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.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Affordable Care Act
http://www.exchangenevada.com/
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.
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.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Nevada Health Link Re-Enroll Email
We have already started calling our current clients and informing people of this change and have begun the process to re enroll everyone for 2015. We want this to happen smoothly for each one of our clients and not make them go through the headache on their own. We were successful last year at getting people coverage through Nevada Health Link and we will do it again. It can be a nightmare trying to correct someone else's mistake on the websites. It is extremely important to make sure the information is accurate and that you understand why the questions they are asking are being asked. The first application I did last year was a dummy one I did for myself and I honestly was a little confused and annoyed. I have now done hundreds of these and I have a lot more knowledge and experience to get these done correctly.
We are putting on 2 events in October in Las Vegas to help people understand the changes and make life better for those who attend. Mark your calendar for October 18 and 25th at the YMCA off N Durango at 10am. I think it is a such a blessing to be able to have us work for you and get these done so you don't have to stress. The second best part is having a second person to be on your side in case things don't go 100% smoothly either. I have seen some of the worst technological issues with the website get fixed because we intervened and worked on the case. I know for a fact if those clients were on their own, they would be in the same boat today with no repercussion.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
What is your reason?
Recently, a client of ours took out life insurance. She just turned 50 and had nothing in place. A huge reason why they made this decision now is because two close friends of theirs just passed. I can't imagine how they must have felt having not one but two deaths to process. This client has a family and is the main source of income for them. I had mentioned it to them last year. It was something they wanted to do but hadn't gotten around to it. After losing friends so close to them they had no other choice but to secure the future of their family. Nobody likes to talk about, "what if I die?" However, this is a question we need to take the time to ask ourselves. Please talk it over with your family.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
2015 Nevada Health Insurance update
The department of Insurance has released the proposed rates for next year for individuals and small groups. I have put them together into our easy to use spreadsheets and are looking forward to being able to quote new policies soon. There seems to be some interesting trends. Anthem has decided to decrease their rates and offer totally new products, including an actual PPO product this next year. Sierra Health is staying with their product line up with relatively low increases and they are even introducing some lower cost alternative plan options. Assurant health, who last year was a big player has decided to join Humana at higher than market rates with increases as high as 30%+. Golden Rule is also putting their hat into the ring again this next year with rates equivalent to Assurant and Humana. Aetna has decided to stop offering Coventry plans, but they have kept the same kind of rates amongst the new Aetna plans that were similar to Coventry offerings with very strong low rates in the Bronze and Silver levels. Humana has also decided to increase their product offerings to expand into Platinum and Gold, but rates are still slightly higher than the lower priced Anthem, Sierra Health, and Nevada Health Coop Products. The Nevada Health Coop has introduced a whole lot of new offerings. They have expanded their Southern Simple and neighborhood plans to include platinum coverage and are introducing a whole new set of plans. Their rates are still amongst the least expensive.
Some big news for people who shop for coverage with subsidies is Assurant is going to be offering the first true PPOs on our exchange. This is good news to people who want more freedom and more choices f doctors. We are still yet to hear what provider network these plans will be using, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Aetna Signature Administrators network they used mostly last year.
As we get more updates about how our new federally facilitated marketplace will work, I hope to port more about those changes and hopefully we will be seeing some fixes to some of the biggest headaches we have been dealing with.
Some big news for people who shop for coverage with subsidies is Assurant is going to be offering the first true PPOs on our exchange. This is good news to people who want more freedom and more choices f doctors. We are still yet to hear what provider network these plans will be using, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Aetna Signature Administrators network they used mostly last year.
As we get more updates about how our new federally facilitated marketplace will work, I hope to port more about those changes and hopefully we will be seeing some fixes to some of the biggest headaches we have been dealing with.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Going on vacation this summer?
Going on vacation this summer? Does your insurance have a network in the area you are traveling to?
As many people travel during the summer it is important to check with
your insurance carrier or broker to be sure you will be covered in that
area.
Couple things to remember:
- HMO: Most will cover emergencies only when you leave the service area or state. Any other medical bill you may incur that’s not an emergency will be your responsibility and you will pay out-of-pocket.
If an emergency arises, make sure and notify your HMO provider
immediately. If this does not happen, the HMO may decline payment.
- PPO: If you the provider is not contracted with the insurance, no matter what the circumstance, all costs will go towards your out-of-network deductible. You would need to pay cash and/or bill the insurance carrier directly as that provider does not have a contract with your insurance carrier. Make sure to keep detailed receipts so you can bill the insurance correctly.
This
is why it is important to plan ahead. There are options if your
insurance carrier does not cover the area you are traveling to. You can
always look into travel insurance and Nevada Benefits can definitely
help you with that. Below is a link found on our website regarding
travel insurance.
https://www.sevencorners.com/
https://www.sevencorners.com/
Be safe, be prepared, and have a wonderful summer!
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Las Vegas Metro Chamber trying to delay ObamaCare
http://eepurl.com/W_wJL
This sounds all great and wonderful on the outside. I too would like to keep my premiums as low as possible for as long as I can. Bill Wright is a great guy and I see where he is coming from. The problem is, the Chamber Health Plan is no longer going to be paying them commissions when things change, unless the chamber can get more people on their new program.
We cannot keep delaying the inevitable. If we keep trying to enact new legislation that allows people to keep their current health plans, then those few select people will never fully understand or appreciate the new healthcare law. It will also cause more troubles later on for those people. The main trouble being they will continue to elect officials who have no clue of what to do about the law and never get things fixed in a timely manner. We will see people trying to apply fixes that don't need to happen because someone only saw the law from an outsider point-of-view.
One example of this would be how many Nevadans went onto NevadaHealthlink.com to sign up for insurance in Oct-Dec for insurance to start in January but failed to select plans and make payment and expected those accounts to work for April and May start dates. Yes, I know the technology should have allowed it, but people kept complaining and instead of starting fresh, got frustrated and made the Nevada Health Link apply fixes to these old accounts that crashed every other new account and payment for April through June! If only people got smart and realized the issue, things would have gone smoothly. If people were not given so many extensions, we would have seen real progress.
By nature we are procrastinators. We cannot put off what we need to do today. The sooner we face our challenges the sooner we can overcome them. Accept challenges and move on.
This sounds all great and wonderful on the outside. I too would like to keep my premiums as low as possible for as long as I can. Bill Wright is a great guy and I see where he is coming from. The problem is, the Chamber Health Plan is no longer going to be paying them commissions when things change, unless the chamber can get more people on their new program.
We cannot keep delaying the inevitable. If we keep trying to enact new legislation that allows people to keep their current health plans, then those few select people will never fully understand or appreciate the new healthcare law. It will also cause more troubles later on for those people. The main trouble being they will continue to elect officials who have no clue of what to do about the law and never get things fixed in a timely manner. We will see people trying to apply fixes that don't need to happen because someone only saw the law from an outsider point-of-view.
One example of this would be how many Nevadans went onto NevadaHealthlink.com to sign up for insurance in Oct-Dec for insurance to start in January but failed to select plans and make payment and expected those accounts to work for April and May start dates. Yes, I know the technology should have allowed it, but people kept complaining and instead of starting fresh, got frustrated and made the Nevada Health Link apply fixes to these old accounts that crashed every other new account and payment for April through June! If only people got smart and realized the issue, things would have gone smoothly. If people were not given so many extensions, we would have seen real progress.
By nature we are procrastinators. We cannot put off what we need to do today. The sooner we face our challenges the sooner we can overcome them. Accept challenges and move on.
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