Some of the downfalls of being "poor": DOWNFALL #1.
You can't afford health or dental insurance--- a few years ago I burned my foot by spilling a big pot of boiling water on it-ouch...and I went to the emergency room they cleaned it up gave me some ointment and told me to come back in two days to make sure that it was healing fine. I returned 2 days later and the doc looked at it and told it was healing nicely :)....Do you know how much this two day spa treatment cost me? $USD 1000.00 :S I had no health insurance and to pay it all out of pocket, while I was still in school and was making about $6.00 an hour. It took me a couple of months but eventually I paid it off. When I made assistant manager at the old retail job, I decided too get the company health insurance, even though I was making only a little more and really could not afford it, but I decided to bite the bullet and sacrifice that extra $130.00 a month but I soon found out that the deductible was much more than I could afford with what I was making so the insurance became an extra deduction out of my paycheck. Then the dental insurance was completely useless, it would not even cover my extraction of a wisdom tooth that had become abscessed, and I had to go to the emergency room because the left side of my face had become swollen. The emergency room doctor told me that I had better get the tooth extracted, because the abscess infection could spread to other parts of my body--pretty scary. Then he told me I should just stop spending my money on frivolous things and pay the money to have my tooth extracted lol I wanted to hit him for that comment. I didn't have the money to spend on things I needed, never mind frivolous things.
I frantically tried to think of an idea to come up with the money, and finally I realized I could take out $500.00 from the mere $750.00 I had in the 401K that I had at work. Just a year before the incident the company elected to open a 401K for me, because I had been there for over 5 years and reached the required age of at least 21. They deposited a little money for me, so I thought why not put a little money like 5% of my paycheck into the account every payday. Big decision for me; not making too much to begin with. But I am happy I did because I was able to take an early distribution on the money (paid a $50.00 fee for that when I did my taxes) and get my tooth extracted.
