Living without the system to support you

I'm sure if any of you know me well enough you've realized that I've grown up in a family that did not receive support from the government state or national. My mother paid to give birth to us, my father supplied health insurance and we did not receive food stamps or medicaid. My parents had to pay for preschool for us and did not get help with clothes, food, school supplies or other. I also don't ever remember suffering when I was a child. We always had a roof over our head and electricity on. Christmas and birthdays have always been huge events in our family and my mother provided above and beyond for me and my brother. Michael grew up equally as happy without the use of government assistance. Let me preface this with I do not judge people who NEED assistance for the short amount of time it's supposed to be used for. People go through tough times and for a small amount of time Michael used BCCAP which helped pay for Leighas daycare. In that situation we were not married and we both worked full time and needed help paying for daycare. Once we got married that was quickly withdrawn and we were on our own paying full price for daycare. I know a mother on my Facebook who has her own health insurance that she pays for and her son is on medicaid. That's making an effort to be employed full time and supplying your own health insurance because you're able to. Let me just break down a little bit of the reality for you who aren't aware of what it's actually like to "make too much money" for government assistance.

1. I pay for my families health insurance
We have Amerihealth Administrators through my job at Deborah. It's called the PPO 80 plan which means Amerihealth pays 80 percent of my bill, that is if they don't deny the claim. Luckily the past two surgeries I've had were at Deborah and I didn't get a bill.Otherwise they only pay 80 percent. Which means every time someone on my plan needs to go to the ER for any reason it's $150 copay. when you need to go to the pediatrician you get billed $20 for the copay. If you need a procedure you'll get billed for the twenty percent the insurance didn't pay. Need a specialist? fine but it's $25 right off the bat before services are rendered. This is all on top of paying out of my paycheck every single two weeks. When me and Michael got married my health insurance plan changed and even though we pay more we don't have to answer to anyone or prove employment. I pay my insurance and I'm covered with medical, dental and vision. Every time someone on my plan has a visit in any of those categories I get an "explanation of benefits" explaining what was done during that visit and how much it cost. If something was denied I'M responsible for calling and trying to fight the insurance if it's a test that's really needed. I have all of the power in that situation and if there's children on my plan in the state of NJ I have to claim them every year on my taxes as dependents. Lots of information huh?

2. I don't qualify for any government assistance.
This includes health insurance, food stamps and daycare assistance. As previously discussed I pay for my health insurance. We also don't qualify for food stamps or anything of that sort therefore all of the food and cleaning supplies and anything for my house that's considered a necessity is bought with our actual money. All of my breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks. All the yogurt the kids eat up and mac and cheese bowls. This is on top of the cleaning supplies that are purchased for my home and the laundry pods and fabric softener I wash our clothes and sheets in. I also don't get any assistance for clothing nor do we or have we ever received child support for any reason. I supply clothes to the girls moms when they ask for it and I supply clothes for them here. If someone needs school supplies or books for homeschool or a co op I write checks or wire money to also help pay for that. We don't get any assistance for anything whatsoever. This on top of two car payments.

3. I have a 401K and a high yield savings account.
When I was younger, probably about 18 my dad had a conversation with me about a retirement savings plan. All I knew was I was a teacher at a pre school and I had just started contributing to my 401K. Every paycheck a certain percentage (I think maybe 2 percent) came out and went into a retirement fund. This ensured that when I was of retirement age I would have money to pay for my monthly bills every month because god knows where social security would be at that point. Ten years later now I'm a marketing rep at the number one hospital in new jersey and contribute a whopping 6 percent into my 401K every paycheck and I bump it up every year. Michael also contributes to his retirement fund. Because being a grown up also means not feeding off the system when you're 80 years old. I'd like medicare when I'm older, not some crappy plan that's going to cost me money I don't have any cover nothing. My high yield savings account gets money put in it every month and gets a percent every month as interest. This ensures if one of our cars breaks down, there's an emergency or anything happens, were covered.

4. I pay for life insurance plans for myself, my husband and all of my kids.
Globe Life insurance is a great company and I have a life insurance plan on myself, mike and all of the kids. We pay a certain amount a month for all of us. Michael has the most since he's the bread winner, I'm second in line and each of the kids has a $20,000 life insurance plan to cover funeral costs if god forbid anything happened to them. Morbid? Maybe. I call it being prepared because in the midst of having the mourn the loss of your child you need to be able to bury them as well. At the age of 18 it automatically goes into an adult life insurance plan for whole life insurance and does not increase in cost and at an age where I feel like they're ready they can take over the plan. All of the girls beneficiaries are Michael, I'm just the plan holder.

Living without the assistance of the government has it's pro's and con's. Having to pay for health insurance is inconvenient and obviously more expensive than having state insurance. With the recent crack downs on Medicaid abuse though I'm aware of people who have lost their state health insurance for a multitude of reasons. Mostly because they weren't employed and medicaid requires proof of employment to stay on medicaid. The medicaid cuts come from national outcry of people tired of paying for people on the welfare system and just abusing it. Again this is not a judgement for people who actively need the assistance, we've been there. Daycare is expensive! But if you can do what you can to provide for your family and not mooch of the state that gains so much more respect from people. Go out and do what you have to do to provide for your family. Don't rely on other people to take care of you, go out and be independent. Show everyone who doubted you that they were wrong and you can take care of yourself and your own. I hope the reality of this helps people realize that were not living this awesome lifestyle, were just trying to live as independent citizens.


Kristen