Marion's Blog

Health Insurance and Living in a Small Town

A good friend of mine is fighting a battle with throat cancer. HD (I'm used to calling him Dieter) and his wife Una moved to a small Oregon town in 2002 after they retired. The other day Dieter sent me an email telling me the bad news about his health. He also gave me some really useful information about their experiences with medical insurance. HD and Una have been roll models for what I want to do in retirement. I regularly follow their web site.  I really value and appreciate their advice. I asked and he said I could include a portion of his email here.

"Hello Marion,

I just read you latest blog, and I had to write to you with, what I think is, a very important issue in your retirement.  And that is health care.

Unfortunately right now I am battling throat cancer,  am in chemo and radiation treatment. It was diagnosed early February, had surgery in Portland at OHSU (the university hospital there) and now they are mopping up after it with the other stuff.  Something I have to go through. Wish me luck!

But the reason I write to you is the fact that health care in a small town is a *BIG* issue (at least for us it is).  Depending on your insurance type and willingness to pay a lot, it may be very difficult to find doctors and facilities that work with your insurance company. Una is fighting a brave and big battle with our insurance (their name is xxxxx and they work through a Dr. network called xxxxxx). They have strange ideas as to what is reasonable for a patient (i.e., going almost 2 hours one way to receive daily radiation, luckily we talked them out of that nonsense and are having it in town).  Also finding doctors in a small town may a problem, i.e., there is no ENT doctor taking our insurance list. - Also, when we moved from California to Oregon, we learned that the company we had then, did NOT operate in Oregon, so insurance is not necessarily transferable to another state. Just a few things to let you know. 

Best Wishes to your upcoming move and the prep work for it.
Take care,

HD (aka Dieter) and Una"

HD asked me to xxx out the insurance company name since they have to keep working with them. His email really struck a chord with me. I have read advice like this before but I usually skip right over it because I figure we are too young to have to worry about this kind of thing. But of course that is ridiculous. Anyone can need medical care at any age and when you need it it is too late to move somewhere else.

Duke and I currently have Kaiser HMO  for our insurance. We buy it through Intuit Cobra.We have been happy with Kaiser but It looks like it is not available available in Nevada. Since we will be right over the border form California we were thinking we would keep it at least until the Cobra runs out. But given Dieter's email I am going to do some more research. When the Cobra runs out we will probably get a high deductible insurance with a Health Savings Account.  I'll keep you posted.

Travels and Getting the House Ready to Sell

On April 17 Duke finished his first tax season working for H&R Block. Since then we shifted into high gear in our drive to get our house ready to sell so that we can move. We have lots of other stuff going on too.

One of my daughters was moving so last Saturday morning we helped her transfer a load of furniture to her new place and then we headed towards LA. Duke's girls' choir had a recital and one of the girls had a solo. The recital was great and the solo (her first time singing in public) was very impressive.

After the recital on Sunday night we drove to Escondido to my parent's house. Monday morning we took Mom to have an MRI and an EEG. Mom goes back to her doctor this coming Friday. My sister Barbara and her husband will be with her for that. We are hoping to get a better diagnosis for the cause of her Parkinsonsisms.

On Wednesday we drove from Escondido to Reno. It always seems odd to me that Reno is essentially due north of San Diego. The road goes east of LA and then straight for many mile right past Edward's Air Force base and up the East side of the Sierras. The mountains are beautiful. I climbed Mt Whitney 9 years ago so It was fun to go through Whitney Portal again.

On Thursday in Reno we had lunch with my Mom's brother and his wife. Then we looked at a few apartments. Our plan is to get our house up for sale and then rent a place in Reno to use as a home base while we decide where we want to move for the next stage of our lives.

We looked at several places and think we will rent a house in a Del Webb Active Adult community, for people 55 or better. (Duke just turned 55 and I will turn 55 this summer). For less rent than they were asking for the apartments that we liked we can have a new house with a two car garage and use of the club house with indoor pool and walking track. I don't think it is the kind of place we want to live in eventually but it should be perfect for the next year. It will be right around 240 miles from the old house to the new house.

The list of things we want to do before we sell the house is long. Before we left last week we painted our bonus room and now we are laying solid oak hardwood on th floor. Next we will lay porcelain tile in our laundry room and in the one bathroom that still doesn't have it. Next we will get scaffolding and paint the walls and ceiling of the living room with the 24 foot ceiling. Those are just the first 3 big items on the list. In the next month we will also be helping Duke's girls move and helping my parents move from the assisted living place back to their house.

June 10 is our target to have the house on the market so May is going to be a very busy month!

 

Selling Books

I love books and reading!  I always have. When I was young I wanted to grow up and be a librarian. When I look at a book I often remember when I read it, what was going on in my life and how the book made me feel. For the books I haven't read yet I like to remember how I acquired them. I enjoy savoring the anticipation of reading them someday.

Since we've decided to sell our house and move, it makes sense to get rid of some of my books. When I made this decision I had 8 big bookcases overflowing with books and several boxes of books in the garage. I'm selling a bunch but of course I'm keeping all my favorites.

Over the past year I have been culling out the books I don't want to keep. On April 17 of last year I started selling books on Amazon. So far I've sold 167 books. After fees and postage I've cleared $384. Listing the books, packaging them and taking them to the post office takes time and It certainly is not going to make me rich but I am enjoying it. Plus, trying to sell the books makes the process of parting with them easier. Currently I have about  260 books for sale on Amazon.

For books that are too old to sell on Amazon I am selling them on EBay. Currently I have several books about books for sale on Ebay. I'm selling other stuff on EBay too. I'm always surprised what sells and what doesn't and for how much.

I'm selling stuff on craigslist too. I don't sell books there, usually only bigger stuff.

Often books don't sell. When that happens I give them to charity. By then I've broken my attachment to them and I'm able to let them go.

Update 5/1/2007 - The sales on Bay have ended. I am still selling stuff on EBay sometimes. My user name is ruthie730 if you want to see if I have anything currently. Here is a list of the books I sold and the selling prices:

$6.60 - Books and Collectors by Maurice Dunbar
$.99 - Dans Ces Bras
$.99 - French Little Women
$5.76 - A box of 13 Nora Roberts Paperbacks
$71.00 - Complete 21 volume set - The Annals of America
** note: I may have to refund this one because the post office seems to have lost one of the boxes I shipped.

$1.80 -The Book of the Month - Sixty Years of Books in American Life edited by Al Silverman
$5.00 - Prince of Forgers by Emile Mabille, Henri Leonard Bordier, Joseph Rosenblum
$3.37 - Prince of Librarians, Life & Times of Antonio Panizzi by Edward Miller
$2.60 - Slightly Chipped by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
$1.80 - The Joy of Books by Eric Burns
$11.98 - 18 different back issues of Biblio Magazine
$1.00 - The Bookman's London by Frank Swinnerton
$6.23 - Penny Wise and Book Foolish by Vincent Starrett
$17.50 - Two A E Newton books about book collecting
$3.25 - Dukedom Large Enough - Reminiscences of a Rare Book Dealer  1929-1956 by David A. Randall
$11.51 - Hooked on Books by Maurice Dunbar
$12.55 - Infinite Riches - The Adventures of a Rare Book Dealer by David Magee
$11.44 - Sunwise Turn - a Human Comedy of Bookselling by Madge Jenison
$4.24 - Great Books and Book Collectors by Alan G. Thomas

One of the good things about retirement

One of the lovely things about being retired is that for the first time in my life my daily schedule and agenda are under my control. My days were externally driven in childhood, in school, at  work, and then parenthood. Now I decide what I am going to do every day. I decide what is important and what isn't. It is up to me! I absolutely cherish this freedom.

So, for example, last Tuesday I drove to Sunnyvale and had breakfast with a friend before taking her to the San Jose airport for her flight. Then back to Sunnyvale where I caught Cal Train to San Francisco for lunch with Allison.  The train service on the the San Francisco peninsula is wonderful and the scenery is great too. I walked to Allison's office. It was a beautiful warm sunny day (rare for San Francisco). After we ate our sandwiches we sat in Yerba Buena park and talked before she had to go back to work. Then I walked back to the train and took it back to Sunnyvale.

My friend Linda's house is near the train station. She I went out for dinner before our book club meeting. The book club book was Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood. It was a wonderful very enjoyable book. I liked that it was well developed. The characters were very believable and it had a thought provoking and satisfying ending.

Tuesday was a perfect day partly at least because I was doing things I wanted to do.

The Subject of My Blog - Retiring, moving, and downsizing

You should pick a subject for your blog, is something you usually find included in advice about how to start a blog. I've always resisted having a subject for this blog because I want to talk here about all the varied things that I find interesting.  I think not having a specific subject tends to limit my readership to a smaller group of people. I always say that I'm blogging because I like blogging, not to build a big readership but I have to admit I do look at readership statistics. 

For the next several months a big focus of this blog will be all the life changes that we are making. As you know Duke and I each retired last year. Our plan is to sell the house, move into temporary quarters (probably in the Reno area), and then spend the next several months traveling around looking for a place to settle down for the next phase of our life. I'm very excited about the adventure and will be sharing a lot about it here.

We won't be selling the house until early summer but I'm starting to get ready now. The trim around many of the windows needs replacing and we've hired a guy to do that. I've been selling some of my books on Amazon.com and donating the ones that don't sell. I've also been selling some odds and ends on Craigslist. The goal is to trim down our possessions and get organized.

Even though I will continue to talk about lots of different things on this blog, a reoccurring theme for the next several months will be downsizing, searching for a new place to live and finally moving and settling in. Of course I'll be sure to keep you up to date on all the adventures along the way.