I made $120 for one hour of work last week.

On Tuesday, I participated in a neuroeconomics study at a nearby university. For sixty minutes, I lay inside an MRI scanner while answering questions about money. When I had finished, the researchers paid me $120. In cash.

I admit that with the four hour round-trip and the half hour of wait time, my hourly rate drops to something nearer $20, but that's still not bad. In fact, the experience made me wonder if there might not be similar opportunities closer to home.

In America's current healthcare system, in most cases, you're better off with the crowd. Usually, that crowd is your employer or a government pool like Medicare or Medicaid. But sometimes, due to choices you make, or circumstances you can't control, you end up on your own, with full responsibility for your healthcare expenses. Here are some circumstances under which you might end up needing to seek affordable individual health insurance:

• You lose (or quit) your job.
• You have insurance through your spouse or partner, and they lose or quit their job.
• Your employer or your spouse's stops offering insurance for you or your family.
• You change jobs, and your new employer has a waiting period before you become eligible for coverage.
• You take early retirement.

In some other circumstances, you may have the option to participate in group medical insurance, but it's not in your financial interest to do so.

• You are young and healthy, but your employer group has a lot of older, sicker people in it, and your employer makes you bear much of the premium cost for either yourself or your dependents. Keep in mind that if you find yourself in this situation and you opt for your own insurance, you help yourself, but also make it harder for your employer and your co-workers to afford coverage.
• The group plan you are eligible to participate in doesn't meet your needs. For example, it does not cover doctors or hospitals where you live, or it does not cover particular health condition that you have or are at risk for, or the plan offers richer benefits than you want to pay for.

In any event, if you are shopping for individual health insurance, you need to keep in mind several important things.

Lately, I've been making rumblings about getting in shape again. I want to get fit slowly. The trick is figuring out how to do it. It took a lot of reading and a lot of trial and error to take control of my finances, but I've finally achieved a healthy attitude toward money. Now I hope to do the same with physical fitness. But where to start?

One approach would be to just throw money at the problem. I've been looking at fitness clubs, for example; they offer great exercise equipment and motivational classes all in one facility. But they cost more than a frugal fellow like me wants to pay. (Yes, I've looked into the YMCA and local community centers — there's nothing nearby.)

I've also been fighting the urge to purchase a new bicycle. The Redline 925 makes me drool, but do I really want to spend $800 on bike? What's wrong with the bike I already own?

This article was written by Shiva, who wrote to offer some advice on how to shop for prescription medicine: don't assume that the new new stuff is better!

I am a general internist — a physician who provides primary care to adult patients — and am on the faculty of a medical school, where I teach medical students and residents. One of my interests is the excess marketing and use of expensive yet marginally effective prescription drugs.

I have found in clinical practice that the most effective medications tend to actually be "tried and true" ones approved over ten years ago with thousands of patient years of post marketing safety and efficacy data available. Rarely is the latest the greatest.

Unfo

Eating healthy is important.

Eating healthy:

• Lowers disease risks
• Increases productivity
• Gives you more energy
• Makes you stronger

You probably think eating healthy is expensive. I'll be honest — it is. But there are tricks to spare your savings account and keep it low cost. Here are sixteen ways to eat more healthily while keeping it cheap. Continue reading...

Three months ago I wrote about the high cost of being fat. I had spent $4500 over four years because of my weight. The problem wasn't just costing me money — it had caused sleep apnea, a torn ACL, and mild depression, three conditions which eroded my quality of life.

Then a reader issued a challenge. Lauren Muney wrote to provide her services as a wellness coach free for one month: "I'm offering this to you because I've been reading your blog daily and I want to give back," she said. She continued:

Most people think that coaching is bull. It's amazing how much money people will spend on diet books, fad equipment, diet pills, and the like — and never budge an inch. I just talk to my clients. They drop 10, 20, even more pounds of weight, plus they retain the weight loss and make life changes they never thought possible. But it is they who do the work and they who take the glory. I know you understand the value of getting rich slowly but carefully. It's the same with fitness and lifestyle changes — the good stuff is slow, but it sticks.

Continue reading...

More about...Health & Fitness

I am fat.

I am fat, but I am not obese. I do not pause to catch my breath when climbing stairs. I do not avoid hikes or sports for fear of failure. But — no mistake — I am fat. I am far above my normal weight. I carry 205 pounds on a frame built for someone forty pounds lighter. [PDF: Body mass index and health, from the USDA.]

How does this relate to personal finance? Your health is your most important asset. Not your house. Not your car. Not your job. Not your retirement account. These are secondary. Your health is your most important asset. Even someone as young as I am (37) can face serious financial repercussions from being overweight.

Here's a tip I cannot believe I'm sharing in public.

For years I've battled dandruff. I mean I've had it bad. Recently it's reached nightmarish proportions — my scalp was like North Dakota in January.

I tried all sorts of remedies. I tried Selsun Blue. I tried Head and Shoulders. I tried Denorex. Nothing worked. I even tried not washing my hair at all. That didn't help the dandruff and just created the added grossness of greasy hair. Continue reading...

In the United States, we value our cars. We've become a nation of drivers. It rarely occurs to us that walking might be an option, even for short journeys. One-quarter of all automobile trips in the U.S. are less than a mile in length; forty percent are less than two miles (one source of many). Looked at another way: of all trips less than a mile in length, eighty percent are made by car (source).

I know a man who drives to work, even though he lives half a mile from his office. Why does he drive? Because he may need the car for some errand during the day. How many errands did he run during the workday last week? None. The week before? None.

I have a family member who will spend time circling a parking lot, looking for the perfect space. In the time it takes her to find these utopic spots, she could usually have parked farther from the entrance and burned some calories by walking a few hundred feet to the store.

Backpacking and camping are awesome frugal activities. It costs nothing to take a hike. It costs a bit more to camp overnight, but even that can be done inexpensively. While browsing the web for camping stuff, I stumbled upon a great list of frugal suggestions that were originally posted to the Usenet group rec.scouting on 03 December 1994!

According to the original poster:

These low-cost equipment/ideas/fixes for Scouting and camping in general [were] originally found on a F-Net Scouting board and [were] reposted on Fidonet on Nov 11/92 by Steve Simmons. The file evidently originated with BSA Troop 886 in the USA.