More Spending Money, Saving Money

I forgot about another expense I took care of yesterday.  It was for a bunch of lab work I had done with my physical from a few months ago.  Unfortunately, the gal at my doctor’s office that drew my labs sent them to be processed at the hospital rather than to Quest, which would have been cheaper.  I’m not one who frequents my doctor’s office all that often, but I think she was fairly new.  Anyhow, the bill was for $377.  I paid via our Discover and submitted the claim to our FSA.  I made the full payment to our credit card, and it will be back to a zero balance come Monday.  I could have our FSA pay the bill directly, but by paying it via our Discover, I get 1% back.  This morning I see that the claim was already approved, so we should have our money back within a week or so.

Even after this claim to our FSA, we still have $299 to use up by March 15, 2020.  That won’t be a problem.  FSAs are always a bit of a gamble since they are a “use it or lose it” account.  This past year we contributed $660 of our own money, but are not doing this for 2020.  Hub’s company does put in $840, so with that and what we have leftover from this year, we should be ok.

For more savings, I reviewed Hub’s hotel loyalty rewards.  When he was stuck in Chicago for two nights last week, he stayed at a Holiday Inn.  I had kind of been waiting for him to stay in that chain since he was close to having enough points for $100 gift card, which was a better value than cashing out for one for $50.  We now have a $100 Lowes card coming our way.  Lately, Hubs has been staying in Hiltons, and their rewards options don’t seem quite as good.  Earning free nights doesn’t excite us too much since he already stays in hotels for free.  Lol  The best option for his Hilton rewards is applying them to Amazon.  We would like to get a mount for the TV we got for the bedroom, so with the $42 he currently has available, that shouldn’t cost us anything out of pocket.

Yesterday I also called our local township to find out about our winter property taxes.  The bill gets sent directly to our mortgage company but I was curious about the amount.  Our state gives us two bills, one for the summer and one for the winter.  By appealing our taxes, our total bill for 2019 was $459.67 less than what it was in 2018!  And to think that the assessor was going to increase our taxes, the difference would have been even more significant.   I sure am glad I didn’t just accept the denial from the Board of Review.  It was worth it to take it to small claims for a judge to decide.

We finally heard back from our mortgage company regarding canceling our PMI.  We don’t need a full-blown appraisal, just a Broker’s Price Opinion.  The bank estimates that cost to be $105, but I’ll call around so I know for sure.  We can’t do this until after we make January’s payment, but I want to be prepared.  Our PMI is scheduled to be dropped in September of 2020, but I’m all for getting it dropped before then.  That would save us $137.55 each month!  I put PMI right up there with credit card interest.  Such a complete waste of money.  I admit, too, that I’m also eager to run a new amortization schedule.  With what we are currently adding to our payment, we are well on track to get our mortgage paid off before Hubs retires.  Refinancing two years ago to a 15-year mortgage (with a lower interest rate!) was one of the best things we did.