Affording Surgery: Medical Loans vs. Saving Up

[Crow]

The next big step in my transition is going to be top surgery, but I'm not quite sure where to start on the financial side of things. I'm already stretched to the limits financially-- I'm going to be attending college full-time for the next four years all while working to afford living essentials like rent, phone, and bus fare.

If at all possible, I would like to have my top surgery sometime either next summer or the summer after. The surgeons I'm looking at are mostly around the $7,000 range. The question is, how am I going to fund it?

What are your experiences with paying for surgery? If you used medical loans/credit (such as Care Credit), what was the experience like? What were the steps you had to take and obstacles you had to deal with along the way? If you paid for it out of pocket, how did you manage to save up the money and how long did it take?

Mostly I'm just scoping out my financial options. If you have any kind of surgery financing story or resource, please feel free to share!

[mrs izzy]

The next big step in my transition is going to be top surgery, but I'm not quite sure where to start on the financial side of things. I'm already stretched to the limits financially-- I'm going to be attending college full-time for the next four years all while working to afford living essentials like rent, phone, and bus fare.

If at all possible, I would like to have my top surgery sometime either next summer or the summer after. The surgeons I'm looking at are mostly around the $7,000 range. The question is, how am I going to fund it?

What are your experiences with paying for surgery? If you used medical loans/credit (such as Care Credit), what was the experience like? What were the steps you had to take and obstacles you had to deal with along the way? If you paid for it out of pocket, how did you manage to save up the money and how long did it take?

Mostly I'm just scoping out my financial options. If you have any kind of surgery financing story or resource, please feel free to share!

If you are in the states more and more colleges and universities are making there student insurance policies to cover all TG services up to encluding GCS. So i would check and see if maybe it is offered.
For me when in the states i was covered under a HSA and that gave me a way to save for GCS, hormones and things that were not covered under the policy its self. But that only works if your insurance is a HSA type account.

I know also there are more and more states adding GID into there laws of discrimination and if your state or school state has such a goverment policy you have a chance to have things covered.

I would say save as best you can, Make a account just for your needs and maybe tomorrow or the next coming days or months GID will be covered by insurance.

Luck
Izz

[aleon515]

I've looked into CareCredit. They have a little link to figure out what your loan will cost you. If it hadn't been for CareCredit I don't think my cat would still be here. This was a number of years ago, so obviously they aren't a fly by night operation (actually is GE).  But the loans aren't cheap. OTOH, they might be better than a credit card, depending. I've been setting aside a hundred or two and am not doing too badly but not up to what I need. In my cat's case though, I was able to pay off the loan in a year and they offer an intro rate of 0%. Nice if you can do this, but for $7000 seems unlikely.

If you have good credit you might be able to go to your bank, which might be cheaper. At least the APR might be less. I may be trying this first.

Obviously the lower the loan here the better: http://www.carecredit.com/apply/

You should definitely look into using your insurance.


--Jay

[DriftingCrow]

Crow, do you have health insurance from your college/university? I know a few trans guy who got chest surgery and it was at least partially covered by their school's insurance.

My uni just changed insurance, so I haven't looked at the new policy yet, but under our old one, I could've gotten top surgery covered up to so much. . . like $5 K or so if I remember correctly. . .

Anyways, you might want to check that out, taking out a loan for a few grand to cover whatever insurance doesn't shouldn't be too difficult or saving up a little for it.

[Crow]

Thanks for the ideas, guys!

I don't know for sure what my school's insurance policy covers, but I will ask them. It says it's "sickness/injury" insurance, so I'm a bit concerned that it won't cover something like top surgery because it's not a sickness or injury?

I have a side job where I format papers from time to time (not a reliable income, but money is money), so I think I'll designate my income from that as top surgery money, since my income from my primary job covers my living expenses.

EDIT//

Yeah, I just looked it up. My school insurance doesn't cover any kind of elective surgery, gender related or not. Alas.

[King Malachite]

There's also scholarships you can look into for your top surgery....more specifically CK Life and Jim Collins Foundation.

For me, I'm just going to pay that out of pocket and I'm going to do that by saving up the money when I start to work.  If I would stop being so lazy, I could probably have it done within the next year and a half if I worked really hard for it.  Then again, my situation is a bit different since I'm living at home.  However, I do believe saving and cutting back on things you don't really need to spend money on will help alot.  Until I can get a job, I make money by selling the junk I have laying around in my room and hunting for change on the ground.  There are times where I will come into a little bit of money that my family gives me so I just save it, but I definately reccomend selling things you don't need anymore.  If you don't have anything to sell, go out to yardsales to buy things to resell.  My father is teaching me the art of reselling so that may be something I do in the future.  I was even told of a story of a woman who paid off her SRS by doing that. 


There's also the go fund me donation site and fiverr.com where you can sell your talents online for $4

[Crow]

Thanks! I knew about the Jim Collins Foundation but not CK Life. Once surgery time gets a little closer, I will try my hand at applying.

I really ought to get back in the habit of drawing so I can earn a bit of extra money doing that, too.

[Simon]

Out of personal experience I would advise steering clear of Care Credit unless you are absolutely positive you can make the payments on time every time. I used them in 2010 to get my wisdom teeth removed (borrowed 2 grand). Then I was laid off and the interest rate skyrockets if you are late or miss a payment. I had no choice but to use them at the time because my wisdom teeth came in impacted and were making me sick. They're a godsend in a true emergency but be aware of their terms and conditions.

[Arch]

Crow, is your heart set on this particular school? You might transfer to a school that covers surgery.

You can also look into your school's job board--and keep checking it. You might find a little part-time job, maybe a temporary job or two, that you can take on while going to school. For example, when I was in college, our newspaper was hiring a proofreader to work a few hours a week. And the job board once had a posting about a temp job that one of my compatriots got to before I could apply--the library needed someone to catalog all of the Russian books, and we had quite a few volumes. You never know what opportunities will come your way if you keep looking.

[Crow]

Thanks for the heads up on Care Credit! Does anyone know of any other medical loan options that are a bit more flexible with people in awkward financial situations? I work a lot of temporary/seasonal jobs due to being a college student and the nature of my work (environmental and education jobs are notorious for being seasonal nature, and I work both), which means I sometimes have periods of a month or two out of work.

I'm set on staying in Rhode Island. There are two other schools in RI that offer similar majors, which I suppose I would be alright with transferring to in theory... but the other two schools are private schools and way more expensive, even though the public school I'm attending actually has a way better Wildlife/Marine Biology program than the private options. In the end, the transfer would probably cost me more than paying for surgery out of pocket and might not even end up getting my surgery covered. Plus, really... right now getting my bachelor's degree is more important to me than getting top surgery. If I have to put one of them off to make the other possible, top surgery is going to have to wait.

Right now I'm having a hard enough time finding a job to pay for rent during the school year (my current job is summer only). Once I get that settled, I can evaluate how much money I can put into savings and how much time I have left for extra money saving endeavors. I have a couple weeks of no work/school at all coming up, so I'm definitely planning to use those to do some freelance work and earn some spare cash, which will be reserved as top surgery money.

[DriftingCrow]

Crow, is your heart set on this particular school? You might transfer to a school that covers surgery.

Yeah you're so close to MA, and that's where I go to school (where my school might still cover top surgery though I still haven't checked yet) and the transguys I know who had their school insurance cover it also went to school in MA -- it think it was BU and/or Northeastern. If you're planning on going to grad school, those are excellent schools and you might be closer to paying for top surgery.

[Crow]

Thanks Learned-- BU has an awesome Marine Bio program that I was already looking at for grad school, actually! So does UMass Dartmouth. If either of those covers it, I may put off surgery a couple extra years and make it happen during grad school, instead.

[aleon515]

Thanks for the heads up on Care Credit! Does anyone know of any other medical loan options that are a bit more flexible with people in awkward financial situations? I work a lot of temporary/seasonal jobs due to being a college student and the nature of my work (environmental and education jobs are notorious for being seasonal nature, and I work both), which means I sometimes have periods of a month or two out of work.

My understanding is that it is VERY flexible. I don't exactly know what you mean as I think that's one of the strong points (a weak point is cost of the loan) but you can get everything from $500 and up and pick that rate you pay it back.  I don't think there is exactly a top limit. I think I borrowed $2000 for the cat. But since I paid it off in a year, they didn't charge me interest. You aren't going to get some kind of loan which you don't have to pay it back for awhile or something like that. My understanding that the only loans like that are school loans (as you are continuing to "use the service") and some kinds of layaway type products. You could take the longest time possible to pay off, but that does increase your loan. Higher the pay back, higher the interest. Bank loans are typically the same thing, but you might get lower rates. My understanding is your credit has to be better perhaps 700 or so. CareCredit allows something on the order of 550+. My understanding is that if you pay late even once your rate will jump to 22-30%.

However there are some other options, AFAIK. Check out here. It gives info, which is also helpfui to me. It uses the term cosmetic surgery. Of course that's not what it is, but...

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/10-financing-options-for-cosmetic-surgery-1284.php


Again check out the insurance, you might be surprised.

--Jay



--Jay

[tvc15]

I used Carecredit and picked the 18 month payback option. So I have to pay them back the full amount in 18 months. If I take longer than that they will hit me with jacked up interest rates (and they apply to the original loan, not the amount remaining). You can do the math to figure out exactly how much you will have to pay each month to meet your goal in time. As long as you pay the minimum amount due each month they won't add interest rates, but if you make a smaller payment one month that's just more money you'll have to add on to a future payment. Carecredit has many options... like, 6 month, 12 month, 18 month, 24 month, etc. etc. but not all surgeons will accept whichever one you want. Mine actually only accepted 6 and 12 month payment plans but they let me do the 18. I skimped on a lot of my payments so I am having to pay over $600 a month to have it all paid off in time. If this sounds like something you can do, certainly look into it because then you can get your surgery done right away. I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where I CAN spend all my money paying back this loan. Otherwise I would just have to recommend saving up your money. If I had my druthers that's how I would've done it but it was imperative I had surgery ASAP.

[Crow]

Ahh, thanks for the clarifications guys-- I don't really have a good grasp on how loans work.

For now, I'm going to start saving up at a $150/month rate, which will mean I can have my surgery right after graduating college if all goes according to plan. If a better option makes itself available between now and then, though, I'm open to changes in plans!

[King Malachite]

Ahh, thanks for the clarifications guys-- I don't really have a good grasp on how loans work.

For now, I'm going to start saving up at a $150/month rate, which will mean I can have my surgery right after graduating college if all goes according to plan. If a better option makes itself available between now and then, though, I'm open to changes in plans!

Sounds like a plan. Plus, the more you make on the side (like your drawing), the quicker you will get there. Best of luck to you!

[aleon515]

Ahh, thanks for the clarifications guys-- I don't really have a good grasp on how loans work.

For now, I'm going to start saving up at a $150/month rate, which will mean I can have my surgery right after graduating college if all goes according to plan. If a better option makes itself available between now and then, though, I'm open to changes in plans!

If you get a loan is really critical that  you understand how they work, but the best rule of thumb is this: They make money for the lender. Think of a way the lender can make more and they will make it. Late on a payment? Figured wrong? what it is the lender wins.
A credit union is the nicest but I don't know to what extent they do personal loans, thinking not so much. If you need  a loan the lowest possible is the best.


--Jay