“What?! Your baby’s not even born yet, and you’re talking about your first baby mistake?”
Yes, while our baby is still snuggled up nice and cozily inside of momma’s belly, we have indeed made what I consider a major snafu. In fact, it’s a mistake that will cost us quite a sum of money.
Deductible Dilemma
Late in 2014, we were “casually trying” for a baby, not necessarily thinking that it was likely to happen right away. (We were actually planning to ideally get pregnant a few months later.) So during that time, we didn’t think to adjust our Medi-Share* AHP (annual household portion, which is basically the deductible) down from the lofty $5000 that it was set at. The plan was to adjust our AHP/deductible downward when we started getting serious about having a baby so we wouldn’t be on the hook to pay so much out-of-pocket for all of the prenatal care and delivery expenses during the course of pregnancy. Of course, no insurance company is going to be so magnanimous as to let us adjust our deductible down while pregnant, and so since we got pregnant sooner than expected, we are stuck with a $5000 AHP/deductible for this pregnancy.
She’s not born yet, and Baby Crumb is already keeping us on our toes!
Not All Bad News
While it’s a bummer to have squandered the possibility of saving thousands of dollars, it’s not all bad news. If indeed we ended up getting pregnant at the time that we were originally hoping, it was possible that the pregnancy would have extended across two different years of our medical coverage plan, meaning we would have had to cover the deductibles for both years. The timing of the pregnancy now allows us to fit the all of the medical expenses into just one year, making full use of our AHP/deductible.
$5000 is a lot of money. And when it accounts for about one third of our annual living expenses, the scale becomes even more sizable. However, this just underscores the importance of having an adequately topped-up emergency fund. So even though we could have saved thousands by reducing our deductible, the $5000 AHP/deductible still won’t sink our ship because we would be able to cover it from our emergency fund. (We certainly won’t be happy campers doing it, though!) Fortunately, we’ve got a few months before all the bills are due so we can save up for it in the meantime. (I’m glad babies give us 9 months to get our act together before they decide to show up!)
Of course, the opposite also might have been true where we lowered our deductible and raised our monthly premiums, but then not have been able to get pregnant. So with all things considered, we are very content with the way things have turned out.
First of Many
While our frugal sensibilities were terribly disturbed by the fact that we could have saved several thousands dollars with better planning and decisions, nevertheless we realize that this is no big deal in the span of a lifetime. To put it in other words, we’re sure that we’re going to make many bigger mistakes than this!
*If you’re confused what Medi-Share is, it’s a Christian medical expense sharing program that we are members of. We wrote a post about it, and you can catch up on it here.
