The Addison Cafe

Priorities. One of the main points of the holiday season is to remind us of our priorities. It is a time to remember how grateful we should be for our friends, family, food, and provision. Whether rich or poor, we all have something to be grateful for.

In response to this renewed awareness of blessing in our lives, many of us become excited at the opportunity to give gifts to others. Unfortunately, sometimes we get too excited. Every year it seems that fights and arguments break out between people fighting over that last hot ticket item on the shelf, or over who got there first. I just read this morning that a man was trampled to death at a Wal-Mart in New York by the crazed throng of Black Friday shoppers who broke through the doors in their rush to ensure they got what they wanted. The 34yr old man was an employee opening the doors.

This tragedy was of course an accident, but the devastation none-the-less reminds us that sometimes we need to step back and put people before our possessions. Something that is sometimes easier said than done. As the holiday season is now officially kicked off, I wish everyone a safe and joy filled time with those you love, and offer all of us a reminder to keep people our top priority.

I can still remember how much emphasis my parents put on getting a job with good healthcare benefits when I graduated college. When I found out how much I would have to pay each month, I honestly thought about forfeiting coverage so I could have some extra fast food money. Of course that was before getting married and realizing that some things are more important than 99 cent chicken burgers, including my family’s health (and maybe housing…but besides that the chicken burger is still king in my book).

Although now I realize how important it is to have healthcare, it is still frustrating to be stuck in a broken system where costs seem to sky rocket every year. Here are some tips for cutting those crazy healthcare expenses:

1. Don’t get sick or have children.
2. Sign up for a flexible spending account. It can essentially save you over 25% on annual healthcare expenses because you are using pre-tax dollars.
3. Live a healthy lifestyle (Ha! Easier said than done, but I threw it in there for fun).
4. Go to school and become a doctor so you can treat yourself.
5. If you don’t visit the doctor that often, choosing a plan with higher co-pays can sometimes lower your monthly cost.

It’s not too easy to beat the system, but doing your homework and exerting a little bit of effort can shave some of those intimidating expenses.

Red, white, and blue. Those were the colors of my dog Shinobi’s Halloween costume this year (no, I am not going to talk about politics, there is enough of that on other blogs). He was a pirate and did a good job of stealing any loot (candy) that we accidentally dropped on the ground.

The pirate outfit, it turns out, foreshadowed a surgery appointment which he is at right now as I write this. In the last several months, his kneecap would occasionally slide out of place while he was playing or walking around, forcing him to carry that leg off the ground and hobble around like a little tripod until we could pop it back into place (tons of fun btw). I am sure he would look pretty cool with a hook or pegleg, and even though it was highly unlikely that something as drastic as losing a leg would happen, we were naturally a little fearful about what was wrong (plus we don’t have the money to get him a parrot).

Turns out it is a pretty common problem for dogs, called “Luxating Patella”. The recommended surgery costs around 2k.  I would recommend asking vet schools to perform surgery for your pets, thinking it would be cheaper since students are performing it, but after calling a handful of schools it turns out it is the same price or more in some cases. Stick with a good vet. Earlier this year I wrote about pet insurance and the conclusion of the post and the comments that followed was that it can be a great thing to get for new puppies and for older dogs. This post is an amendment to the earlier one…apparently dogs don’t always wait to get old before something happens. In Shinobi’s case, he is only a year and a half. Another thing I found out about pet insurance is that it doesn’t cover genetic conditions, which his problem is. My conclusion? There is no expense-proof way of purchasing a pet, so make sure and follow the tips in some of these other posts and build up an emergency account for precisely this type of thing. Ouch.