While I continue to experience my personal finance crisis of confidence, I wanted to share a few random and unrelated mid-week financial thoughts:
- If you own a pet and don’t have pet insurance, I implore you: stop reading this post, head over to Pet Plan’s website, and get your critter enrolled. (To be clear, this is not a sponsored post, they are just a kick-ass company with kick-ass customer service.) My poor kitty has been dealing with a serious eye problem since before Christmas. After 7 trips to the regular vet, I finally took her to a specialist today and got a more specific diagnosis. Without insurance, I would have been out over $1,000 by now. With insurance? Just around $125. I’m serious guys – you never now what can happen. For around $20 per month, it’s worth it.
Here she is, looking dainty, winking her bad eye 🙁
- In other news, Jay Leno is my favorite frugal celebrity. I recently read a really interesting article about famous people who are money-conscious and his entry really stood out:
“When I was a kid, I had two jobs,” wrote Leno. “I worked at a Ford dealership and at a McDonald’s. I’d spend the money from one job and save the money from the other. That’s still the way I am now. I live on the money I make as a comedian, and I put all the TV money in the bank. I’ve never spent a dime of TV money—ever.”
Talk about a guy who’s smart with his hard-earned money! Especially in a world where celebrities are always pissing their money away on completely gratutious materialism, it’s refreshing to read about a public figure who makes the big bucks and has prudent spending and saving habits.
- In other other news, I really want to file a complaint with the FTC against my former eye doctor. Here’s why: I ordered a pair of glasses from Warby Parker, and naturally they needed my prescription information, including a very important measurement – my pupillary distance. But the problem is, I’ve never gotten glasses from my current eye doctor (only contacts). So I had to call my old eye doctor to get it. And the nasty woman on the phone refused to give it to me! We went a couple of rounds on the phone, but basically the reason she wouldn’t give it to me boils down to the fact that the company doesn’t want its customers buying cheaper specs online, it wants us all to pay through the nose in their store. To me, this is a very clear violation of customers’ ability to shop on the open market. There’s no other option for getting a pupillary measurement – you have to go through the eye doctor (there’s a really sketchy way to try to do it on your own, but it’s very inaccurate). And if the eye doctor won’t release the information, they’re basically forcing you to buy their products. Not ok! FTC, if you’re listening, I feel like this issue could be your new pet project. In the interest of full disclosure, I was finally able to get her to give up the measurement, but only after threatening to call the company’s corporate attorney. It shouldn’t be that hard!
So that’s what I’ve been thinking about and dealing with recently. Your turn! Tell me about your random, unrelated person finance thoughts in the comments. Make my Wednesday 🙂
