Sunday - Window of Opportunity

Our prompt for today is 'windows of opportunity'. This is mine.....

As you all know, we are getting ready to move to Belize. This is a huge window of opportunity for us. Whereas we do not want to leave our family and friends, we will have a much better quality of life there. We just cannot afford to stay in the US. In two years, if we are not happy there, we can come back because by then I will be 65 and will have an option of better healthcare than I can get now.

Here in the US (if you do not know) Social Security and Medicare are deducted from your wages. Social Security is a bit like a pension plan. Medicare is a state run medical program. Unless you make a lot of money over the years, you cannot live on Social Security because it is based solely on how much you earned. You receive a percentage of that when you retire. We both have small pensions from our employers that we also contributed to while we worked. This money does not move from employer to employer and not every employer offers pension plans. By law, they are not required to.

Even though we paid into the Medicare fund our entire working lives, when you retire they take $104 out of your Social Security as a monthly premium (this year anyway, it goes up every year). Medicare covers doctors and hospitals (you still have co-pays for these services). You sill have to have some kind of insurance plan to cover your prescription drugs. At least this part doesn't cost you a premium every month. You still have co-pays though. The only problem with this is you are only allowed so much a year to spend. If you have a lot of medicines, and some of them have a high co-pay (which hubby does), you meet that deadline very quickly. When that happens, you fall into what they call the 'doughnut hole'. Then you pay the entire amount for the medicine which can be hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars. Even with all of this, it is still better than the healthcare insurance I had to take out when hubby retired.

My 'Obamacare' insurance is costing me $285 a month. I have a $500 deductible for prescriptions and have to spend $3500 out of pocket before my co-pays kick in. I had to change my pharmacy that I have used for years because my new insurance dictates where you get your medicines. I had my first prescriptions filled last week. I have six prescriptions I have filled every month. I only picked up three because the others were way too expensive. They wanted $62 for one, $85 for one and $635 for my insulin. With my other insurance I paid $10 for the same insulin. The three I picked up cost $16. I have one medicine that I don't have to get filled every month so I have no idea how much it will cost.

So, to make this long, drawn out story shorter, we are jumping at this window of opportunity to move to a country that offers less expensive healthcare, medicines, and overall cost of living. We no longer can afford to live in the US at this juncture of our lives.

So, those of you that were going to google Belize, I hope you found it and see how beautiful it is there. You are all welcome to come visit once we get settled.

I don't know what it is like where you live, but the US (or many parts of it) is no longer such a good place to be. At the rate things are going, I do not know what our children and grandchildren will do when they get to be our age.

We are very excited and should be leaving on March 22 or there about. I will keep up with blogging as well as I can. Luckily, a lot of places have free Wi-Fi.

Take care and have a good week. xxxx

Belize

 

Thadd's Birthday Dinner Saturday

(Kobe Japanese Steak House)