insurance Archives • Bitches Get Riches

Life Insurance: Responsible Investment or Waste of Money?

September 27, 2023September 27, 2023 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 6 Comments

I didn’t understand anything about life insurance until I was in my late twenties. I’d just started a small blog with a friend (you wouldn’t have heard of it), and it was unclear how many people were reading it. Until one day, when a shocking email arrived in our inbox. A company wanted to give us money to recommend a product.

The product was life insurance.

Jess (that’s Piggy to the uninitiated) and I regarded this offer with the confused-yet-intrigued energy of hungry fish watching a worm wriggle on a hook. Obviously we hadn’t had the audacity to make a preemptive affiliate marketing policy. Life insurance sounded like the kind of thing responsible adults should have, right? And it would be cool to offset the cost of running the site, wouldn’t it? We agreed to take a few days and devote our shower thoughts to the idea.

Like many a wise rainbow trout, we decided against the hook. No matter who you are, easy money is always a fat and juicy temptation. But we agreed we’d rather run the blog at a loss than sell random crap to our readers. Happy with this decision, we sat down to our inbox to find two more unsolicited affiliate offers.

These products were also life insurance.

In the years since, they’ve never stopped coming. We get a new one at least once a month. Now, we have the experience to understand why life insurance companies are so eager to pay bloggers to rep their stuff. Today, we’ll permanently burn that bridge by explaining how it works—and why we think most life insurance isn’t worth it for the majority of our readers.

Your Super Simple Guide to COBRA Health Insurance

June 14, 2023June 16, 2023 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 9 Comments

It’s really hard to fully understand what COBRA is and how it works. It’s a strange but potentially useful little product—but you’re only eligible for it if your life is already in a state of chaos. I don’t know about you, but I’m not great at absorbing complex new information when I am flying through the sky like Adrien Brody in the opening sequence of Predators!

COBRA is a very specific type of health insurance coverage. You can get it in only one circumstance: when you leave a job that has employer-provided health insurance. It’s meant to help you bridge the gap between when your old insurance coverage expires and the new coverage kicks in.

And honestly? Thank god.

If I’m under a fantastic health insurance plan from January 1 to December 30, my ass will be immaculately healthy for all 364 of those days. Then on New Years Eve, I will accidentally drop a bottle of sparkling wine that cannot legally be called champagne. I will twist both ankles as I log-roll over it, windmilling my arms comically while shouting “w-w-woah!” Then I will tumble ass-over teakettle down a staircase, landing on a bed of spikes, and all my prions will simultaneously fold the wrong way.

My body, the day I'm not covered by COBRA.

Like, I’m not superstitious. I’ve just lived long enough to know that’s literally how the world works. The moment you don’t have health insurance coverage, something spectacularly bad is bound to happen.

Which is exactly where COBRA comes in!

Your Yearly Free Medical Care Checklist

August 10, 2022August 10, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 7 Comments

If you are an American who is lucky enough to have health insurance, you almost certainly have free medical care coming your way.

Several annual and semi-annual services are available to you with no copay—and you have absolutely no reason not to use them. Technically, you have already bought them, as their cost is built into the premiums you’ve already paid. And your body will thank you for it! Even if you feel perfectly healthy, establishing a baseline of health will help your medical professionals detect problems early.

Pro-tip: don’t wait until the end of the year to do all this stuff! Every medical office I’ve ever been to is slammed during November and December as everyone tries to use up their benefits. Schedule it now to avoid the crush.

Here’s what you should be doing every year.

The Dark Magic of Financial Horcruxes: How and Why to Diversify Your Assets

June 24, 2019June 2, 2022 Piggy 15 Comments

Lord Voldemort was the unrecognized Suze Orman of the Potterverse. The man could’ve poured his money into nasal reconstruction surgery, yet instead he saw the value in diversification, making himself harder to kill by spreading his assets out among multiple Horcruxes.

You may not be a wizard, ‘Arry, but today you’re going to learn something about personal finance from He Who Must Not Be Named. For while we’ve already established that the good guys of J.K. Rowling’s seminal masterpiece are fucking idjits when it comes to money, the Dark Lord himself is another matter.

The principle of Horcruxes—dividing Voldemort’s soul into multiple containers so that he could only be killed when all of the Horcruxes were destroyed—is a pretty damn clear analogy for financial diversification.

Diversification, just like the dark magic of Horcruxes, is a strategy for risk management. The idea is to spread your money out into a variety of different investments and savings vehicles to lessen your overall risk should one or more of those investments go the way of Tom Riddle’s diary. Diversification generally helps you yield higher financial returns over the long term and wraps your financial future up in layers of safety you won’t get from sticking 100% of your net worth in a checking account.

You know: exactly like Voldemort’s Horcruxes.

How to Pay Hospital Bills When You’re Flat Broke

April 8, 2019June 2, 2022 Piggy 6 Comments

It’s a fucking travesty that the leading cause of bankruptcy in these United States is medical bills. Not credit card bills nor risky investments. Not even student loans, but hospital bills. Invoices racked up through freak accidents and diseases the patient certainly didn’t ask for and would probably prefer to live without.

To our readers in other, more civilized countries, you’re dismissed. This week we’re going to be dissecting a uniquely American problem: exorbitant medical bills and how to pay them.

The CEO of GoFundMe, an online crowd-funding platform, never dreamed that his company would become synonymous with “I’m broke and need $300,000 to pay for my child’s cancer treatment.” What he envisioned as a way for entrepreneurs and artists to raise money for their passion projects has become the last desperate hope of sick and injured Americans on the verge of total financial ruin.

It blows, dear readers. It fucking blows.

Which is why we need to get creative with some of the lesser-known and best ways to pay for medical bills. Sure, it might be cheaper in the long run to move to Canada, Sweden, or Namibia. But if you bleed American blood on American soil, here’s what you do.

How Mental Health Affects Your Finances

May 14, 2018June 1, 2022 Piggy 13 Comments

May is Mental Health Month, and that’s why we, your fabulous yet imperfect Bitches, have been sharing stories of our own mental health challenges. Kitty bravely explained how she’s dealt with depression, and I walked you through my adventures with anxiety. Then we examined the human brain itself through one of our favorite books: Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos.

We’ve been overwhelmed with the outpouring of support from our followers. But even better, our lovely readers have come out of the woodwork to share their own stories of life outside the neurotypical spectrum. And this. Is. Glorious. We’ve never felt more warm fuzzies for our community and we’re proud of each and every one of you for carrying on through depression, anxiety, ADHD, and whatever other mental weirdness you’re dealing with.

But some of you might be asking at this point, “I thought this was a money blog. What the hell does mental health have to do with personal finance?”

Everything.

Workplace Benefits and Other Cool Side Effects of Employment

April 16, 2018May 31, 2022 Piggy 23 Comments

You just got a job offer! Condragulations! Now it’s time to negotiate… for your life.

But before you start throwing numbers around, there’s something you should understand. Salary—the thing most think of when they are considering the terms of a new job—is but one item on a long list of negotiable items. And while it’s wicked important, your potential employer might not have as much room to adjust there as they do in other areas.

So aside from salary, you need to think about what you need to be happy and comfortable in a new job.

What is going to improve both your financial situation and your overall life? Because if an employer can’t budge on the salary, that doesn’t mean they don’t have something more to offer you in other areas.

So let’s talk benefits, shall we?

Financial Lessons Learned from a Night in the ER

March 29, 2018May 31, 2022 Piggy 43 Comments

I have always been accident prone. Like a real-life heroine in a YA novel featuring vampires and forbidden romance, my most benign character flaw is that I’m clumsy as fuck.

I guess I just never grew out of that stage of puberty where you walk smack into walls that have been there for your whole life and end up with bruises of mysterious origin all over your legs. I just don’t know where my ends are! I’m missing whatever survival instinct informs the human body not to grievously injure itself on a regular basis.

So I guess it was just a matter of time before I ended up in the emergency room, writhing and blinded by the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life.

You guys. I hurt myself really, really badly. And I’m going to be paying for it for a long time.

Dafuq Is Insurance and Why Do You Even Need It?

November 10, 2017August 14, 2021 Piggy 11 Comments

This article is definitely not about health insurance. I specifically refer to pretty much every other kind of insurance you can get in the United States, but not health insurance. Because contrary to what our fearless leader said recently, everyone knows that healthcare is really fucking complicated. Not to mention expensive.

Therefore, I’m saving it for another post so as not to muddy the waters… with our tears.

Our readers from civilized countries like Canada and Namibia are probably recoiling in horror right about now. Yeah. WELCOME TO THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE, BITCHES. Moving on.

Insurance in general can seem like a confusing and unnecessary gamble. Obtaining it and taking advantage of its benefits might seem daunting. Why should you pay money for something you might never need? You’re healthy and careful! What’s the point of this expensive service?

Worry not, my confident yet naive marshmallow peeps. I’ll break it all down for you.

Pet Insurance: Is It Worth It?

April 27, 2017August 14, 2021 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 7 Comments

As we’ve discussed, Piggy and I are pretty obsessed with our pets. I admire Piggy’s restraint in having but a single dog. My house currently contains four dogs, one cat, six chickens, and two clinically narcissistic garbage disposals guinea pigs. Friends who know me to be an IRL Pokemon Master often ask me what my pet insurance rates are like.

My pet insurance bill is approximately zero dollars. Same goes for Piggy.

Neither of us have pet insurance. And there’s a reason for that.