Saturday, November 01, 2008

On my own

My employer has finally found and hired a replacement for me. She starts Nov. 17. That means my last day is Nov. 14 and as of the following day I will be officially self-employed. So I did what any good 21st-century girl would do. I made a Web site.

http://sites.google.com/site/ananelsonshaw/Home


Your constructive criticisms are welcomed.

Also your hints about navigating our wreck of a healthcare system without the safety of an employer-provided insurance plan.

5 comments:

Utahdoula said...

(I don't think my first try worked)
I like it, but I think it needs a picture of you and some other visual content on your pages.

Ben McMurry said...

Nice site! As far as Insurance goes, Alison and I have used Fortis several times. The benefits are that it is cheap and cover almost anything. You can get it through State Farm. The drawbacks are that it is temporary and if you make a claim, you cannot renew it. If you think that you might have insurance in a year or something, you can always pay for a year and use it as much as you want knowing that you won't have to renew it.

Braden Bell said...

Wow! Congrats on this major step forward. Good luck on the healthcare.

Anonymous said...

Hi Ana, got the link to your blog from Marta's list of blogs she follows. I have enjoyed what I have read.

About insurance - we have been buying our own for four or five years now. If you have no major things that make you uninsurable it is not too bad. I would recommend you find an agent that you trust - ask around and get a referral. Ours sends a letter every year and will research whether we could find something cheaper or if we should sit tight with what we have.

Don't overlook supplemental plans like Aflack if you have somebody particularly accident prone or that gets sick a lot. I had a couple of those policies for maternity (buying your own insurance in Utah has a $5000-$6500deductible for maternity no matter what the rest of you plan says), but one of them just paid out a certain amount for doctor visits, no matter what they were for, e.g. it could be for kids too.

Another thing to remember if you want to risk it for a little while, is that you should have access to Cobra coverage from your previous employer and that even if you don't pay for it now, you could pay for it when something happened and you needed it (must catch up all lapsed month's payments). If it is only a month or two, you might get lucky with this, though if you go past 60 days, you might run into pre-existing condition problems (if you have any) when you next purchase a policy.

Can you tell this is a big issue at our house? Hope that wasn't all stuff you already know backwards and forwards.

Keep writing! I am going to try out some of your veggie recipes and see if my family will eat them. I like your part-time vegitarian philosophy. I am currently looking into where I can buy "grass finished" beef and other meat. If I fork out for that, we will have to be vegitarians at least half the time too!
:-) Ali (Marta's sister-in-law)

alyddall said...

Rats - i left the previous long comment while logged in as my son. Sorry about that.