Reality Sets In

Someone wrote me a while back asking if the escalating fuel prices affected our travels at all. Certainly we've had to scale back our random wanderings on back roads and consolidate shopping trips to conserve fuel. We've started taking the interstates instead of using state and county routes to get from campground to campground because it takes less fuel to drive at a constant speed than it does starting and stopping at all the traffic lights and stop signs that dot the roadways of the more rural routes.

But the biggest hit to Denny's pension has been the rising cost of our medical coverage. In 2004 our rates rose 966%. We just received our coverage plan for the year 2007 and the notification that not only are the premiums rising but the deductibles are doubling so we'll be paying more out of pocket for standard doctors' visits and any emergency care. The total percentage of the increased costs from 2004 to 2007 is now 1044.5%. Now that is what is going to affect our lifestyle more than rising fuel costs.

So now as fulltimers we're going to have to consider self-insuring ourselves; taking the amount of money that we would be paying for our medical coverage and investing it for any future medical problems. Why are we considering this? Well, Denny is now covered by Medicare and I being much younger am basically healthy (clumsy, but healthy) so we don't foresee any extreme medical conditions popping up in the near future which would cause us to have to pay any medical bills. Our basic wellness checks at our annual doctors' visits will no longer be covered due to the increase in our deductibles so that will all be out-of-pocket anyway. Basically, it's a gamble--stay healthy and bank/invest the money ourselves or continue paying premiums for health care that we may or may not use in the foreseeable future. For the next few weeks until we have to make that choice by the arbitrary deadline set by the pension board we are going to be looking long and hard at all our options.

And to think that when we first started fulltiming our most difficult decision was where to head next...sigh.