A medical claim, shopping, and cat expenses

A medical claim, shopping, and cat expenses~now that is quite a mix of things!  I’ll start with the medical bill.

I see that our health insurance finally paid the medical claim for the routine mammogram I had done last October.  While they had settled the lion share of the bill, the hiccup was with the 3D part.  I knew it was a covered benefit, so when I received an amount owed of $40 from my provider, I appealed it with our insurance.  It took several phone calls, but I’m glad I persisted.  It also goes to show the importance of knowing what your insurance covers.  Had I not paid attention, I would have paid the bill and been out $40.  My provider did work with me and put a hold on the bill.   The last thing I wanted was to see this end up in collections.

Hubs went shopping last week and ended up with a coat, two Carhartt shirts, gloves, and a hard hat with eye and ear protection.  He is also going to get a new pair of Red Wing boots, likely next week.  As of right now, on account of “shopping” at a company workplace, he is at zero out-of-pocket!  While he was there, he also went out for a buffet lunch with some other employees — $ 35/person paid for by his company.  As for his boots, he received a voucher.  I think they cover up to $150, so anything over that will be our expense.  He does have some good perks to his job.

I also did some shopping.  I hadn’t been to the city in almost three weeks, so I went yesterday after I got out of work.  Groceries are so much cheaper at Meijer compared to the small local store 20 miles away.  Cranberry juice $1.99 compared to $2.75, Smartfood popcorn (on sale) $1.99 compared to $3.99, 3lb bag of mandarin oranges $1.99 compared to $7.99 (not a typo) are just a few examples.   Price differences like these are why I only use the local store for needed items such as eggs.  I’ll check for sales, but seldom end up buying much of anything until I go to the city.

Now for the cat expense.  I buy Arm and Hammer Clump and Seal.  Until about a month ago, I never paid attention to the directions.  It’s cat litter, how difficult can it be?  Scoop it out every few days and change it once a week or so.  Um, not so fast.  I had the first part right, but come to find out, don’t need to change it near as often as I had been doing.  I’m not even sure how it caught my eye, but the instructions on the box say to scoop out the clumps every few days (I got that part right!) and then to add more litter to maintain a depth of 3-4 inches (I did this too), and replace it all once a month.  I admit I was a little hesitant to give this a try.  Would the cat hate it?  Would our house stink?  I am pleased to say the answer is no on both accounts.  Now I’m not so sure I want to chance going more than three weeks between changing it out (seems gross going longer than that), but even with that, we should still save over $20/month.  For a Dime at a Time…that is a lot of dimes!