Are you saving?

In my recent conversations with clients and friends I have been trying to ask the question, "Are you saving your money?" Of all the financial gurus and financial programs I have studied I have learned one common thread that ties them all together: Save money.
I think some people are naturally born with this insight and others are taught it very young. For the rest of us it is just against our nature. The reason we have money is to buy things and since it feels like our resources are so low, when we get anything extra, we spoil ourselves with fun. Saving that money doesn't seem very fun, because it doesn't yield any instant gratification.
I have learned that in order to make saving fun I had to start doing it in a unique way. Just sticking extra money in a bank account or setting it aside doesn't work well for me. I can still see it there and it just sits, never growing or moving, just sits there as worthless cash. So instead of having the money be boring, why not start investing it? You don't have to have a lot of money to start investing. It really isn't all that difficult either. Most people tend to think they need financial advisors or lots of money to start investing. That couldn't be further from the truth. I wouldn't even bother hiring an advisor unless I had a ton of money, because their fees are way too high.
You can open a simple thing called a brokerage account from your favorite on line fund manager like etrade or schwab or Fidelity. You can start by choosing your favorite company where you spend a lot of your moey already and just buy a share or more of their stock. now you have "Saved" your money and purchased something that can be fun to watch. You can watch as your money fluctuates every day and know you own a part of that company you frequent often. If you are willing to set aside regular amounts of $100 or more a month you can just invest in an indexed mutual fund that mimics the stock market. When the market goes up or down for the day you can rest assured your money has done the same thing. When you get bored or want more excitement you can sell those stocks or mutual funds and buy something different. It seems like every rich person I have heard about started out in the stock market doing something similar to that- just buying a few stocks. I think by starting to buy small stocks they got more interested in what was going on. As they got smarter and smarter about the markets they made more and more money.
Sometimes stocks don't grow and you lose money. The good news is you probably won't ever lose all of it. If you hadn't invested you wouldn't have anything left over anyways and probably would much sadder had you done nothing at all. You also gained a lot of experience and can start earning more later.

Affordable Care Act

http://www.exchangenevada.com/blog

Sal Morales, went from paying $560 month in Cobra insurance to about $145 a month through the Affordable Care Act. He also has a network deductible of $500. Here’s how he breaks it down: “There’s one party, the hospital who provides the service. There’s a second party, the patient, who receives the service. And there’s a third party, the insurance, who pays for the service.” What happened with Mr. Morale’s case is that the insurer negotiates a lessor amount for various plans, with a variety of hospitals through multiple agreements for the same hospitals or doctors.

Doctors are paid differently even if two patients have the same insurance company, if the plans are different in any way. To make this simple there are as many price tags for a hypertension checkup as there are insurers and providers.

The question that should be asked is how much is your doctor getting paid, to determine the best deals for coverage. If you have the history of medical procedures from lasts years doctors treatment the insurance company can provide a better assessment as opposed to shopping around to be told the price is more to cover you for the same procedures as last year.

“We’re identifying the procedure, we’re identifying the provider, the date of service and then making sure the amount, the member responsibility has to be in there,” Monzon says.

To get a clearer sense of what health care costs, someone would have to collect enough of those statements from patients at all different hospitals with all different insurance.

There are companies and crowdsourcing projects trying to do just that around the country. And Massachusetts has a law that says insurers have to disclose some of these prices in a way that is accessible to patients.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WLRN, the Miami Herald, NPR and Kaiser Health News.