physical health Archives • Bitches Get Riches

Long-Term Disability Insurance Is a Necessity… and a Scam

July 24, 2024August 7, 2024 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 6 Comments

As promised, for our ongoing series for Disability Pride Month, I’m explaining long-term disability insurance. Some employers offer this perk to their employees at low or no cost, so you may already have it. For others, long-term disability insurance probably feels like one more thing you “should” have, but don’t have the time, energy, or budget to get. Regardless, you’re going to learn so much today.

I wish I could say you were in for a treat! But you’re not.

You’re in for some kind of savory Jell-O salad.

I thought last week’s explainer on short-term disability insurance sent me to hell. Oh no! From today’s vantage point of the seventh bolgia of Malebolge (within the eighth circle of hell, where fraudulent thieves are ravaged for eternity by vengeful reptiles), I can confidently look back and say, “Aw, that wasn’t so bad!” Get ready to join me!

Learning about long-term disability insurance policies IS hell.

Your Yearly Free Medical Care Checklist

August 10, 2022March 7, 2024 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 9 Comments

If you are an American who is lucky enough to have health insurance, you almost certainly have free medical care coming your way.

Several annual and semi-annual services are available to you with no copay—and you have absolutely no reason not to use them. Technically, you have already bought them, as their cost is built into the premiums you’ve already paid. And your body will thank you for it! Even if you feel perfectly healthy, establishing a baseline of health will help your medical professionals detect problems early.

Pro-tip: don’t wait until the end of the year to do all this stuff! Every medical office I’ve ever been to is slammed during November and December as everyone tries to use up their benefits. Schedule it now to avoid the crush.

Here’s what you should be doing every year.

{ MASTERPOST } Everything You Need to Know about Self-Care

October 7, 2019April 12, 2024 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 3 Comments

Self-care! It’s not just for rich white ladies with 100,000 Instagram followers!

Self-care is for you.

Yes you. As hard as it may be to believe when you’re at your worst and feeling low, you deserve a little care and maintenance now and again.

And we want you to have it. So here it is, children: the complete works of the Bitches on self-care, personal betterment, and making your life happier, healthier, and wealthier.

You’ve earned it.

Ask the Bitches: How Do I Prepare for a Recession?

January 14, 2019June 2, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 6 Comments

We’ve gotten a lot of questions recently about a hypothetical looming recession. The stock market has taken a bruising; bellwether companies are stumbling. Do such omens and portents mean that another recession on its way?

The good news is, we can answer this one very easily.

Yes. Another recession is coming.

We know this with 100% certainty.

How?

The same way we know with 100% certainty that Piggy and I will be dead within the next hundred years. It is in the nature of a living being to die, just as it is in the nature of economies to grow and contract. The sun rises; the sun falls. The tides go in; the tides go out. It’s just the way things are.

Sounds kinda shitty, right? It’s possible that, someday far in the future, someone will devise some new system that will smooth out or even eliminate these cycles. Maybe the nature of goods and services will change so fundamentally that economies will transform in ways we can’t even imagine. But that’s Phillip K. Dick stuff—innovations that live so far in a hypothetical future that they’re still science fiction. You should plan to endure these market cycles throughout your lifetime.

And yes, there are lots of things you can do to make yourself more prepared. Let’s go through them.

I Think I Need To Go the Emergency Room?

June 25, 2018June 1, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 14 Comments

Or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part One: Severe Testicular Injuries.

General content warning: this post discusses medical stuff that some people might find squicky. Possibly men in particular. As if they needed more reasons to not read this blog!

Last Sunday was a pretty damn perfect day. It was my wedding anniversary—FOUR MORE YEARS! It was also the last weekend before my little brother (who lives with us) leaves for a life-changingly awesome two-month working vacation overseas.

So we drove into the Big City to celebrate. We marveled at nature’s weird-ass creations at the local aquarium. Afterwards we ate an obscene amount of oysters, shrimp, scallops, and hot buttered lobster rolls. Then we drove home and laid out in the king-size hammock in the backyard, reading The Subtle Knife aloud to each other. The air was warm; the world was still; and the late-afternoon light was hazy and golden. It was a perfect day.

And then all hell broke loose.

Financial Lessons Learned from a Night in the ER

March 29, 2018May 31, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 43 Comments

I have always been accident prone. Like a real-life heroine in a YA novel featuring vampires and forbidden romance, my most benign character flaw is that I’m clumsy as fuck.

I guess I just never grew out of that stage of puberty where you walk smack into walls that have been there for your whole life and end up with bruises of mysterious origin all over your legs. I just don’t know where my ends are! I’m missing whatever survival instinct informs the human body not to grievously injure itself on a regular basis.

So I guess it was just a matter of time before I ended up in the emergency room, writhing and blinded by the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life.

You guys. I hurt myself really, really badly. And I’m going to be paying for it for a long time.

The Joys of Getting Around Without a Damn Car

February 19, 2018May 30, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 38 Comments

Loyal citizens of Bitch Nation, I have a confession to make.

I fucking hate driving.

It’s tedious and boring. It takes up time I could spend in other ways. It raises my blood pressure because everyone else is a really fucking bad driver but definitely not me I’m perfect. Cars are noisy, dirty, and expensive. And I’m expected to follow the rules of the road when I just wanna be all

So yeah. Me and cars? We don’t get a long.

And I’m not alone. Haunt the halls of lifestyle blogs and personal finance advice long enough and you’ll run into people who have gone to great lengths to go without driving.

Living a carless lifestyle is entirely possible for a lot of us, and the joys and benefits are many. Getting around without a car saves you a trunkload of cash (see what I did there?), it’s better for your health, and it’s better for the environment. It can even save you time, in certain circumstances.

Below I examine the joys and practicalities of carless modes of transportation. It’s by no means a complete list, so I encourage class participation! Tell me all about your car-free mobility in a comment.

Run With Me if You Want to Save: How Exercising Will Save You Money

July 11, 2016May 26, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 11 Comments

Being unhealthy and generally unfit is expensive. Living a truly sedentary lifestyle (one in which the word “exercise” is avoided at all cost and bursts of physical motion are vanishingly rare) is associated with all kinds of expensive illnesses and health risks. It literally costs you money to be lazy and out of shape.

But being fit and healthy is affordable by comparison. You can save yourself all kinds of money on healthcare costs and lifestyle expenses just by working your muscles periodically throughout the day. As far as frugality goes, physical fitness is an all-around genius tactic for saving.

Why You Probably Don’t Need That Gym Membership

April 18, 2016May 26, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 9 Comments

Ok I know I just told you to start working out as a way to stay healthy and wealthy, but listen up: you can do it all without a gym membership.

Gyms are smelly, crowded, and over-priced. Their hours are sometimes inconvenient, and there’s no guarantee you’ll get a turn on the equipment you want to use or fit into that over-crowded aerobics class.

Even the most affordable, at $30 a month, are a big chunk of change that you could surely use for more lofty goals. And while the most expensive ones also offer things like saunas and in-house massage therapists, do you really use those services often enough to justify paying $500 or more a month?

Answer’s no, snowdrop. When you get right down to it, a gym membership is a great way to tell the world “My New Year’s Resolution was to lose ten pounds by going to the gym six days a week, but it’s February 10th and there’s a new season of Orange Is the New Black on Netflix and I’m too ashamed to cancel my gym membership so HERE WE ARE.”