Update on Michael and financially planning for illness

He did end up having the flu. I got a touch of it--no fever, but a little bit of cold symtpoms, and so far the boys don't have it.

We still ended up spending money that was not budgeted in advance and I felt like our spending was a little out of control this week. This morning Michael and I talked about planning better for illness. For one thing, it makes sense to make sure we have enough in our Medical Envelope to cover co-pays for everyone in the house. Michael's is $25, and we didn't even have that in the envelope. Then there was the $25 co-pay for the tamiflu. I went and bought more cod liver oil, and occillococcinum when I started feeling bad, and I had to run out and buy more ibuprofin. I bought the occillo at the health food store, and found out later that it was on sale at Walgreens for much cheaper, so if I had planned in advance, we wouldn't have had to spend so much and I wouldn't have been so stressed out running around to get everything we needed. We also ended up buying some extra groceries (not much--$15 worth), because we had nothing in the house and I was feeling too yucky to really make meals.

Michael is better at actually organizing stuff, so today he is going to go through the medicine box and see what we actually have and try to organize it. He's making me a list of his preferred OTC meds, and I'll add mine and the kids. I'll shop around to make sure we have stuff specifically on-hand, and I'll make sure we have stuff on hand to treat the flu since this flu season won't be over for a long while. I'm going to make a list of meds to keep on hand, and we're going to keep cash in our medical envelope with money for :

Doctor co-pays for each of us
1-2 prescription co-pays
money for vitamins and OTC meds
$20 for emergency groceries

That way, the money is right there and on-hand for if we get sick. I was way too stressed with all of it this week, when I needed to be taking it easy.

I'm also trying to figure out a way to plan some easy and healthy meals for if I am sick and can't cook. It seems like we eat the worst when we're sick because no one has the energy to cook! I might just start working on a list of quick, inexpensive meals. It would be good just to have that on-hand anyway.