Good News Lynnae over at Being Frugal just did an article on shopping and eating Healthy on a budget.

Shopping for a Month

and Part Duex It may be worth taking a look.

And I’ll second others about healthy foods being cheaper. You need to change cuisines basically and not center your meals around meat. I shop at the ethnic groceries (chinese, korean, indian, and hispanic), which are far cheaper overall and sell things like 50 bags of bulk things for far far less per pound than buying 5 pound versions at the local supermarket. Their fresh veges are cheaper too. You should base your meals on beans, lentils, split peas, etc. as they are dirt cheap sources of protein and fiber. That’s what we live on here. And we also save a ton of money baking our own bread using the deadly simple NY Times no-knead recipe.

But I don’t envy you sorting out the insurance thing. Ick. But keep your chin up and work those phones to find out what has to happen next to set it right.

Oh one other thing. Every time I make an online payment, I print the resulting page to a pdf file on my computer in a special folder, so if I need to prove that I tried to pay, I have the transaction number off that and the screen grab.

Good luck with the shopping and the health of the hubby!

I think its a shame that processed foods are cheaper than whole natural foods.

Good luck w/the BCBS thing. Getting medical providers to sort out bill paying issues sometimes is a bear…hopefully it won’t take too long.

Also, if you change service level, your account number may change, along with the remit-address, thus delaying or otherwise having an account or payment go to “non-post”. That happens when you may not catch those changes between your new bill and what you have setup for online payment.

It will (not can, but will) take 3 weeks or more to get “research” on any payment from BCBS here in Massachusetts.

The trigger here is that if BCBS will not accept the payments electronically from your bill pay service (the Payee controls how, not the bill pay service), then it goes by paper check. Knowing that it’s best to either use your local BCBS website to pay (if it has it), or use a personal check so you can track if/when it clears, and if it doesn’t within a week of mailing, issue a new one.

Try to keep the faith – you have had a couple of really bad days. Personally, I have had better luck NOT using Bill Pay. I do it the other way – go to the company that wants the money and set up an electronic transfer. That way, they are responsible for taking the money and if it doesn’t happen they accept responsibility for it. This process seems to have fewer problems.

Good luck and remember that in a month – this too will be a memory.

Take care!

A note of encouragement: eating healthy doesn’t have to be more expensive.

Refined/processed foods lack fiber, so we often eat more than we should. But whole foods contain fiber and better nutrition, so you usually eat less of them before feeling full.

When you’re eating the right foods, you’ll find you usually won’t eat as much.

And as another commenter wrote, eating healthy is cheaper in the long run when compared to the cost of medical bills.

The blog hack is probably, lack of a better reason, for pure entertainment. It is a challenge for them to try to gain access and mess stuff up, which it seems like they did. Change your passwords and have a backup plan just incase they come back.

Processed foods are a killer….and yes, it just isn’t right that eating for optimum health should cost so much more. I try to shop only the outer aisles of the grocery stores. The middle aisles and the “end Caps” are what get you.

I got rid of most processed foods and make everything at home as often as I can. Amazingly, I don’t think eating healthy is costing me that much more and I more proud of what I eat since I made it and I know what is in it and where it came from.

I am sorry to hear about your insurance snafu. I got one medical bill to the tune of a few thousand dollars and had a heart attack. Luckily, it was simply calling the billing office and reminding them that they were supposed to bill insurance and not me. Certainly an evil way to start your day!

This just means that you’ve got a GREAT few days coming up since you just had a tough few days. (Hey go with it, I’m the optimism girl today.)