That's the Way the Money Goes...

It's that time of year again: That fun-filled season of receipts and record keeping that allows us to get our own money back from the government. It's time to see if having chronic kidney disease pays, right?

Such is life.

But there is good news, on the medical financial front: Costs are down all the way around.

Last year, medications cost us a total of $3416.  This year, that's up a bit to $3509.  That rise is uglier than it looks because LAST year we paid two $300 copayments for Botox. 

Last year's doctor/hospital total was $7302.  This year we're down to $5893 (plus $463 for glasses, which I somehow think we failed to get for anybody last year).

Parking went down from $157 to $112, and medical mileage from 3,040 to 2,111, which gives us $401 mileage expense.

That makes the grand total $7415, about $618/month, almost $400 less/month than last year.

That being said, there were still more than a couple of times when I couldn't pay the bills in front of me with the money in front of me, and had to work out payment schedules (for a period of 4 months, I had three different hospitals on autopay), but at no time was I behind on anything, and all of the bills were paid by the end of the year.

More interesting, from a My-Kid-Has-A-Chronic-Disease perspective, Babygirl is no longer the person whose bills are the highest. She is only on a handful of prescription medications, and hers are all generics.  Hubby is the worst on the prescription costs, with me a close second.  I'm the only one of us who was hospitalized in 2017, although Hubby's pain management bills were nearly as high as that little bill. I had some MASSIVE dental bills last year. Having all of Babygirl's blood work done HERE instead of in Philadelphia has saved us literally thousands of dollars. Best of all, she's likely to qualify for Medicaid this year, taking almost all of her medical costs off the table entirely. 

We won't make the medical deductable this year.  We'd have to have a taxable income under $74,100 to deduct even $50 of it, and I do make more than that (we have made the medical deduction cutoff three different times, so it's worth the trouble of combing through every single credit card record, bank statement and receipt LOL), so we are very blessed this year all the way around.

DeeDee