Christmas, Cell Phones, and Insurance

This was our first Christmas as RVers. Even though we were away from our children and grandkids, and missed them a lot, we had a great Christmas. We went over to Gene & Cyndi's house, and along with 2 other couples, enjoyed a great meal and Christmas Day.

Gene made prime rib. Yummy it was!

All 8 of us are or were full time RVers, and we have lots of tales to share.

A good time was had by all.

The meal was delicious...

And later, the cameras came out.

Cell Phones......

We have made a major change in our cell phone/internet carrier. We have moved away from Verizon Wireless and now use Straight Talk.

Walmart is the one that sells Straight Talk. I converted my existing Samsung Galaxy S3 and am now using the At&T network.

I bought Donna a new Samsung Galaxy S3 and she is using the Verizon network.

We should be good now even iff we are in a Verizon or ATT limited coverage area.

Our numbers are the same, and we have unlimited talk, text, and data. We can use 2.5 g of data per month per phone till they choke down our download speeds.

I use an app on our phones to access internet on out netbooks. The app is Pdanet. Works pretty good.

Each of our phones are costing us $45.00 per month. No contracts. With Taxes, our Cell phone/internet bills are now $100.82 per month.


Health insurance...

Since I retired from Frontier Communications, I have been paying for our health insurance (and used it). For 2014, they notified me that is will go up $200.00 a month. I wasn't happy with the bill going from $696.10 to $830.00 a month, so I declined the new coverage for 2014 and started examining the new Healthcare.gov website.

After trying to use the web site since mid October, I finally got some health plans (South Dakota) chosen and finished the enrollment process.

Because I will soon be eligible for Medicare, I choose a different plan from what Donna will have.

I chose a Bronze plan for me.

The Sanford Simplicity $5000 Health Plan. $5K deductible, $6350 out of pocket max, 40% coinsurance. With our healthcare tax credits...$0.00 per month.

For Donna, a Gold plan...

Avera MyPlan $1500/20% coinsurance. $1.5K deductible, $3000 out of pocket max, 10% coinsurance. With our healthcare tax credits...$235.52 per month.

What we were wanting was free checkups/immunizations, Mail order prescriptions (Express Scripts), and acceptance of pre-existing conditions. With do-able deductibles.

We shall see how this works out. Donna's broken foot med bills totaled $59,283.18, Our share was $3,843.81 (so far). I guess we got our money's worth out of our old insurance.

Donna's cast is off and she is healing nicely.

We will walk a little more cautiously from now on.