This post is part of my Downsized Budget series. For an introduction and links, go to The Downsized Budget: How and Where to Cut Back.

In the Crown Financial Ministries household budget plan, the insurance expense category includes life, health, vision, dental and disability insurance premiums. It doesn’t include homeowner’s or auto insurance, or out-of-pocket medical expenses, which show up elsewhere.

The problem is many of you are paying quite a bit out-of-pocket in employee “shares” for health and related insurance policies, and you’re not the one who decides how much comes out of the paycheck to pay for those benefits. So you may have cut back elsewhere in your household budget to make the numbers work.

That being said, here are some tips on how to deal with this expense in a downsized budget:

• Cooperate as much as possible with a change in doctor request. If the grudge against accepting a cheaper health insurance plan is that you would have to change doctors, is that really a problem or not? Yes, that will be a problem if the recommended doctors are out of your area – and I’ve heard stories about that situation. But in other cases, the only logistic is selecting another practice. Can you take the list of acceptable or participating doctors to your current physician and ask for his or her recommendation in who to select and cooperation in transferring your files?
• Find out what other benefits you can get from that insurance company. There are some health insurance programs that can provide you with discounted services on fitness or nutrition programs, and some that can provide discounts on over-the-counter medications. If you’ve got perks like that coming, figure out how to use them to your benefit.
• Carefully review your life insurance policies. Perhaps you have a free but low benefit life insurance policy already in effect. If so, keep any additional life policy that you pay for as low budget as possible. If you can’t afford a standard life insurance policy, then keep at least a small policy that will pay for burial expenses or set up a pre-paid funeral plan. Do you really want your family to have to arrange for a spaghetti dinner to help pay for your funeral costs? I’ve seen it happen in Monroe.
• Pay close attention to the details if you want to switch health plans. It may be possible for you to put the family on the other spouse’s health plan. But did you get grandfathered into a lower rate plan, and what happens if you need to suddenly switch back? And if you have a child who is part of a divorce or custody decree, that adds a whole other set of complexities as to which insurance policy needs to stay in effect.