What affects the cost of Health Insurance?

Health insurance is just another form of insurance like car insurance and home insurance. It is another type of protection that covers you against unexpected expenses that can arise from injury, accident or illness. It's a smart investment. You pay a little to get more out of that when you are in need.

There are various plans of health insurance and you need to choose as per your requirement. The premium amount will vary on the plan you choose. Actually there are few other things which affect the premium amount. It's your personal habits that affect the cost of medical insurance.

Here I will discuss three major personal habits that could greatly increase the premium amount that it cost to purchase the medical insurance policy.

1. If you drink alcohol regularly, you are just reducing your lifespan. If you are not a regular consumer of alcohol, it won't affect your health so much, but over consuming it may cause you to pay more for your health insurance. Are you really willing to pay more for health insurance so that you can consume alcohol?

2. If you are a smoker or use any type of tobacco products, the insurance company is going to raise the premium for health insurance as high as they can. Tobacco causes everything from cancer to heart disease. If you are a user of tobacco, expect to pay more premiums for health insurance cover.

3. If you are overweight, you may have to pay more for insurance. You must have noticed that while filling up the form, insurance company ask for your height and weight. If your weight is more in proportion to your height, insurance company can charge more for your premium.

There are other personal habits that can affect the cost, but these are more common that I found. If we can avoid these three habits, we can save money while purchasing a health insurance.

Do you think like the middle class or the wealthy?

Among this week's Carnival of Personal Finance at Broke Grad Student is a short, yet impactful blog post. Blogger Moneymonk compares the thoughts of the middle class with the thoughts of the wealthy. And all four points related to the middle-class mindset apply to (gulp!) me.

In essence, Moneymonk (and one of the post commenters, Finance Girl) highlights that the middle class focus primarily on financial security. Those who build wealth successfully focus on financial prosperity.

It's a subtle but important difference. Wealth-builders are more willing to take on greater risks, such as starting their own businesses or buying investment properties. Those in the middle-class take on less risk, by working for someone else (which, admittedly, doesn't seem that less risky in these days of mass layoffs and rising unemployment) or putting their money in a tangible, relatively low-risk asset, such as their home.

I work at a large company, and M and I are diligently saving to move up from our townhouse into a single-family home. The one place where we are taking greater risk is in our 401(k), which is invested 80% in broadly diversified stock funds. Essentially, we have a middle-class mindset, with just a pinch of wealth-building. This realization isn't quite enough to make me want to change what we're doing. But it does get me thinking.

How to consolidate debts?

Debt consolidation is not a complete solution; however, it can provide some instant relief. Debt consolidation is a process of consolidating your credit card debt, payday loan, mortgage loan, personal loan, medical bill into a single monthly installment or payment. It's a process of negotiating with creditors. Its better to take help of a debt consolidator, who negotiates with creditors on behalf of consumer. A good debt consolidator only suggest for a monthly payment that is affordable for the consumer.

There are many benefits of consolidating debt, such as lowering monthly payment, reducing interest rates, removing fees, will be able to reduce balance faster and become debt free in 4-5 years, getting rid of collection calls and more, avoid filing bankruptcy.

How to start the debt consolidation process?

1. List your debts including mortgage, credit card, car loan and other personal debts.

2. Note down the balance, interest rate and monthly payment.

3. Calculate the total amount you will pay on completion of the loan period.

4. You may consider refinancing your mortgage.

5. Use a credit card with low interest rate. Transfer balances of other card to one card.

6. Consult a debt consolidator to negotiate with creditors. Contact a non profit service for debt

negotiation.

7. Consider taking a debt consolidation loan from a reputed company with reasonable interest rates.

Debt consolidation is the best option to avoid bankruptcy, which affects your credit badly and you may face difficulty in getting any sort of financial help in future.

Personal finance served family style

Canadian Personal Finance Blog serves up this edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. It was Family Day in Canada this week, so his blog is themed accordingly: advice that might come from a member of your family. My three fave posts:

• What we learn from tragedy. Jason of MyMoneyMinute offers some heartfelt "practical applications" and "fundamentals" to think about. I'd add that make sure you also have powers of attorney in place.
• A macroeconomic look at credit cards, by David of Davidonfinance. Read the post, and the first few comments. David initially characterizes credit cards as "inherently evil," but then seems to be persuaded otherwise by some readers.
• Valentine Day flowers a rip-off? by MoneySmartLife. Valentine's Day flowers are worth the gouging by flower shops because" they perform a valuable service," according to the unnamed blogger. It made me wish I'd spent a little more on the flowers I got M, which I gave her a few days ahead of Valentine's Day. After her initial surprise and gratitude, she said knowingly, "Were they on sale?" Guilty as charged.

Funny ways to show finacial crisis

Bush on financial crisis.....................haha.....


















Obama- change.......

When having a land line and cell phone makes sense

I used to think M and I paid too much for our phone usage. Not anymore. I discovered the costs—largely non-financial—of moving to a cheaper plan actually outweigh the benefits.

We pay how much??
For the past five years, we’ve resented paying more than $100 a month for a cell phone plan and unlimited long distance on our home phone. We’d go back and forth about getting rid of either service to reduce our costs, but honestly, we're hooked on the convenience.

I use the cell during my two hours of commuting time to catch up with family or do “chores,” such as scheduling appointments. M uses the land line while at home with the kids to keep in touch with her mother and best friend, both who live out of state. She also likes not having to keep track of her minutes to avoid overage charges, or having to call late in the evening or on weekends.

But last November, we took a first step and went with a pay-as-you-go land line plan. We expected some small savings, maybe $10-$20 per month, as we better utilized the unused minutes we had each month in our current cell plan to make long distance calls, and took more advantage of the ability to make free calls to each other. Maybe we’d even get rid of the home phone altogether.

Old habits die hard
This week, we went back to unlimited long distance. In the three months, we spent more—not a lot, but still more—for phone calls instead of less. Changing our behavior was not quite as easy as changing our calling plan.

We tried hard to break the habit of reaching for the home phone. At one point, M stuck a “Use cell phone” Post-It on the cordless handset as a reminder.

But obstacles stood in our way. We have phones on three of our townhouse’s four levels, so the temptation to simply make a call, especially a quick one, from the land line was great. M also wasn’t keen on always having to remember to keep the cell phone at her side.

Most importantly, phone calls became a source of friction. I tired of reminding M to call me back on the cell instead of the land line, and she tired of me reminding her. We may have eventually ended up with a lower phone bill by not speaking to each other, but that hardly seems the point.

If we’d stuck with it, we probably would have developed phone habits that could have saved the few bucks each month. But for us, it’s just not worth it. We can find other, less wearisome, ways to trim the budget. And our once “high-cost” phone bill now seems like a pretty good value.

Tips for chosing a car insurance

Insuring your car is as important as insuring your life. Purchasing a car is one of the life's biggest investment one make and we must think about the security of our investments. So it's always advisable to get your car insured. In this article we will discuss about the point you should consider before purchasing insurance for your car.

1. Look for a insurance company offering the best deal. You can save a minimum percentage on the premium amount. For that you have to shop around. Compare offer policies by different company. Some policies are cheaper but then you might find a difference in cover amount. So before you purchase a policy for your car, make sure that you have chosen the best one.

2. Another thing that you may consider is no-claim bonus. It's not similar for all companies. You must check if before getting into it. Protecting no-claim bonus may cost you a bit more, that is your premium amount may go up for few dollars, however, it's very beneficial in few cases.

3. The policy should be in the name of a regular driver. However you can go ahead to add someone for few days

4. Try not to add a young driver for the policy, as in that case you may not be able to get no-claim bonus.

Though we invest in purchasing insurance for our car, but I always wish not to face such situations to get benefit of the policy. Please take a advance driver's course before you sit on the drivers seat.

Please add other points that you think of in your valuable comments.

There's no place like...the Carnival of Personal Finance #191

Dollar Frugal hosts this week's Carnival, with a Wizard of Oz theme. So follow the yellow brick road to these cool posts:

• Being married seven years has taught Mighty Bargain Hunter seven lessons about money. Nothing real surprising here, but some good reminders, such as listening to your spouse is key and don't keep secrets!

• Bible Money Matters shares why good financial decisions don't always make financial sense. Amen, brother!

• Michael James offers an interesting analogy between playing poker and successful saving. Deal me in, Michael!
  
  
  
  

A coin jar adds up to more than just saved pennies

Given my new mission, I was mulling over changing the name of this blog to better reflect my goal of linking behavior and spirit to building wealth. Then as I thought about it, I realized that a coin jar is actually a pretty good example of that alignment. Here’s why:

It’s easy to start. You can use just about any container you find hanging around the house to hold your coins, which removes a big barrier to saving and building wealth: Just getting started. I use a medium-sized white porcelain bowl we got as a Christmas gift one year, and I’m not even sure how it ended up being my container. But I need something bigger because it's overflowing.

It’s habitual. Many people keep their containers close to the place where they empty their pockets each day, so they can toss coins in automatically. My bowl is in my nightstand, where I put my cell phone, Ipod, and employer security badge each night after work. When you make saving part of your normal routine, you give yourself a great chance of being a successful saver.

It builds up over time. Coin jars teach a valuable lesson: Wealth-building requires action and patience. You won’t get rich quick by saving pennies a day, but you'll be surprised at just how much your spare change adds up to over a long period of time. And that’s true for any type of saving, whether it’s a down payment on a house or your 401(k). Little things mean a lot.

So nothing's changing: The Coin Jar is here to stay. (Good thing, too, otherwise I’d have to write off as a loss all those Coin Jar t-shirts I printed up…just kidding. ; )

How much money have you saved using a coin jar? Have you ever used the savings to purchase a big-ticket item, like a TV or computer? E-mail me your story and make The Coin Jar Honor Roll.

Carnival of Personal Finance offers good reading

The Carnival of Personal Finance for the week is up at Funny-about-Money. A few favorites related to behavior and money:

Financial lessons learned from my younger self at Monogamoney.
Why I never budget (though he does in a way) at Bret Frolich.com
Biggest financial lesson learned from the bear market at personalfinancestartup.com.

Check 'em out!