This is part of a series taking a look at CNN Money’s Fifty Ways To Cut Your Health-Care Costs and this is the second tip in the series. This one is related to the first tip of negotiating your health care bill, they recommend that you request the costs for some of the common medical procedures so that you have more ammunition when you go to bargain with your doctor. Shopping for health care is like shopping for groceries, you should have a general idea of how much a gallon of milk costs so that when you see it on sale for $10, you don’t get suckered in by the “sale.” The difficulty with medical costs is that it usually happens when you’re not well and you, hopefully, don’t buy much health care so you aren’t aware of how much a procedure should cost. Money recommends that you ask your insurance company as they will probably be able to help you the best.

Source: CNN Money

Now that everyone has overpaid for their homes, it’s time to learn how to combat the recurring reminder that you’ve overpaid: real estate tax time! They estimated that real estate tax collections are up like 35% the last four years and there’s little chance that those taxes will be rolled back, so the only two weapons left in your arsenal are to:

• Contest potential errors, and,
• Argue your case.

Unfortunately, I believe the artificial floor of your valuation is the price you paid for your home so you can never get it lower than that (it can’t possibly be worth less than what you paid for it, since you likely had a home appraiser come and value the home for a mortgage lender).

(read full article…)

This is part of a series taking a look at CNN Money’s Fifty Ways To Cut Your Health-Care Costs and this is the first tip in the series: ask your doctor for a good deal. I was surprised, but not entirely surprised, that the rates doctor’s charge weren’t absolute and that they had the discretion to change their rates. I was surprised only because I never thought to bargain with a doctor, even though when you think about it… they’re a business like any other. Where this makes the most sense is when you have a high deductible or have no insurance whatsoever and are paying out of your own pocket. In those situations, you can probably explain to your doctor and they’ll usually be sympathetic.

Here an interesting statistic:

According to a 2005 Harris Interactive poll, about two-thirds of adults who negotiated for lower prices with a hospital or dentist succeeded, as did three out of five adults who bargained with their doctor.

Source: CNN Money

In 2007, I’m going to start a series I call Devil’s Advocate, where I will take the opposite side of common personal finance advice and argue why you shouldn’t be doing that. Why you shouldn’t take your employer’s 401k match, why you shouldn’t have an emergency fund, or why you shouldn’t save for retirement. They won’t be humorous or sarcastic, they’ll be legitimate posts where I argue the other side, the side that never gets much exposure in the personal finance blogosphere (or mainstream media).

Why play the Devil’s Advocate?
When everyone recommends one thing (and we all recommend things like ‘get that 401(k) company match’), it’s too easy to just do it without considering the other side. With a lot of personal finance issues, the other side really doesn’t have much weight (at least not enough to make the decision at least marginally difficult) and so you often don’t hear about it. These series of posts seeks to fill that void, to play the Devil’s Advocate on a lot of the personal finance issues you’re familiar with.

So, I hope you enjoy the new series and if anyone does feel passionately about the devil’s side, the opposite side of conventional wisdom, shoot me an email and we can set up a guest post.

Last year, around this time, I didn’t do much goal setting and so I never really had much of a benchmark to judge my performance against. That being said, had I set goals for 2006 I probably would’ve shattered them because many of the things in my life, both financial and otherwise (though here we’ll only focus on the monetary ones, this is a personal finance blog after all), have exceeded my expectations on a daily basis.

So, what are some of my/our goals for this year?

• Maximize both my and my fiancée’s contribution to our 401(k) plans.
• Maximize both my and my fiancée’s contribution to our Roth IRAs.
• Save at least 20% of our incomes and put it in a Vanguard Target Retirement fund.
• Generate more passive income than what I earned actively in the first year of my full time job.
• Donate more to charity in 2007 than we did in 2006 (~$2,000).

Now, if you have regular goals, you need to have stretch goals that you really really want to get but may be a little out of reach (or out of scope)… so here are a couple of my/our stretch goals.

• Generate more passive income than what I earned actively from my full time job.
• Research all the options and then open a 529 plan.
• Increase total net worth by 25%.
• Buy an investment/rental property.
• Donate $5,000 to charitable organizations in 2007.
• Start a scholarship in both my high school and my fiancée’s high school.

We’ll have to take a six month look at this and see how we’re progressing, but I believe the regular goals are reachable, the stretches may be… well, a stretch. I’d claim victory if we knocked out a couple of those.

I was going to try to collect a whole bunch of year end financial planning posts to do a roundup of some kind until I read a great 2006 Year-End Planning Round-Up over at Guzzo the Contrarian.

Looks like Guzzo the Contrarian is gone.

That’s it for me until Tuesday, happy holidays!

One of the great success stories about personal finance blogging was when NCN got himself out of around $11,000 in debt (two car notes and some credit card debt) within a year (April 05 to Feb 06) and he posted a list of all his own personal debt-related posts during the time period. If you’re in debt and you enjoy reading pfblogs for either ideas or inspiration, this set of posts is definitely a good place to start. Another blog I’d recommend is Tricia’s Blogging Away Debt who has cleared away $12k and only has $25k in debt left.

Nickel wants to know whether your frequent flyer airline miles are expiring… well, are they? You have no idea? Well they might so you better find out!

FMF has a list of ten things you shouldn’t skimp on and his personal thoughts on each.

JLP has a list of some outrageous fees taken from Money magazine.

The game of Monopoly has some very important lessons, MBH says you can learn them if you play by the rules. I think house rules are fun and that MBH is a wet blanket, if you have a moment, go over to his blog and tell him I think so.

Should you contribute to a Roth IRA in one lump sum? If you feel particularly passionate one way or the other, please share your thoughts with Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary.

Lastly, I think that show Identity is stupid but I’ve only watched one episode… if you ever find yourself down to three people and you still have some of your lifelines, read Lazy Man’s tip on how to walk away a millionaire (or at least a half-millionaire… which is like a quarter millionaire after taxes).

Enjoy the holidays!