Health Care

I recently had a horrible experience with a local doctor that I just had to share.

It all started when my friend Shirley received a preliminary diagnosis of cancer. The good news for Shirley is that it turned out to be an infection and not cancer. Her scare was the motivation for me to contact a dermatologist to have a red mark on my forehead checked out. I knew I needed to see a dermatologist and the only experience I had was when one of my sons saw one years ago for acne. I thought, why not use the same doctor. That was my first mistake, but not my last one with this guy!

I chose to make an appointment with a doctor with a Rheumatology & Dermatology practice in Cordova because my son had seen him and it was convenient to my home. I showed up for the appointment and paid the required fee to see the doctor. Once in the examining room the doctor vacillated between taking a biopsy and freezing the spot on my forehead and another on my back. He finally chose to freeze them - all the while he was facing the computer entering various notes and codes. He left the room and a woman entered and asked for $14 so they could freeze the two spots. I asked, "can't this wait until I check out?" She said no, collected my payment and left. The technician said, "she gets chewed out all the time for having to do this." I guess they thought I would stiff them for the $14!

Several weeks later I return to have my "spots" checked and they collect my copay at the door. The doctor comes in and looks at the spots then focuses on his computer all the time speaking with his back to me again. Honestly, I wish I had said to him, "Excuse me doctor, I'm over here, your patient, can't you take a few minutes and ignore your computer?" The long and short of it is I got in and out in a few minutes and decided that I would never seek treatment from this doctor again! That was before I heard from the insurance company.

I received my explanation of benefits (EOB) from my visits. I WAS SHOCKED TO SEE THAT the doctor HAD CHARGED ANOTHER $200 FOR THE FOLLOW UP VISIT! In my opinion this should have been a courtesy follow up... Obviously I was wrong.

Today I called the office and after requesting to speak with the office manager. I was given the third degree about why I needed to speak to her then placed on hold. I guess the normal procedure is to put the patient on hold for an extended period of time to review the charges and hope that I would hang up, eventually I got to speak to the manager. She said, "$200 was the normal charge" (my insurance only paid like $84 for customary and reasonable charges) and that, "dermatological visits were expensive." NO KIDDING!

To top it all off she said I still owe $7 and change for the visits after my payments and the insurance reimbursements. I asked her politely if she would waive those charges as a courtesy and she said something sweet like, "they don't do that."

Not so sweetly but still poiltely I said, "I will pay your bill but, I will never darken the door of the practice again, that the doctor has a terrible bedside manner and I would tell all my friends about my experience! Hence the blog post today!

By the way I asked my son about his experience years ago - he agreed that the guy has no bedside manner.

If you want to avoid my experience I'll be happy to share the name of the doctor with you.

Tofu Adventure Part II

We are now two months into this modified diet and I wanted to comment about the changes we have made.

First some successes:

Both of the following have been staples of our daily diet.

Red Meat - I thought this would be the most difficult to give up, but to my surprise it has been quite easy! I don't generally crave red meat anymore and find chicken, turkey, fish and even tofu acceptable alternatives.

Potatoes - no longer consuming them having replaced them with rice and couscous. I love potato chips but have substituted them with multi grain chips that satisfy my craving for salt.

When we do eat out it has been fairly easy to opt for the fish, chicken or salad and skip the meat all together!

Now for the failures:

Dairy - We have discovered that we can't live without cheese, particularly cheddar. So we eat it in moderation rather than cutting it out all together. We still drink milk although Soy milk is fine it is a cost issue.

Alcohol - I still love drinking a beer after a good workout such as mowing the lawn, but we have tried to be more intentional about drinking a glass of wine that is better for us.

Breads & Sugars - Bread is something that we make and love, particularly Cheddar Cheese Bread! We will keep enjoying this on a regular basis. I have discovered that I have more of a sweet tooth now, enjoying cookies and ice cream recently. I do try to use honey as a substitute but I still consume far too much processed sugar.

Side Notes:

Ground turkey is a wonderful substitute for beef. We have made stroganoff, burgers, and spaghetti with great results!

Couscous are great especially when you need a side dish is a hurry, be sure to add some spices to the dish especially cumin!

I have discovered a dill sauce for fish that is divine - of course it has dairy in the ingredients - but it is awesome!

We have discovered that asparagus and corn cooked on the grill are delicious!

That's all for now.

Wilderness Wanderings

30 Days out!

Every year my dear friends Bob "The Bobber" Schubert, Clark "Bwana" Lentz, and Mike "Doc Mike" McMahon plan a 10 day wilderness adventure to the western United States. In years past we have visited California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah. This year we'll visit the Escalante Wilderness in Utah. Our trips regularly test our outdoor skills and always bring us closer together! We are approaching 20 years of trips and here are some of the highlights!

Our trips began in the summer of 1991 when we made our first backpacking trip to Glacier National Park in Montana. Since then we have been known as the "Glacier Guyes" and our adventures and misadventures live on like the story a fisherman tells of a great fish!

We have climbed peaks including Mt Whitney (14,500') in California which is the highest peak in the lower 48 states and was probably our least favorite summit. We have hiked through acres of wildflowers, skinny dipped in frigid lakes and "canoed" on melting icebergs.

We have met some interesting people along our journey; Little Brother in Glacier, a strange man carrying several steamer trunks, and a man who lost all his food to a bear. There was the beautiful young woman whom Clark and I encountered on the Continental Divide and 18 years later Clark is still kicking himself for not pursuing the woman of his dreams.

We too have seen all sorts of wildlife; Grizzly & Black Bears, Elk, Big Horn Sheep, Mountain Goats, Marmots, Pica, Mule Deer, Squirrels, Loons, Eagles and Bwana Clark has reeled in many a trout for us to fry up and enjoy.

Food is often a focal point of our trips and we have enjoyed dishes created along the trail with appropriate names like, "Golden Trout Fish Nuggets; Blue Diamond Lake Trout Almondine; Louisiana Red Beans and Rice which has been banned from future trips! Thimbleberries, raspberries, blueberries, Schubert's Mint, are included in the wild edibles in addition to the fish.

Bears like "people food" a lot; on our Mt Whitney trip we were three days from the end of the trip when we literally fought off a 250 pound bear who had invaded our camp looking for an easy meal. The bear left after 20 minutes of being pelted with rocks!

The Glacier Guyes have been joined by some friends on various trips. Ronnie who tells the best stories I've ever heard; Rodney who will never be forgotten for his dive (a forward 1&1/2 somersault from the pike position) at Hilton Lake; & the rite of passage to manhood for Jim and Sam, my sons who share my love for all things wild.

I'm so very blessed to call all these me my friends and look forward to our adventure next month!

Greg "Greggy" Ward

Money Strategist

Saving money knows no season.

Spring is in the air and things are growing like crazy in our gardens! Beautiful flowers, shrubs and trees are all enjoying life anew with the advent of warmer temperatures. Last week I prepared the mower for another year or mowing. I checked the oil, replaced the air filter and noticed that the grass catcher still had a plastic bag stuffed in it to seal a hole that let grass escape. I checked on buying a new grass catcher but that was going to be more than $75 with tax and shipping. My thinking is that the grass catcher works but it looks horrible.

Just a couple of days later I'm driving along a busy highway and I spied a grass catcher that looked to be in great shape lying on the shoulder of the road. I wonder could it possibly fit my mower? I turned around and picked up the grass catcher, and quickly tossed it into the back of my truck since I was stopped along a busy highway. I returned home and low and behold it was a Craftsman 21" grass catcher, the exact model as the one on my mower! Score a $75 bonus for this lucky guy!

There are lots of opportunities to get bargains out there. It is unlikely that I'll find another freebie on the side of the road but I'll keep my eyes open! In the past year I have started visiting estate sales and I have scored a breadmaker that is incredible (I use it at least weekly) for $25! I have picked up a 24 bottle wine refrigerator for $75, and a food processor for $10.

Using the internet I used my coke rewards points to score a $50 Walgreens Gift Card. I helped my son purchase an airline ticket on E-Bay for $350 saving him $250 dollars!

My $9,000 pick up truck was purchased for $4,700 in cash and a 42" plasma TV with the wall mount was bought for $420 in cash at a tax asset auctions. Both have served me well for three years now.

Most of this requires a little bit of imagination, looking past some dust, and spending time on the internet, or the newspaper. Being smart with your money doesn't mean that you have to live like a pauper, in fact, I submit to you that I live well beyond a pauper precisely because I have learned to become a money strategist.

I'd love to hear some of your stories so I can learn from you!

Loaning Money To Friends

If you want to wreck a friendship either borrow money from or loan money to a friend. I learned this the hard way on two separate occasions. A friend asks to borrow money from you because a bank won't loan them the money. Banks are in business to loan money, at interest, so they can pay dividends to their stockholders, build nice buildings and pay their employees hefty salaries. If a bank won't loan someone money it's because they don't believe the person is a good credit risk or stated another way, "they don't think they will get their money back!" DUH!

So when a friend comes to you for money you have two options:

1) Give them the money without expecting them to repay you, because they probably won't pay you back.

2) Tell them no and the reason is that you don't want to ruin your friendship by loaning them money.

Now repeat after me, "I am not a bank, and I don't loan money to friends."

Now if you think I'm joking about this read this next part. I was "Steve's" best man when he got married. A few months later he called and asked to borrow $700 for three weeks until a real estate deal closed. I loaned him the money and three weeks later the real estate deal didn't close. I would call him up and I continually got a sad story about why he couldn't pay.

I did a little digging and over a dinner conversation with another friend I learned that "Steve" had borrowed money from her and a number of other people. Well this only served to make me more determined to get the money repaid to me and others!

I began calling him on a regular schedule and nothing was happening. I discovered his wife didn't know about his creative borrowing habits and so I brought her into the "loop" and that was the catalyst to get things moving! I finally got repaid but it took two years and ruined our friendship. I have not heard from him once since then and that was three years ago.

I haven't had any other friends request to borrow money but I now have my reply, "Sorry, I don't loan money to friends."

PS - NEVER co-sign a loan for anyone, under any circumstances, ever!

Shade Tree Mechanic

The radiator on my truck has been slowly deteriorating and I made the decision to replace the radiator. First, I took it to my local repair shop and they pressure tested the radiator to confirm that it indeed needed to be replaced. They quoted me $507 to do the repair. I thanked them for the quote and decided I needed to do a bit of research before I let them do the work. I called a local radiator supply and discovered that I could purchase the radiator for less than $200, the repair shop wanted $350. I then got a second quote for installation only from a second shop which was $150. I then went online and watched a how to video on replacing your radiator. It seemed straightforward so I enlisted the help of my friend Larry Rice and we decided to tackle it ourselves.

We met yesterday morning to do the work. We removed the radiator, took it to the radiator supply where we purchased the new radiator and verified that it matched the one from my truck. We stopped by Autozone and purchased some antifreeze and transmission fluid and returned to my garage where we installed the new radiator.

The only mishap was a pair of needle nose pliers that slipped into a crevice in my engine compartment that we failed to fish out and they became a permanent resident of my engine compartment.

I drove the truck to work and noticed a small amount of fluid on the pavement under my truck later in the day. Thus, I have a little follow up work to figure out which hose or fitting is not quite tight enough. Judging by the color of the fluid I think it is a loose fitting for the transmission line. But, overall a successful shade tree repair and a net savings of just under $200 after paying my friend for his time and effort to help me.

I have nothing against using a repair shop and I'm willing to pay a bit more for the expertise and convenience that a repair shop offers but I was turned off by the attempt to gouge me an additional $150 for the radiator. The job took us three hours to complete and that included one hour going to get the radiator and half an hour trying to recover the pliers.

Watching the how to video on the Internet was invaluable and made the job much easier because I knew what to expect and what to look for during the actual repair. I learned that the radiator also cools the transmission fluid, in my truck, which came as a surprise to me.

Tofu Adventure

I've been reading this book about eating foods that are appropriate or healthy for my blood type. First of all I was pretty bummed to lean that the majority of the foods I have been eating are not healthy for my blood type. This goes beyond the obvious "unhealthy" foods such as greasy cheeseburgers and the like. I found that the best diet for my blood type is a "Vegetarian" diet. I was neither impressed nor happy to learn this. I love, really LOVE, red meat and the number one thing about blood type A people is that red meat is not to be consumed at all! Talk about bummed; no more rib eyes, pot roasts, bacon, sausage, BBQ, or Nathan's Hot Dogs, and no more hamburgers or anything that has hamburger.

So I'm trying to see how all of this is going to work. My wife and I share the same blood type, so this makes it a bit easier right out of the gate. After a couple of days we attended a basketball game - try to find something on their menu that is healthy for a type A... We ended up with chicken tenders, fries and a beer. Well at least chicken is allowed (not fried)... So we ate the food and man did I feel miserable afterward - I think it was a combination of our bodies adjusting to the new diet and rejecting the breading, grease, potatoes and beer. My weight was up two pounds overnight from this adventure!

Saturday, I headed off to the grocery store in search of Tofu and soy milk (dairy is not on the menu so no milk, cheese, butter, or ice cream. I guessed that tofu would be in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, it wasn't. I was looking at some recommended flour and right down the shelf voila' there is the tofu in a nice little carton. I got the tofu, some squash, baby portobello mushrooms and took all this stuff home. Lunch became those ingredients and a carrot, garlic, and an onion sauteed in olive oil and seasoned with soy sauce and sea salt. It was actually tasty and we enjoyed our lunch. I have to admit that I was very skeptical of the whole tofu thing but combined with the other ingredients and the seasoning worked fine for us.

Sunday, I baked a chicken in the oven (beer can chicken recipe) - the beer was a cheat and the spice rub was probably not the best choice either... But the chicken turned out well and we enjoyed it and will have leftovers tonight with some fresh steamed veggies.

The major adjustments thus far have been significantly reducing red meat and dairy products; reprogramming my mind to think about a healthier diet and focusing on the foods that are recommended like peanuts!

This morning I awoke without my normal body aches - fluke or new benefit from the diet?

Opportunity Cost

Last night I heard a story about a young man who decided that he wanted to buy a certain Mercedes model. He actually set the money aside for the car (Novel idea, actually paying cash instead of financing). He promised himself that the first year he made 100k he would buy the car.

Well he soon made the 100k and headed down to the Mercedes dealer in his old diesel VW Rabbit. The salesman looked down his nose at the still young man who drove there in a "beater" car and asked him how he expected to pay for the Mercedes with a price tag of 40k? The young man replied, "I'm going to write a check". The salesman changed his tune and off they went for a test drive. The young man was pleased with the car, it truly was everything he wanted right down to the leather seats!

Ultimately, the young man decided not to part with his hard earned 40k. Instead, he put it in a mutual fund and left it there. One day 12 years later the was driving his Rolls Royce and pulled up alongside the very model of the Mercedes that he had so dearly coveted. He rolled down his window and said to the man driving it, "I don't wish to be rude but can you tell me about your car?" The man told him that he had just purchased the car and it was in mint condition. He went on to say that he was able to buy it at book value for $4,000! The young man smiled and said thank you and they parted ways.

The young man learned a valuable lesson about "Opportunity Cost" that day. You see, 12 years ago he could have bought the Mercedes for $40k and today it would be worth 4k. Instead, he left the money in a mutual fund and 12 years later it was worth over $300,000!

12 years ago he could only use that money for one purpose and he chose to reward himself by saving for his future rather than spending it in the present!

What a great lesson to learn. I am fortunate to have all of my needs met everyday. May I be wise with my extra income and not waste it by failing to understand the opportunity cost.

Credit Cards

We received a letter from our credit card company about a "change in relationship". There is a lot to "unpack" here so I appreciate your indulgence. First, credit cards can be a slippery slope to debt. I have suggested to my sons that they avoid using them, telling them, "you don't need a credit card" if you have a debit card. This is admittedly a bit hypocritical since I have carried a credit card for lo these many years. A slippery slope comes into play when you charge something without having the means to pay for it when the bill arrives...

There are some good reasons for carrying a credit card:

1) There is a good amount of buyer protection.
2) You don't have to carry a lot of cash.
3) There can be some good "rewards".
4) Often a credit card will cover rental car insurance requirements.

There are also some down sides to carrying a credit card:

1) Studies show that you spend a lot more money using a credit card versus cash.
2) The rewards can be hard to redeem.
3) Fees are steep and interest rates are ridiculously high if you carry a balance.
4) Financing a $5 hamburger can cost you more than a gourmet meal!

The specific reason we carry our current card is that "points" earned can be used to pay down our mortgage. We have used the points to pay $650 off our mortgage balance in the past year. Here is where the "change in relationship" comes into play. The agreement between our mortgage holder and the credit card company will be ending next month. So now we are being courted with a new "cash back" card.

We will likely continue to carry a credit card because it is convenient, we pay off our balance each month, and we actively redeem the rewards rather than let them languish or expire.

The other thing is we have made a paradigm shift in our spending and our credit card use is greatly diminished and will stay that way because we are saving by not charging. We now budget and use cash for most of our expenses and the result is more intentional spending. For example, if we budget $250 for groceries then we stick to our list more closely and don't overspend because there is a fixed amount of cash in the envelope set aside for groceries.

We have been at this cash thing for just over a month and we're adjusting to it but we are spending a lot less because we are using cash and there is a direct emotional and painful correlation when you use those dead presidents (cash) versus the old credit card!

I like the change we have made and I love taking more control of my spending.

PS It really helps that my wife is on board with this whole process.

Learning to "Live on a Budget"

Everyone makes some New Year's resolutions, we are no different and our resolutions included the typical lose weight and get in shape along with getting our financial house cleaned up.

We moved the elliptical machine into the den where we have been working out three days a week for twenty minutes. This is in addition to our Yoga class that meets twice a week.

Denise, my wife challenged me to feed our family of three for the month of January on $200. Actually, she challenged me to spend only $150 but we agreed on $200 and ended up close to that goal with total expenditures of $240! How we did this was two fold; first we only used cash so I was much more aware of what I was spending and I stuck to my grocery list. Second, we made several meals from foods in the freezer & pantry. We never went hungry and enjoyed being creative with the things we had available to us.

Beyond our food budget we decided to live on a budget and now we tell our money where to go before the month begins! February will be our first full month on a written budget and we'll see how it goes.

We have curtailed using our credit card and are paying cash for so much more which is a paradigm shift for us. Using cash has an immediate psychological impact versus using a credit card where the only emotion comes with the arrival of the statement and the sum of all those charges!

In summary, we now have a plan and we're trying to live into the plan. I'll let you know how it is going along the way.

My First Post

Well it's time for me to join the world of blogging. I'm blessed with a wonderful family, great health, a good job and a great life! I hope to share some of the wisdom that comes with more than a half century of life; most of the wisdom from good decisions and some of the wisdom from decisions that were not.

If you choose to read my posts you will discover that I am a man of faith; conservative with money; and willing to learn from those around me. I adore my wife and love my sons who are all real men!

I have a few scars that demonstrate I have experienced real life and I always give people the benefit of the doubt. I trace my paternal roots to Wild Wonderful West Virginia and my maternal roots to the Empire State, New York for those who are geographically challenged. Born in Virginia, I am a southern gentleman who married a girl from the Mississippi delta after I was transplanted to Memphis ten years ago. I have chosen to bloom where I'm planted although my heart will always yearn for the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I have a pastor's heart and hope to share some wisdom along the way about life, money, and other things that are on my heart.

So there it is, my first post.

Thanks for reading!