cheapism.com did a broader comparison, it also found online and in-store prices were pretty equivalent.
So if we consider that settled, then it’s all about whether you can make back the delivery fee. Stores charge between $7.95 and $12.95 to deliver your groceries, depending on the size of your purchase. You may also want to tip your driver, although some stores don’t allow it. So… can we recoup the delivery fee? Stay with me…
You offset a little of the delivery fee right away since you don’t have to pay for gas. Plus there are ways to get free or discounted delivery: First, many stores offer discount codes for free delivery if you buy a certain dollar minimum. Second, sometimes manufacturers will pay for your delivery if you buy a certain amount of their products. Third: when certain time slots aren’t filling up, stores will often offer discounted delivery.
I would argue that the bigger benefit to shopping online is the time you save by skipping the trip. Plus, if you enter your loyalty card number, all the products you’ve bought at the store in the past should pop up as a customized shopping list. Just click the ones you’d like to buy again and you’re done. No wandering from aisle to aisle. When you shop from home you can also check your pantry to see if you need something, rather than guessing and wasting food. And, if you’re a parent, taking kids to the supermarket inevitably takes more time. So there’s that.
But here’s the real beauty of shopping for groceries online: your online shopping cart keeps a running total of your purchases. If you’re over budget, you simply uncheck something to remove it from your cart and get back on track. By contrast, when you’re at the store, unless you’re Rain Man, you have no idea what your total is as you shop and putting items back after the checker rings them up is awkward.
You can also shop around by unit price online. Looking for something like canned peas, where the brand doesn’t matter? Tell the computer to sort them by price from lowest to highest, and stick the cheapest one in your cart. By contrast, scanning up and down the shelves with your eyeballs is much more time consuming.
Shopping online also helps you avoid impulse buys. In fact, when I spoke with a Giant executive, she admitted that that is challenging for them as a company.
You can even use coupons when you shop online. Some stores allow you to use paper coupons for online orders by presenting them to your driver. Others have virtual coupons right on their websites. Online grocery stores also feature sales. Some even have handy tools that list products you’ve purchased in the past that are currently on sale.
Now, to address what EVERYONE always says when I suggest they try grocery shopping online: picking out your own produce. Yes, it’s nice to choose your fruits and veggies, but keep in mind, online grocery stores DO have a comment section where you can leave instructions for your personal shopper. Like your bananas green? Your apples small? Say so. I now do a combination of in-store and online grocery shopping. I hope I’ve convinced you to at least give online shopping a try.
EPISODE 18 ~ EASY MONEY PODCAST
EPISODE 18 ~ SAVE MORE: Medical Billing Advocate: Hire a Specialist to Catch The Errors in Your Medical Bills
Now let’s plow into our SAVE more segment for the week: how hiring a medical billing advocate can save you thousands of dollars on hospital and other medical bills. My guest is Jeanne Woodward of Medliminal, a firm that specializes in finding and fighting erroneous medical charges. Welcome, Jeanne!
First of all, how common are erroneous medical charges?
Medliminal estimates, based on our years of analyzing medical bills, that 90 percent of them contain errors. And guess what? Most of those errors are in the hospital’s or other medical provider’s favor, not yours!
That’s a huge number. How does this happen?
•Sometimes patients are charged twice for the same service under different codes or descriptions.
•Maybe your surgeon charged full price for multiple procedures, even though they were on the same day.
•Often hospitals charge for related services that should not be billed separately.
You’ve got some specific examples of products or services that hospitals charged big bucks for. I’m going to name them and you explain and tell us the pricetag, OK?
•Thermal Therapy. That’s a euphemist for a bag of ice and one hospital charged $15 for it.
•Handling fee. They carried a vial of blood to the lab and charged $18 for that.
•Cough support device. This was literally a teddy bear! And it cost $62!
•Venipuncture. That’s the technical term for inserting a needle to draw blood. One hospital charged $680 for it.
So medical billing advocates help people find and fight these charges. How do you do that?
•First we request the patient’s complete medical records and an itemized bill. Patients rarely see those and they are a goldmine of details. We compare the medical record against the medical bill and look for discrepancies.
•At Medlimimal, we have developed software that scans hospital bills for errors and overcharges. Plus our people are nurses and coding experts, so they KNOW healthcare. They also comb through the patient’s bill personally looking for things that don’t make sense.
Are the errors they find just accidents? Or do they seem intentional?
Both.
•Mistakes can be simple human errors like misplaced decimal points or the wrong patient ID number.
•Or problems can be more intentional, such as: Upcoding, where a hospital bumps a procedure up to a more complicated code in order to charge more. Or charging for things that are supposed to be included, like surgical supplies that are included with the surgery.
Without naming names, can you give me an example of an individual you helped, what the major errors on their bill were, and how much you saved them?
Cynthia K. of Florida thought being diagnosed with breast cancer was the worst thing that could happen to her. But then the hospital where she had her 40-minute lumpectomy overcharged her. Before the operation, the hospital told her it would cost $5,000. Instead she got a bill for $12,700. Her medical billing advocate found all sorts of classic errors. The hospital had billed Cynthia for two first hours in the operating room. There were drugs listed on the medical bill even though they weren’t in Cynthia’s medical record. And the hospital had charged Cynthia $192 for a postoperative support bra that her advocate was able to find for just $19 on the internet! All in all, the advocate was able to save Cynthia $6,858!
How much does it cost to hire a medical billing advocate?
Some charge an hourly fee, ranging from $25 to $150, for their work. Others work on contingency. That means you pay nothing unless they negotiate a lower payment for you. They then charge a percentage of the amount they saved you. 15 to 35-percent is typical.
If people listening have insurance, they may wonder why they would ever need a medical billing advocate?
•If you have a high deductible health plan, that means you have to pay the first few thousand dollars worth of care, so it’s worth it to reduce the cost as much as possible.
•Plus, many of us have co-insurance plans these days where we have to pay a percentage of our medical bills. If you’re hospitalized for something like a heart attack, your portion could easily be $20,000. You would want to reduce that bill as much as possible to shrink your own portion.
We’ve been talking about hospital bills, but what other kinds of medical bills can billing advocates help with?
—Doctor’s bills
—Lab and other diagnostic bills, like for MRIs or CT scans.
—And we can also help people get paid when their insurance company refuses to cover a claim.
At what point in the process should you hire a medical billing advocate?
It’s crucial to hire a medical billing advocate BEFORE you pay your hospital or other bills. It’s a lot easier to pay less money in the first place than it is to get money back after a hospital or other medical company already has it.
Jeanne Woodward of Medliminal, thank you so much for being here on Easy Money! And, lucky us, Medliminal has provided a guest blog post telling you steps you can take on your own to try to reduce your medical bills. If it’s complicated you’ll want to hire a pro… and they are also sometimes called claims assistance professionals, medical claims professionals or healthcare claims advocates. I will link you to several sites where you can find one, whatever they’re called!
Medical Billing Advocates of America: BillAdvocates.com
Alliance of Claims Assistance Professionals: Claims.org
Patient Advocate Foundation: PatientAdvocate.org
Healthcare Advocates, Inc.: HealthcareAdvocates.com
Health Proponent: HealthProponent.com
Care Counsel: CareCounsel.com (This service is only available through employers, so check with your HR department to see if your company participates.)
EPISODE 17 ~ EASY MONEY PODCAST
EPISODE 17 ~ SAVE MORE: Medical Tests: Shop Around And Save Thousands On Medical Tests
If you are uninsured or are insured but have to make a substantial coinsurance payment, it’s worth it to shop around for medical tests. The difference in price from one facility to another could be 20 to 60-percent —or more.
My friend Ingrid in California had tried everything to relieve shooting sciatic pain that started when she was pregnant. Now she needed an MRI to determine if she had a ruptured disk or if something else was causing her sciatic pain. Since she’s a shopper by nature, Ingrid decided to shop around. She called two different places and one charged $4000 for an MRI. But another place, just as close to her house, charged just $1500! That’s a $2,500 savings, which is 63-percent.
And that was not an isolated case. Across the country in New Jersey, I was doing a savings makeover for a family and the mom needed a routine colonoscopy. That’s expensive and the family had to satisfy a high deductible before their health insurance kicked in, so this was their own money that would be paying for this. So we called 10 facilities within 5 miles of their home. And guess what: we found one that was $3,980 less than the rest! Now THAT’s how I like to save money!
EPISODE 16 ~ EASY MONEY PODCAST
EPISODE 16 ~ SAVE MORE: Health Savings Account: A Better Way To Save Money For Healthcare Costs Tax-Free
Health Savings Accounts, which are different and more flexible —ironically— than Flexible Spending Accounts.
In order to open a Health Savings Account, first you must open A High Deductible Health Plan or “HDHP.” That’s a specific type of health insurance plan created by Congress. For 2017, a High Deductible Health Plan must have a deductible of at least $1300 for individuals and $2600 for families. The deductible is the amount you have to pay before the insurance benefits kick in.
High Deductible Health Plans by themselves are not that exciting. But Health Savings Accounts ARE because they can help you save money. Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs, are accounts in which you can save money for healthcare costs tax free.
They’re similar to a Flexible Spending Account —only better. In the old, obnoxious Flexible Spending Accounts you have to guess how much you will spend on healthcare each year and set aside that amount. If you guess wrong, and don’t spend all the money, you forfeit the balance of your account. Oops! You lose! And little known fact: your EMPLOYER gets to keep the cash.
By contrast, the new Health Savings Accounts are so much saner. Here’s why I like them:
- HSAs roll over from year to year instead of being forfeited.
- They are portable, so you can take them with you to another job.
- Employers typically contribute to them.
- HSAs earn interest or can be invested (carefully!) in the market
- And You can cash in your HSA for any use after age 65
HSAs paired with High Deductible Health Plans are better for people who are physically and financially healthy, so that they’re either unlikely to have to pay the high deductible at all, or it won’t hurt them financially if they do. Some employers offer HSAs, many of the health plans on the Obamacare exchanges are combos of High Deductible Health Plans and Health Savings Accounts and independent insurance agents also sell them.
An HSA saves you money because it reduces your taxable income. For 2017, individuals are allowed to sock away up to $3,400 in a health savings account and families can save up to $6,750. How much can you save? Let’s say you make $100,000 a year and contribute the family maximum to an HSA. That will save you $1,688 on your taxes!