Saving Without Sacrifice Blog

Here are two tips to lower your healthcare costs:

Make the most of discounts. Many insurers offer discounts on services to promote healthy lifestyles, such as gym memberships, smoking-cessation and weight-loss programs, chiropractic service and acupuncture.

Sign up for employer incentives. Many employers are offering premium discounts, contributions to health savings accounts and outright cash incentives to employees who sign up for a wellness program or health assessment. Some also offer perks to people with, say, asthma, lower-back pain or diabetes for enrolling in a disease-management program.

This being National Osteoporsis Awareness and Prevention Month, we thought we would give you a few ideas on living a healthy life and saving money at the same time.

1. Prevent rather than treat – Wev’e all heard prevention is the best cure, and it is!  One of the most effective ways to keep your costs of health care down is to take up and maintain a healthy lifestyle.  This includes maintaining or attaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly, kicking any unhealthy habits, having regualr checkups to catch any problems in their early stage, and taking advantage of any wellness programs provided through your employer or local comunity center.

2. Take advantage of free services whenever possible – Most communities have clinics that may ofer free health screenings as part of their services to the community.  Local clinics, hospitals and pharmacies often provide a variety of these, including blood pressure and cholesterol screenings and even mammograms.  They may be advertised in your local paper or on your local radio station.

3. Eat foods in their most natural, unprocessed state - The processing of foods destroys nutritional content.  The more processes it goes through before it gets to your body, the less it has to offer you.