Finding Affordable Health Insurance

by

One of the challenges of retiring early or being self-employed is finding affordable health insurance.  I’m very frugal and don’t spend a lot of money but I wouldn’t go without health insurance to save money.  The risk is too great.

I currently have private health insurance and pay a little less than $70 a month.  This is a good deal for someone who is 41 years old and overweight.  It is quite a bit cheaper than my student health plan and it provides more coverage.  The deductible is $5000 but I’m not too concerned about that since I rarely visit a doctor.  If I do need to visit a doctor I can visit the student health clinic for free.  The purpose of  health insurance for me is to keep me from being wiped out financially if I suffer a serious injury or illness.

My insurance is cheap but as I grow older I’ll need to find more ways to keep the cost down.  One option is to raise my deductible to $10,000 but I’m not going to do that until I have more savings.  I could also open a Health Savings Account or possibly deduct some of the health insurance cost as business expense.  I need to do more research on these.  Right now I probably won’t owe taxes anyway so a Health Savings Account is of no benefit to me.

I found my health insurance online through eHealthinsurance. eHealthInsurance offers the largest selection of health plans. Compare & Apply Online, Free instant quotes, Best prices, and Live help!

___
Get $100 Cash Back Bonus with the Discover® Business Card!

November Income Challenge Update

by

My goal for November was to do something every day to make extra money.  I’ve already fallen behind but if I do two or three things some days I’ll be able to make an average of one a day.  Here are some things I’ve done so far to make extra money:

  • Opened checking account for Bank Bonus
  • Online Survey
  • Associated Content article
  • Brokered ING Direct links
  • Added Adsense back to this site
  • Medical Study
  • Opened bank cd
  • Invested in stock

Some of these things will be done on multiple days.  I won’t be doing thirty different things to make extra money.  The rest of the month I’ll be concentrating on writing articles for Associated Content and eHow.  It would be nice if I could estabish these as recurring sources of extra income.

A $500 a Month Retirement Budget

by

Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme recently posted an example $500 a month retirement budget.  It is displayed below.

  • Rent $200-250
  • Health insurance $75 (get the cheapest possible and stay healthy!)
  • Food $50-75
  • Transport $0-$75
  • Utilities $25-100

I found this very interesting because I’ve been making over $500 a month in alternative income lately.  If I could get my budget down to $500 a month I could “retire” and live off my alternative income.   Here is one possible budget.

  • Rent $250
  • Health Insurance $70
  • Food $75
  • Transportation $25
  • Utilities $80

It is possible to rent an apartment for $250 in some areas.  I think there are even some place in KC that rent that cheap but I wouldn’t want to live there.  A better alternative is to move to a small town or live with a roommate. The health insurance is what I actually pay now.  The food budget would require a little more self-discipline on my part.  I used to spend about $100 a month on food and if I were to cut out fast food I could get that down to $75 or lower.  The transportation cost is for an occassional bus or giving a friend gas money for a ride.  Ideally I would live somewhere I could walk to most places I needed to go.  The utilities expense of $80 would include a phone.  This amount would vary somewhat but an average of $80 seems easily achievable.

An alternative would be to live in Guatemala (or any low-cost country) for part of the year.  Or to spend several months hiking.  Both would allow me to live on about $300 a month.  A possible budget would be.

  • Rent $100 (if hiking would be for hostels, hotels, showers, etc.)
  • Food $75 (would probably be more while hiking)
  • Health Insurance $70 (this would be the same although I could consider going without in Guatemala since health care is so cheap there.  I wouldn’t want to take the chance of being uninsurable upon a return to the U.S. though.)
  • Miscellaneous $55 (entertainment, postage, gear replacement, transportation, etc.)

The $300 budget would allow me to spend a little extra when visiting the U.S. or not hiking.  Some of the difference would have to go airfare to get to Guatemala or transportation to and from the trailheads but the savings would more than make up for this amount. These budgets might seem a little extreme but based on my experiences living in Guatemala and hiking long distances I’m confident that they are feasible.  I’m planning on doing a $200 a month hike for several months next year.

For now though these budgets are just musings but after I get out of law school they could very well become reality.

Changing My Investment Strategy

by

I have decided to change my investment strategy for retirement.  My previous strategy was to max out my retirement accounts first before setting aside any additional savings.  Since my plan is to retire at 50 though it doesn’t make sense to have most of my savings in retirement accounts where it will be difficult for me to access them without paying penalties.  The main benefit of having your money in retirement accounts is that it is allowed to grow tax-freee.  This isn’t much of a benefit to me due to my short time frame and low tax bracket.  I expect to stay in a low tax bracket for the foreseeable future.

I’m also not happy with the performance of the mutual fund in my Roth IRA.  I know the stock market is taking a beating but I don’t like the idea of paying a management fee to lose money.  I could lose my money myself.

My new strategy is to invest in dividend paying stocks.  I won’t go into too much detail since this isn’t an investment blog.  Right now I have a portfolio of five stocks and I plan to expand that to ten to fifteen stocks.  I’m more concerned with yield than capital appreciation.  I want companies that will continue to increase their dividend.  This way I can use the dividends to pay my expenses and still have a hedge against inflation.

So far my results have been pretty good.  I’ve had the stocks about two weeks and I’m up a small amount and I should receive about $250 in dividends for the next year.  This represents an almost 10% yield but that is skewed due to one very high-yielding stock.  Most of my stocks are paying around 6%.  If anyone wants to know how I chose my stocks I’ll do a post on that.  My selection process is somewhat based on guessing though so I wouldn’t recommend anybody follow my picks.  I feel I’m taking an acceptable risk to have a good shot at retiring early and am willing to live with the consequences if this strategy doesn’t work.

Getting Rid of My Car

by

After much consideration I have decided to get rid of my car.  My plan is to get rid of it after my last final for the semester in early December.  Next semester I’ll only have class on Monday afternoons.  That is the only place I’ll really need to go.  I’ll be relying on public transportation to get there and anywhere else I want to go.  Since I’m living with my GF I should be able to combine any trip I need to make with our other trips.  I’ve been reluctant to give up my car because I haven’t wanted to get up early twice a week to take the bus to school.  Now that I will only have to take the bus once a week and not have to get up early to catch it I don’t have much excuse for not getting rid of my car.

I’m not sure whether I’ll sell my car or donate it.  My plan is to try to sell it for a low price and if it doesn’t sell then I’ll go ahead and donate it.  Since I won’t make enough money to itemize I won’t get any benefit from donating the car but I’d still like to see it go to a good cause.

Getting rid of the car won’t save me a lot of money because it has been paid off for a long time and I don’t drive much anyway.  I’ll save $20 a month on car insurance and and another $40 or so in gas and some more from not having to make repairs or pay taxes and registration.  I will have to pay for bus fare and I might have to pay something to be added as a driver to my GF’s insurance although I will rarely be driving her car.  My net savings should be somewhere around $60 a month.

Even if I get nothing for this car my cost per mile based on my purchase price alone is less than two cents per mile. I bought this car cheap and put over 90,000 miles on it. I didn’t keep complete records of my repair, maintenance, gasoline and other costs so I can’t figure my total cost per mile.  I am sure that it was much lower than average though.  Someone buying an average priced new car would still have a higher cost per mile than me even if they put a million miles on their car.  I definitely received good value out of the purchase of this car.