My Frugal Week

Although Monday was a holiday this past week, I was scheduled to work every day, but then inclement weather came and school was cancelled for two days. Ugh. This next week I have three days scheduled, so we will see what happens. 
Good news for us, we won a free steak dinner from Fresh & Low this week. There was enough there to split it between the both of us and it was delicious. 

This week I also won a contest from Kroger and won $25 worth of free groceries. They applied the balance to my Kroger card and although we've not been there yet, I'll post about it when we do go. 
This week I worked on saving money on our prescription drugs. I don't order them all from the same place as some places offer better savings. 
It is hard to beat the 90 day prescription drugs for $7.50 from Publix, so we have some there. Another RX I  get from Food City, but learned that Walmart will beat their price and save me $15, so I will make the switch this week. 

Food Lion has Oscar Meyer beef hot dogs on sale for $1.99 this week when you buy five. So, I stopped in there on Friday and bought five. 
Food City has Hunt's pasta sauce on sale for 69¢ each when you buy ten. So, I stopped in there on Friday and bought ten. 
We stopped in at the bread outlet and stocked up on bread and hot dog buns for the upcoming week. 

Payday came this week and my check was actually correct and included those missed days from last month. So, all the bills were paid this week. My car registration is also due at the end of March, so I went ahead and paid it too. 
How was your week?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~ My Linktree

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Saving Money on Prescription Drugs

We've discussed this topic here at the Frugal Workshop before, but as always it's good to review your expenses regularly to see if you can get them even lower. 
Last week I worked a very stressful job all week and my blood pressure was high as a result, so yesterday I made a visit to my doctor's office. 
Come to find out my regular doctor had retired, so my appointment was with a new doctor. This turned out to be a good thing. 
She was asking me about my prescriptions and told me how I could save money on some of them. Turns out Publix now has some 90 day prescriptions for $7.50.  So, we ended up transferring some of mine to Publix. 
Turns out one of my Mom's prescriptions is also on the $7.50 list, so she is going to switch her RX over to Publix as well. 
Here is a list of the prescription drugs they are offering.  
This is a great savings for only $2.50 per month, and just goes to show that you should always be reviewing your expenses to see if you can get them ever lower than you are paying now. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Saving Money on Prescriptions

My doctor told me one time that pharmacies like Walgreen's and CVS usually charge more money for prescriptions than smaller pharmacies. For the most part that is correct, but as with any area it really pays to do your homework and do the research. 
Our insurance company will only pay for a certain number of prescriptions per month and since we use more than the allotted amount I have to pay cash for the other prescriptions we use each month, so I did my homework last year and have definitely saved money in this area. 
The first thing I did was to write down all of our prescriptions so I could have this information all in one place. Then I figured out how much each one cost at CVS, which is the pharmacy we regularly use. 
CVS is my go to pharmacy because they give detailed information with each prescription, they have a convenient drive through service, and they give me a free bottle of water every time I fill a prescription.  However, the down side to that is they charge a lot more money for certain prescriptions. 
During my research I called multiple pharmacies to ask them the cost of each prescription. And I found out some interesting details such as...
Did you know Publix offers some drugs for free such as Montelukast (my daughter and I both take this drug), Amlodipine, Lisinopril, and Metformin all for free? They also offer certain antibiotics for free as well. You can read about their free prescriptions here. CVS charges over $100 to my Insurance company for the Montelukast. 
Fresh and Low, a locally owned grocery store here, also offers some prescriptions for free along with free antibiotics, and free monthly vitamins for children under the age of 18 years old. 
Another way of saving money on prescriptions is to shop around for the $4.00 prescriptions that became popular a few years ago. 
Food City has become my second go to pharmacy for this reason. I have been able to save so much money getting several of my prescriptions at Food City for only $4.00 verses the astronomical prices for the same drugs at CVS. 
I love CVS, but I have to do what is in the best interest for me and my family and our budget. 
My Mom uses Walgreen's pharmacy and she thinks they are the bee's knees. She has a prescription for high blood pressure that she was unable to fill at Walgreen's because they wanted $79 for it and she is on a limited income. 
After a great deal of discussion I finally convinced her to call Food City and check their price of the drug. She called and Food City offers the same drug for $21, so I took Mom about two weeks ago and had her prescription filled. 
You want to know what she told me this week? 
She said that she felt so good, knowing that she was able to take her blood pressure medicine EVERY day because she was able to afford it. I didn't even know she was only taking it every other day because of the cost.  As you can imagine, that made me very sad. 
Mom was reluctant to change pharmacies because she is a loyal customer and didn't want to leave a place she had used for years. And many people probably feel that way, but if you are trying to save money in this area, I would consider calling around and seeing if you are able to save yourself some money. I know we certainly were able to do that. 
I hope you find this information helpful. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Mail Order Prescriptons

My daughter's Insurance company decided in January 2016 that maintenance medications would have to be filled by mail order rather than through a retail store pharmacy. 
The problem with this was we were not informed about these changes. Therefore our limited number of uses for a retail pharmacy have been used up already. 
My daughter also has a secondary insurance that will pick up the balance. There has been a lot of red tape involved in figuring out not only how to get her medicine in a timely manner, but also how to go about getting the medicine paid for by her second insurance. 
The primary insurance company wants me to pay for the balance of her prescriptions out of pocket. My cost would be $474.69. This would be a huge blow to my budget, which is why I need the secondary insurance to pick up the balance. 
As it stands right now I have asked the primary insurance company to let us use a retail pharmacy since they are refusing to coordinate benefits with our secondary insurance.
As of right now we are awaiting a response from them. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~