Healthcare expenses are a leading cause of debt in America. It’s estimated more than 50 percent of personal bankruptcies are the direct result of healthcare expenses. The rising cost of medical care in America shows no signs of slowing. But there are ways to reduce out-of-pocket healthcare costs.

Here are five tips for spending less on healthcare.

1. Choose a Hospital that has a Contract Management System

Hospitals with healthcare contract management systems are able to provide patients with more affordable treatment options. That’s because administrative costs are a contributor to the high cost of healthcare in America. A contract management system helps get administrative costs under control.

An efficient contract management system helps hospitals:

– Provide better patient care

– Reduce administrative costs

– Mitigate risk

– Comply with legal healthcare requirements

A contract management system benefits hospitals and patients. It makes it easier for hospitals to operate as efficiently as possible. And hospitals with healthcare contract management systems are able to provide patients with more affordable treatment options.

2. Maintain Your Health

The best way to save money on healthcare is to take care of yourself. It’s possible to lower your risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and high cholesterol with diet and exercise.

Maintaining a healthy weight, eating healthy foods, and regularly exercising lowers your risk for several health problems. This helps you avoid the need for medications, medical tests, and treatments that are often expensive.

3. Save Money on Prescription Medications

The average American spends $177 yearly for out-of-pocket prescription drug costs. Some ways to reduce this expense include:

– Use generic medications. A generic drug has the same active ingredients as a name-brand drug. The only difference is that one drug has a brand name on it and the other does not.

For example, the drug acetaminophen is the same as Tylenol. The difference is Tylenol is a brand name. You can purchase generic acetaminophen for less than you’d pay for Tylenol. The same is true for several prescription drugs. You can save money by opting for the generic brand of prescription medication.

– Choose a cheaper name-brand medication that offers the same benefit. There are usually several medications that treat the same illness. And the price of medication is determined by its manufacturer. If one medication is too expensive, ask your doctor if there’s a less expensive option.

4. Use a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) or a Health Care Savings Account (HSA)

HSAs and FSAs allow you to set aside pre-tax money for health care costs. And you don’t pay taxes when you withdraw funds for a qualified medical expense.

A high-deductible health insurance plan is needed to qualify for an HSA. And the government determines what qualifies as high-deductible. The government also determines how much you can contribute to an HSA.

An FSA is available only as part of a job benefits package. Unlike an HSA (which you own), you can’t get an FSA on your own. Any money you’ve saved in an FSA expires at the end of the year. In other words, you must use it within the year or lose it. The only exception is if your employee chose to provide a rollover option.

5. Use Outpatient Facilities

When possible, have surgeries and procedures performed at outpatient clinics. You can often get the same treatment performed at an outpatient clinic for less than you’d pay at a hospital.

Some people think outpatient facilities aren’t as good as hospitals. However, that’s not true. Well-trained professionals in outpatient facilities provide the same level of care provided to patients in hospitals. It’s cheaper because outpatient facilities have lower administrative expenses.

Look for More Ways to Save on Medical Expenses

The tips in this article should make your healthcare costs more manageable. But these tips are only a few out of many. Take time to research and see what other options you discover.

Are you looking to upgrade your home? Are you weighing out the pros and cons of improvements with the value for a future buyer?

Many homeowners struggle with difficult decisions about home improvements. It’s always a juggling act between cost and reward.

If you’re considering ways to upgrade the look and appeal of your home, keep an eye on the big picture. Here are 3 tips to keep in mind.

Keep The Big Picture In Mind

Many homeowners want to have a more appealing front yard and entryway. It’s not really because of resale value. Yet, the idea of creating better curb appeal always leads one to consider the tastes of a future potential buyer.

If you are weighing out alternatives, keep some of the biggest issues in mind.

First, consider your mortgage. Do you have the best loan or are there more attractivemortgage loans available? If you investigate, you may find that your overall costs can be substantially reduced. This can easily influence your decision to buy or stay.

Second, consider your personal plans and preferences. If you are planning to stay in your home for the next five years, what is important to you?

Do you have young children? You may want to have a swing set, a hammock, and a safe place for your children to play.

Do you need to work from home? You will want to have an uncluttered home office to work from. With the current trends towards remote and hybrid work, you’ll want to organize your home for maximum productivity.

Think first about the needs of yourself and your family. The potential buyer is not here yet.

Third, consider ongoing maintenance costs. There’s always an initial cost for a home improvement. The ongoing maintenance can creep up on you and really add up if you’re not prepared.

Transform Your Yard

There’s no question that the climate is in flux. In recent years, more homeowners are looking at ways to cut water consumption. This naturally has created an interest inxeriscape yards.

Fortunately, xeriscape does not have to be just a pile of gravel. There are many options for landscaping with Mediterranean plants to create a verdant garden.

If you’re an avid gardener, look around your neighborhood. Talk to your friends and neighbors who have drought resistant landscaping. You’ll find that with personal interviews, you can quickly come up with a list of plants that are ideally suited to your area. To take this further, contact your local nursery and draw up a map for your yard.

For some homeowners, transforming a front or back yard is an ideal DIY project.

However, for other homeowners, serious yard transformation is best left to professionals. If this sounds like you, it’s wise to not get involved in a DIY project. Instead, talk with an expert landscaper.

A professional will be able to advise you about the ideal plants for your property. A professional can help you select plants for specific issues in your yard – such as hills or slopes.

In addition, he or she can assist with setting up low-flow irrigation, plant selection, and ongoing maintenance. It is entirely possible to have a beautiful garden – with a much lower water bill.

Invest For The Future

As you make investments, balance your desires with those of a future buyer. Look for decisions that will appeal to a potential buyer of your home. This may include a drought-tolerant yard, a repaved driveway, or a freshly painted front door.

Many realtors are happy to share what buyers value in terms of home improvements. They are keen to talk with homeowners, even if you are not ready to sell your property.

Talking with a realtor can be an enlightening experience. You’ll find out what buyers value – and it can inform your decisions about home improvements.

For example, in many markets, buyers are looking at the very first thing they see. This is often the front door. Painting a front door can improve how quickly a home sells. Fortunately, this is quick and affordable.

If you are curious about the improvements that buyers value most, talk with a local realtor. You may find that some improvements will have more long-term value than others.

Sum Up

Your home is a place to enjoy to the fullest – now and in the future. With this plan, you can invest wisely with the best mortgage, create a beautiful drought-tolerant yard, and invest for the future.

They say that you’re never too old to learn and this is especially true if you are a mom that now wants to go back to school. While it may take more work than going to school fresh out of high school, it can still be done with equal parts planning, hard work, and dedication. Here are some things you’ll need to know before going back into the world of college.

Attend Online

If you are worried about trying to fit everything into your schedule because your home life is busy, you should think about online schooling. These days, you can actually get an entire degree while attending online classes, it is not like the hodge-podge of mixed classes that defined online school in the past. The best thing about going online is that you can attend class when it is convenient for you, no matter if it is the weekend, the middle of the night, or any other time.

Free Money

Depending on what the degree is that you are pursuing, you may qualify for grants or scholarships. These are usually contingent on maintaining a certain grade level. The best thing about these ways of paying for school is that they do not have to be repaid, so long as the money is used the way it is intended. If you drop out of school, the money will have to be repaid in most cases.

Employer Assistance

If you are going back to school to further your career, check with your employer to see if they have a tuition assistance program. Many employers will help employees with tuition reimbursement as long as the degree they are pursuing is relative to the company’s industry.

Private Student Loans

While not free money, taking out a private student loan is a great way to cover what is left after you have exhausted your free options and take the next step in your career. Private loans are just as easy to get as government-backed loans, but they have the added benefit of developing a positive relationship with a lender that you may be able to leverage in the future.

Study Space

Of course, with school comes studying. If you have a family at home, it can seem quite difficult to find the time you need to do a proper bit of studying. If you have a spare room, tell your family that there are certain hours where your time is off-limits and use that spare room as your study. If you have no extra space at your house, you can always use places like your local public library or a cafe to ensure you have plenty of quiet time to get your homework done.

Testing Out

The process of testing out of certain classes in which you already excel is a fantastic way to avoid paying for classes that you don’t really need to take. By testing out of specified classes, you receive credit for them without ever having to step foot in the classroom. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Homeownership is one of those things that can help people in the long term. With a house you aren’t subject to rising rent costs and you build equity instead of simply putting money into someone else’s pocket each month. With conventional loans often available for down payments as low as 5%, and things like FHA loans have down payments as low as 3.5% for those who qualify. Although saving for a large down payment on a house can feel overwhelming, it is possible, and here are some ways to help.

Credit Repair

If your credit score is low due to financial challenges, you’ll need to do some things to repair your credit before you can purchase a home. One of the ways to do this is through a credit builder account. If you’ve paid off bad debts, you can also work with the credit reporting agencies to have those removed from your account. Additionally, paying off or down other debt will improve your overall credit score.

Create a Monthly Budget

If you want to save for something big like a home down payment, you’ll need to create a plan you’re your money. A budget helps people see what they make, what expenses they have, and how much is leftover to save. A flexible budget helps especially if you have variable income and need to plan your essentials first. Once you pay for your needs, you can easily cover things like saving up for a house. You’ll also be able to account for those semi-annual expenses like taxes and car registrations.  

Make Saving Fun

Do you like to scrapbook? Make posters? There are a lot of fun ways to save. You can put a picture of your dream home on a board and add something to it each time you hit a savings milestone. If you have a goal to set aside $10,000, you can add something cool to it when you reach each $1,000 milestone. These visual aids can make the process of saving more fun and something you can see regularly.  

Use a Saving App

Automating your savings through an app can help you save more money than you’d realize. Many apps simplify the savings process by setting aside the change on your normal transactions. Just by saving pennies each time you buy groceries can add up to big money over time. Additionally, most banks allow you to set up a recurring savings amount. Whenever you get paid, you can automatically have any amount moved over to your savings account. These automatic savings tips will add up over time and help you reach the goal of home ownership much faster.

Pay Down Your Debts

Paying down your debts does two things. First it helps your credit score. It improves your debt to income ratio. This in turn will help you get a better interest rate on a home which can increase your buying power. Second, it reduces your monthly expenses. This leaves more money in your pocket so you can set aside more in your savings account.

Try a Side Hustle

Getting a good side hustle is an excellent way to make more money. Maybe you can try delivering groceries or taxiing people around through Uber, Shipt, or DoorDash. There are also websites like Udemy, Fiverr, and UpWork where you can get gig work for anything from writing to graphic design. A side hustle can help you make faster headway on your financial goals. Some people are even able to make their side hustle a full-time job because it ends up paying them more.

Cut Your Expenses

One of the hardest things for people is to cut things out of their budget. Their wants and needs end up longer than their budgets. If your budget includes a lot of unnecessary expenses like online shopping subscriptions, streaming services, cable, and mail in services, you might want to thin those out. By temporarily living without them, you can save hundreds of dollars per month. Another way to save on your expenses is to renegotiate your insurance and your credit card interest rates. These are just a few ways to add money back to your budget.

Saving up for a home down payment is possible. It’s worth it when you consider that your new home will appreciate in value and give you much needed equity with time.