Paying Bills

I hate paying bills, which is why it is the 10th of the month and my bills are not yet paid.

It’s not that I don’t have the money (I do, barely). It’s that paying bills takes concentration and focus and energy (plus a good pen), and those qualities have been in short supply around here for years now.

Oh, yeah, and organization.

I’ve now learned to put all the incoming bills in one place, a shoebox, and I’ve set up a proper file with labeled file folders for paid bills and receipts—this is especially important since I am self-employed and need to save proof of all my business expenses, plus medical paperwork, and so on.

Even so, when I sit down to pay bills, something like two-thirds of the envelopes I open are not really bills, they are marketing offers of various types cleverly disguised as bills to get me to open them.

My brain can’t handle all this.

In any case, I started paying my June bills on Saturday morning, got about half way through and found a good excuse to quit for the day, and this is the pile of paper that was on the floor. (See photo.)

Now that Connie has shredded it for me, I will, of course, recycle it.

If I could just force myself to sit down at the table for an hour, I could finish paying my bills for the month. I have stamps, so that’s not a problem. I even have 2-cent stamps so that I can use up my “old” stamps from before the latest price increase.

Of course, once I finish the bills, there is a stack of papers that will require sorting out by phone—most of these are medical bills that, as far as I can tell, I don’t owe. But trying telling that to the billing department at your favorite cancer center.

I have one bill from the University of Washington Medical Center that dates back to late 2005. I KNOW I don’t owe this one, but every so often the UWMC resurrects it and starts billing me again.

There’s also one from Swedish Cancer Institute from late 2006. This one is new, but there is no way that I should owe for any part of my care late in the year: I’ve met all my deductibles (I meet them by February every year, as a matter of fact), and Swedish has a preferred provider relationship with my insurance company, which means Swedish can’t charge me for the part of the bill the insurance doesn’t pay. They have to write it off.

Stay tuned tomorrow for an update. Given the response I got last time I tried to sort out a bill from Swedish, I’m not looking forward to this phone call.

Read:
15 Phone Calls

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[Sara]

Hee -- it's so nice to have a helper.

Good dog, Connie! Good dog!

[Doreen]

UW is the worst! They recently put me in collections for a bill I had been paying on.
For sure, managing this is a full-time job.
A bright spot is that I recently received and award from an organization called Patient Advocate Foundation which allowed me to get a bill for chemo I had in 2003 off my books!
Now if I could just get my coverage nightmare straightened out...

[Jeanne]

Doreen--can yo- send me the contact info for the Patient Advocate Fo-ndation? I'd like to p-t it on my blog.

Thanks,

Jeanne