Tuesday, January 30, 2007
One possible reason to become a neat freak....
As I've mentioned before, I'm in the process of emptying all my shoeboxes of receipts and records and putting them into a filing cabinet. Last night, I sorted through my tax deductibles for 2005, tossing any unnecessary papers in the recycling bin. This was no mean feat as I have thousands of dollars' worth of medical receipts each year.
I had dozens of EOBs, or Explanations of Benefits, from our old insurance carrier. I'd gone through these at least twice before: once when I originally received them, and once when tallying up my medical expenses for 2005. But I was still finding pages with no useful info on them, so I read through each one a third time.
Imagine my surprise when I found, of all things, a CHECK at the bottom of one page! It was dated September 29, 2005, and was for an amount large enough to pay for two weeks of groceries plus a tank of gas! It was completely unexpected as I had never before received a check the entire seven years we'd had that insurance company.
My first thought was: how the hell could I have missed this? My second thought was: I hope they'll still cash it! And my third thought was: hey, I ought to do this de-cluttering stuff more often!
Apparently, the check was a refund for several months of overpayment to my shrink. I'd argued with the insurance company that my co-pay was lower than what they were telling me it was, but I got nowhere and eventually gave up. The EOB the check was on was in a thick stack I'd gotten all at once, easy to miss if you're accustomed to getting EOBs every single week like I was there for awhile.
After looking the check over carefully for an expiration date and finding none, I had Dan endorse it and took it to the credit union today. I put it in our savings account, so if it is eventually rejected, we won't accidentally have spent it. If it isn't revoked by this spring, I'll put it toward the cost of a back yard fence.
Well, it seems that, with a few exceptions, 2007 so far turning out to be luckier than 2006. If nothing else, the month of January has been financially more lucrative than expected.
Works for me.
I had dozens of EOBs, or Explanations of Benefits, from our old insurance carrier. I'd gone through these at least twice before: once when I originally received them, and once when tallying up my medical expenses for 2005. But I was still finding pages with no useful info on them, so I read through each one a third time.
Imagine my surprise when I found, of all things, a CHECK at the bottom of one page! It was dated September 29, 2005, and was for an amount large enough to pay for two weeks of groceries plus a tank of gas! It was completely unexpected as I had never before received a check the entire seven years we'd had that insurance company.
My first thought was: how the hell could I have missed this? My second thought was: I hope they'll still cash it! And my third thought was: hey, I ought to do this de-cluttering stuff more often!
Apparently, the check was a refund for several months of overpayment to my shrink. I'd argued with the insurance company that my co-pay was lower than what they were telling me it was, but I got nowhere and eventually gave up. The EOB the check was on was in a thick stack I'd gotten all at once, easy to miss if you're accustomed to getting EOBs every single week like I was there for awhile.
After looking the check over carefully for an expiration date and finding none, I had Dan endorse it and took it to the credit union today. I put it in our savings account, so if it is eventually rejected, we won't accidentally have spent it. If it isn't revoked by this spring, I'll put it toward the cost of a back yard fence.
Well, it seems that, with a few exceptions, 2007 so far turning out to be luckier than 2006. If nothing else, the month of January has been financially more lucrative than expected.
Works for me.
Comments:
Post a Comment
