i made $3,000 dollars today. nope, i didn’t do a webinar, though i would love to. no, i didn’t find some fancy way to calibrate the ads on my blog. someday. all i did was make a phone call. well, three phone calls to be exact.

originally, i wasn’t going to share this post. i actually wrote it last monday. i don’t have any eye-catching pictures to go along with it and the thing is, i am not financially minded, and this crosses into that zone. if you think of the opposite of a finance major, that’s me. thank the Lord in heaven my husband loves numbers and budgets. he keeps us on track. i am not an expert on anything i write about really, but finances and numbers are way out of my comfort zone. despite this, i am going ahead with this post because i think lots of people could benefit from an extra $3,000 saved.

as a stay at home mom, there are small ways i feel like i “make” money for our family. i’ve mentioned this before and i am sure a lot of you are doing the same. i recently wrote about ways to spend less on kids’ clothing. medical bills are another way i work to save our money for our family. our medical expenses are not astronomically high. we have two kids so trips to the pediatrician are par for the course. we see a couple specialists for minor things, one of those being allergies and asthma. surprisingly, these bills can add up, especially when conditions require surgery like tonsils, adenoids, tubes, more tubes, etc.

last friday, i received a bill for close to $4,000. on monday, it was time to pay that bill. needless to say, i was not excited about it. after receiving bills a few years back for our daughter’s time in the NICU, i learned a very important secret. every medical bill, every single solitary doctor’s bill is worth a phone call to the billing department. it takes time, and i feel out of my comfort zone every single time i call. but these phone calls have saved our family thousands of dollars. here’s how. if you are like me, and numbers and finances make you start to sweat, bear with me. the first two steps are the most intimidating {i think} but truly anyone can do this. if you can get to the third step, that’s where the moneymaking happens.

first step

get to know your family’s insurance plan. as i said, i am not a numbers girl. i do, however, know the importance of understanding our insurance coverage and have made it a painstaking point to read ours carefully each time we switch carriers {and this has happened more than we’d like}. it usually takes me a couple hours to figure out our plan. you can look everything up online, and if you have trouble with this, call the number on the back of your card and they will walk you through. in our insurance benefits table, i pay attention to the coverage for the things we do the most – pediatrician and specialists. i also pay attention to deductibles per person and emergency room charges. while this might seem overwhelming, it is the first step to saving your family hundreds of dollars {thereby helping you “make” money for your family}.

second step

look into the financial aid qualifications for your preferred hospitals. if someone told me this five years ago, i would have ignored it because these sorts of things intimidate me and in a million years i wouldn’t have guessed we’d qualify for financial aid. along with our NICU bills, the hospital sent a financial aid application. i threw it out three times before i figured it couldn’t hurt to fill it out. all i had to lose was time. through this process, i learned that you can make a surprisingly high combined salary and still qualify for financial aid through your hospital, especially if your bills are above a certain number. at that time, we qualified for a small percentage off each bill, but even a small amount was worth the time it took to fill out the application. most times, private doctor’s offices will match the financial aid provided by a hospital, so these savings can extend to other specialists as well. totally worth looking into. all it takes is a phone call.

third step

and here’s where the “moneymaking” happens. this all started because i actually did not fully understand our NICU bills, so i called. i asked the person on the other end to explain every single line item, every single time we got a bill {and there were a lot}. if he/she couldn’t explain something or it didn’t make sense, i asked for clarification or a supervisor. i wrote down the dates that i called, who i spoke with, and what they said, usually right on the bill. i referenced these names and dates when speaking to other departments so they knew i was taking this seriously. what i learned, was that asking simple questions, even if just for an explanation, usually resulted in some sort of discrepancy. Almost 100% of the time, mistakes were found, and the bills were reduced, just because i asked.

this is exactly what happened last monday. i actually understood the bill pretty well and did not think my phone call would result in a deduction. i went to my husband’s office and told him to transfer money into our checking account so i could pay the bill, but that i would call just in case. the first call i made did not get me far. i called the hospital billing department and the man i spoke with believed my issue to be with our insurance company. basically, he said everything on his end looked correct. i asked him to explain a few things. not all his answers made sense, but i agreed to call insurance. i knew i would call the hospital again, after insurance, and speak to someone else. i {and you} have a right to understand my bills and to have someone be able to properly explain them. i called my insurance company, and they let me know that they had reduced the bill by $3,000 and sent notification to the hospital. somehow, despite this, i was still being charged the unnegotiated rate.

i’ve looked at countless hospital bills, and even i didn’t see that coming. insert happy dance. i called the hospital back and got a supervisor, who proved to be extremely helpful and apologetic. my bill went down $3,000. i am not exaggerating. i got the new one in the mail today. i could easily have paid the original bill and i don’t think anyone would ever have let me know i’d overpaid. there was an error with the system, and the bill was sent before the information from the insurance company had uploaded. these are things i {and you} cannot see and they happen all the time. i have thousands of dollars in savings to prove it.

after my phone calls, i casually walked into my husband’s office and casually mentioned, “not sure how your day is going but the kids are down for a nap and i just made $3000. no big deal.”

you can do this for your family too. make a plan. spend this week looking into your insurance policies. spend next week calling your hospital to ask about their financial aid requirements. {don’t be discouraged if you don’t qualify. we don’t qualify anymore either and we are still saving money.} and next time you get a medical bill, get on that phone and ask any and all questions you can come up with. It’s worth $3,000 don’t you think?

important to note :: i have called medical billing departments countless times at this point. sometimes the bill is actually right and i pay in full. my sister tried this the other day and there weren’t any discrepancies. there is nothing wrong with paying a bill you actually owe. i want to make it clear that i am not working the system. i appreciate and respect the medical profession. our doctors and specialists take care of my children in ways i cannot. but hospitals are big and technology is not perfect. it is usually a simple mishap with technology or a communication error that results in dollars saved. i believe doctors are due what they earn, i just don’t like to pay for system mistakes. right? ok enough numbers talk. who’s up for a diy project?! happy saving!

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