On the run

I've got this stack of e-mail drafts, pieces of paper, and ideas floating around in my head for blog posts, but I have no time to do anything about it.

The $100,000 Quandary
One of the most popular topics in this blog (based on traffic stats anyway) is the whole question of what it's like to try to raise a family on $100,000 per year. We've been tracking our expenses much for carefully for the past 9 months, and I have some new data to post (and some new observations).

Scamfotainment
I saw this link (save money by refinancing your car loan) in the Globe (ha!) a while ago. It's even worse than the cr*p that they syndicate from bankrate.com.

The Medical Costs Meme
In my last post, I wrote about health costs and how lucky we are not to be in Bright Side of Debt's situation, being chased by collectors on medical bills, even though she and her family are insured. Yesterday there was a feature in the Times on that very subject:

Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be — often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.

With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline.

P.S. Thanks as Always to Claire
I've just got to say, it always makes me happy when my feed reader says there's a new post over at Tired But Happy. Maybe it's the fact that she and her partner are older parents like me, or that their kid is about the same age as my eldest. Or maybe that hers is the road not taken. After we got married, Mrs. Bluebird and I thought, for maybe 5 minutes, about staying in the somewhat funky, transitional Boston neighborhood where I was living. But a shorter commute, and the chance to live in the midst of a lot of recreation-friendly open space won out.


But we could have been like Claire.