HSAs & The Wrestler

I've been eligible for COBRA twice in my life but in both instances couldn't use it. Even getting to continue the negotiated rate that my previous employer had with the insurance company was way too expensive for the situations I had been in (even if I had still had the same salary).

Luckily I do have an HSA this time around, which is nice. Rather than being at ground zero, I've got a little health-nest egg. It does make me happy to think that the egg is built out of money that otherwise would have come from my paycheck and gone into the black hole of normal health insurance monthly premiums. So, I guess until the fountain of youth is found or universal health care is figured out, whichever comes first, I am relatively happy for a little while.

My trouble is that I find it hard to imagine the funds I accrue in my HSA will cover me as I age. Perhaps if I was in a profession where I could count on my employer making contributions for me, or at least matching them, I might make the $2,900 maximum contribution per year but as it stands I put in a little less than 60$ a month and the interest I earned is considerably less than the $2.00 service fee they charge me with each month. I also wish I would have not paid extra for the dental coverage over the past six months. Clearly I should have put that money into my HSA since I didn't go to the dentist once during that time.

It doesn't appear that I will make that much money with my HSA over time unless I find some way to feel comfortable investing the money so as to get a better interest return on it. I'm not interested in gambling the money in my HSA through investing it. All I have to do is imagine being 75 years old and loosing the money in my HSA because of a bad investment that some faceless person at my HSA bank made. This kind of example is very real right now. There are people out there that lost the bulk of their retirement-eggs. I think they say that the only thing certain is death and taxes. So just put the tax man in charge.

As it stands I found myself a high deductible health plan for right around $100/month to go with my HSA. I won't be contributing much into it for awhile which is ok because I'm young and I have time to make money and put money into it. A solution would be good universal health care. Like public education, I don't see how health care is not a basic right. The crisis we're experiencing right now is really indicative of how capitalism tends to experience these crises and privatization of things that need to be provided is not a solution. Basic needs should be guaranteed by the government since they're the only ones who are structured to provide it no matter what.

Hope this post wasn't too boring. I'll finish up by saying that I finally saw The Wrestler, a movie I was very eager to see. So, the whole movie is very grainy which I thought gave it a nice, raw feeling. The casting was superb. Mickey Rourke was so real as 'Randy the Ram' I had to go back and find old pictures of him to remember what he looked like normally. I'd be sad and disappointed if he didn't get the Oscar. Marissa Tomei was also a perfect cast is seemed to me; however, I feel like there was not enough of a role or performance for her to get the Oscar. For some reason the whole movie felt sort of slow and then it was over before there was a chance for there to be a good plot. I wish his daughter's role had more of a chance to exist as well as Tomi's role; it was a sparse, pretty movie about a gristley, real man. So no award for screen writing to be expected or anything like that but most definitely worth seeing.