Finding the $90 a month

One thing I just got around to checking the online vet pharmacy price on is the Adequan shots I give our dog monthly. When we switched to the new vet I was needing a refill soon so they gave me a box (2 vials, good for 5 injections) and said I might want to check into getting it from an online vet pharmacy going forward because it's cheaper. Boy, she wasn't kidding! The vet charged me $275. The previous vet we had was charging me $220. Online I can get it for $135. Less than half! I will definitely have the vet send this prescription to a vet pharmacy next refill needed. That's a savings of almost $30/mo for this medication. $30 that can be going towards the extra $90/mo cost of having dh on my work health insurance. 

That air exchanger system our HVAC guy installed awhile back has 3 filters. 2 that are smaller and the same and one large one. He said all 3 can be taken out and washed out, rather than replacing. Dh does his filter (HVAC and water) changes/cleaning April 1 and Oct 1. The bigger one for the air exchanger he wanted to buy a replacement one, to have 2, so that when he washes it out and it takes a few days to dry out, he can just swap it with the extra one. He figured then he can take it out and replace all at one trip down into the crawl space. Well, the bigger filter is $350! Plus, not time to get one here before he took them out for cleaning on 4/1, so he just did the cleaning of this one the first time. Set it out in the heated shop to dry out and then a few days later, once it was dried, went back down into the crawl space to put back in (he also had to keep the unit off during this drying time). The HVAC guy also said this big filter only needs to be cleaned once per year. So, for now I don't have to spend the $350 until next year. I'll put a note on my calendar when it gets closer to that time, to order one, but I'm hoping maybe by then DH will say "oh, I can just clean it". We'll see. But, at least it's $350 not needing to be spent this year and that's another almost $30/mo equivalent that can go towards the extra $90/mo for insurance, at least for this first year.

So then I got online with my work's benefits open enrollment to get through that process by the deadline. After adding dh to the health insurance, the next item was how much to contribute to the HSA. Well, previously the employer contribution was $50 a month. Now it says $75. I don't know if this is because I added dh to to the health insurance (which is an HSA type plan) and it's more if you have your family on it, or if they just upped it to $75 a month, but hey, I'll take it. That's basically equivalent to $25 a month back towards the $90/mo more I will have to spend on his insurance.

I think I've managed to cover the extra $90 a month :) I just need to make sure I remember to cancel his current health insurance for end of May, as the new plan starts 6/1.

Mom took her 6pm pill no problem last night (and the night time cleaners didn't unplug it, LOL). Then when I went to bed I changed her medication schedule for starting today - to try no more morning pill time. All the pills at 6pm. I hope this works - at least for awhile anyway. I kind of mentioned yesterday I was thinking about having her do them all in the evening, but there is no way she'll remember I said that. It will be interesting to see if she thinks about it this morning. I highly doubt it. She has never missed her morning pills (because she didn't come back to her apartment during the time the machine was reminding her) and then later remembered. She just thinks "oh, I already took them" when I called her to remind her they still needed to be taken.

I see the distribution from her retirement account is now in her bank account this morning. If I hadn't paid attention to knowing when her RMD usually got transferred to her regular bank account, I wonder how long (or even HOW) it would have stayed in that closed account before they caught it? Why in the world the assistant would think I'd want to deal with a mailed check, I have no idea. Or why would I want to manually request it each year? It has to be distributed no matter what anyway. I told her no, just do it automatically. As long as it's around the same time each year, I'll know for her budgeting expenses when to expect it. Doesn't need to be that hard.