Just when I thought I could sit down to smell the roses after paying off the student loan debts, appendicitis struck. Though my stress levels would be higher if I had the car loan, student loan, *and* medical bills.
There will be more bills next month when I get the appendectomy. A rundown of the bills so far are below. I was going to put it into a spreadsheet but didn’t have the inspiration at 1AM on New Year’s Eve. Not all of these are from the ER directly. Some are followups after the fact and other include lab work.
So for the first phase I’ll be paying about $4,500 according to estimates. Aflac may reimburse me $1,000 based on 2 days spent in the ER. Getting an itemized bill from the hospital that I’ll submit next week. Worth the $125 that I paid for it. Trying to be as aggressive as possible in getting this debt gone. Unlike the car that is 1.9% fixed, the credit card will jump to ~13% Truthfully though my credit card is at 0% until January 2018. Go Chase Slate card.
I paid over $13k in student loans during 2016. The total for medical debt should be around half that. Thank god I have insurance though. Even with deductibles to hit, I’m still getting a pretty huge discount. Not how I wanted to start the new year, but it’s a short-term reality.
Thanks for reading my blog. Have a Happy and Safe 2017.
Debt Free Alpha 
Most hospitals will allow you to set up a payment plan interest free and make it as affordable as you need. I know you still want to pay it off but don’t put your medical bills on a credit card!! Just call the hospital billing department. Ask them to consolidate all your medical debt there and then tell them home much you want to pay per month. Then if you can pay it off great, but if not you are not racking up interest from putting it on your card.
Kind of too late now. At least pre-appendectomy. Got my appendix out on 1/12, still waiting for the bill on that. I still have 12 months to pay it off interest free and have been paying $1000 every two weeks. Assuming nothing goes wrong that puts me around 4 months till my current balance is zero.