Out with 2023, in with 2024

[lilfluff]

I'm not going to post a huge year in review post. There's darn little to brag about for 2023. As I put it over on the fediverse 2023 was, "Not as horrid as 2020 or 2021, an adequate year. Financially it was another painful year after 2021's car troubles and left me treading the monetary waters. But, I survived it." I'm going to hope for 2024 to be a better year. There's no expensive medical tests scheduled (okay, for the US $1500 in patient costs after insurance is not exactly extreme for something that goes beyond getting an x-ray, but it was the first time I myself had such a bill) nor anything else pre-planned that should be expensive. So 2024, you've got a chance to be a better year than this year.

I've signed up for Get Your Words Out, with a habit goal of 120 writing days in 2024. In addition to that I plan to continue my DuoLingo streak, and as I completed all the lessons for Esperanto and it's now in the Daily Refresh stage I'm going to start a new language in January. Probably Spanish. I recently started a Javascript course and I intend to finish that early in the year. Other than that I'll take 2024 as it comes.

However your 2023 went I wish you an excellent 2024.

Comments

[thewayne]

$1500 in patient costs? We're out of pocket $4471 that I documented, my wife is not in the habit of passing me receipts when she goes to the doc. And that's not counting pharmacy.

Three years and I'm on Mediscare... I have no idea how that works for people with primary immunodeficiency.

[lilfluff]

I've been pretty lucky overall over the years. I've managed to avoid anything that's put me in the hospital overnight and while I've got a few prescriptions I've only once run into real issues with insurance wanting to cover them. And then after having an FSA account for the first time in 2022 I decided to reduce it slightly after having more then I expected left towards the end of the year only to first have a broken crown at the end of 2022 that was about a year too soon for the dental insurance to cover and then with 2023 got my first medical test that was an actual inpatient procedure rather than just a blood draw or going to the local medical imaging place. I was expecting it to be more than previous exams but yikes, that $1500 out of pocket early in the year pretty much screwed up my budgeting for the whole year (The last few years haven't been kind to my finances). Here's hoping things don't get any more expensive for either of us.

[thewayne]

We haven't had any hospitalizations since, let's see, 1971.  I had surgery on my hand in '23, and my wife had some cardiac testing that ran about a grand.  This year, I'm expecting that one of my docs may want to perform a procedure on me that may require a few days in the hospital.  I need to call that office and make an appt: when I was there last, they were running horribly late and the front office was gone when I was done with the doc.  We had a PSA account in '22, and it was a horrible company that we were constantly fighting with.  I had a great experience with one and no troubles, I don't know why this one was so bad, so we dropped them.

[meridian_rose]

Best of luck with GYWO and your impressive DuoLingo learning :D