Orthodontist?

[wallawallakids]

I posted this on the community board, but now I am wondering if I should have posted it here because you all are so smart with money. We have 4 kids, all 4 need some treatment but one can wait a few years. I am now starting the process with the other three. She is offering a payment plan without interest, but if I pay up front I save 5%. To me 5% isn't a lot of a savings, but with this much money going out, it comes to a little over $400, which is real money. Also the hassle of not paying every month is nice too. She was going to get back to me on if she will give me a cash discount on top of that or if she will give me another discount for paying all 3 up front. Here is my question: 1) is there any con with paying it all in advance? And 2) is it worth taking the money from our savings account to save $400 total? It would be around a third of our savings and it will take me some time to build that back up. I am having a hard time deciding to save the money, vs. having more cash on hand? I am normally a "any penny you can save" person but I also realize I need to be smart about this and I don't know which way is smarter? Any thoughts? What have you done with your kids? Thanks!

 

[kj2mom]

My daughter just got her braces off today, woohoo. Only having one, I did the interest free monthly plan. I think in your situation it would depend on how vigilant you would be about replacing the savings. Would you budget so that your savings account would receive a monthly payment just like your ortho would? If yes, then I would probably pay the full amount and get the savings, if not I would probably just go with the interest free through the ortho. Good luck to your kiddos!

 

[wallawallakids]

Thank you, kj2mom. I can pay the savings back, but it would take me a LONG time to pay that much back. Probably around the same amount of time it would take for the payment plan. Maybe 2 years. I might be able to do it in 1 year if I worked really hard but that would be if there were no other issues coming up during the year....and we all know how that can go!

 

[cvjw]

I paid all of my kid's orthodontic treatments upfront to get the cash discount. One thing to keep in mind is to make sure that this orthodontist is well established and in good enough financial shape to stay in business the whole time your kids are in treatment. I never had any doubt that my orthodontist would be in business the full time, so I felt OK giving him thousands of dollars up front.

I have a feeling you would be out of luck if you paid upfront and then the ortho went out of business. You would end up having to pay twice

 

[wallawallakids]

Hmm...I didn't even consider her going out of business! That would really not be good. Alright, I think I have made up my mind and will just go with the payment plan. Thank you!

 

[tvguy]

I'm cheap so I am almost always going to take the option the nets me the lowest cost. That's what we did with both our kids. I certainly would give a little consideration to the financial and physical health of the orthodontist. I don't recall hearing about orthodontists going belly up. I have heard of them retiring, selling out, or dying, but in those instances the practice has always been taken over by another orthodontist who agrees to complete the treatment plans that have already been paid for.

 

[StephMK]

I know it's a decent savings to pay upfront but I would NOT pay for all of them upfront at all. We have put 3 kids through braces and are impatiently waiting for the last kid to get them off. Here has been our experience -

Kid #1 - moved out of state between Phase #1 & Phase #2 - phase 1 needed when 8 for significant cosmetic reasons. Ortho closed office at the closest location after treatment was finished. His other office was too far to use for future kids.
Kid #2 - ortho closed up shop without notice - we showed up for an appt. and he had closed that day, shut down, gone. He seemed very busy and had just moved to new spot but either had health issue or legal trouble. The accounts were transferred to someone else but they were much farther away. We transferred to someone else and luckily he charged slightly less than the original contract to finish the work.
Kid # - using same ortho as the one who took over Kid #2. It was supposed to be a year of treatment for minor issues, we are heading towards the 2nd year and not happy that they keep allowing overcorrections to happen, then they have to be corrected back. We would not use them for any future kids.

We have always done monthly payments and insurance has covered up to $1500 per kid. Since insurance was different for Kid #1 phases, we were able to use that benefit 2x.

If you are still shopping for an ortho, I'd check their hours and see how easy it is to get an appt. Our 1st one had limited hours and 3rd one only does certain appts. at certain times of the day. However, they are very easy to schedule with and we can often get early morning appts before school unless it is a longer procedure.

Good luck!

 

[runwad]

What I did was put the money in my Flexible Spending Account to bring my taxable income down and then made the payments from that account. Of course now I think you can only put $2,500/yr in your FSA but the number was higher when we were going thru this.

 

[wallawallakids]

Thank you for all your help and replies. It has really helped me think of a lot of things that did not even cross my mind initially. It really does sound like the payment plan is the best option and the one that affords us the most security. Thank you again.

 

[bbarba]

The other question to ask is will I make more than the 400 I would save by reinvesting that money in some account. There is talk of the fed raising rates, which could point to an increase in the savings amount. Can you move your money to a money market fund and increase any interest? It is not always about saving money spent, but in which scenario will i have the most money at the end.

 

[sookie]

3 people in my house are in braces right now. This is the second set for everyone for a variety of reasons. Post-surgical care, second stage, and one is back in braces due to relapse and non-compliance.

We had an orthodontist do our second set of braces. A general family practice dentist did the first.

Having an orthodontist do your braces costs no more than having a general dentist do the work. An orthodontist specializes in orthodontics; a general dentist does not. You can have a variety of results with either one.

My advice to you is to go to an orthodontist.

 

[ctc917]

I posted this on the community board, but now I am wondering if I should have posted it here because you all are so smart with money. We have 4 kids, all 4 need some treatment but one can wait a few years. I am now starting the process with the other three. She is offering a payment plan without interest, but if I pay up front I save 5%. To me 5% isn't a lot of a savings, but with this much money going out, it comes to a little over $400, which is real money. Also the hassle of not paying every month is nice too. She was going to get back to me on if she will give me a cash discount on top of that or if she will give me another discount for paying all 3 up front. Here is my question: 1) is there any con with paying it all in advance? And 2) is it worth taking the money from our savings account to save $400 total? It would be around a third of our savings and it will take me some time to build that back up. I am having a hard time deciding to save the money, vs. having more cash on hand? I am normally a "any penny you can save" person but I also realize I need to be smart about this and I don't know which way is smarter? Any thoughts? What have you done with your kids? Thanks!

 

[ctc917]

Hi I'm in the process of going to an Orthrodontist with my last child(did go thru the process with the first 2 but at a different Orthrodontist) so with us we decided to find a new orthrodontist closer to home and we loved her in the beginning but as time went on we had problems with her and she had problems with us...our insurance paid her and we made month payments but at one point we decided to part company she had only completed 1/2 of the items on the list of items she was to complete for the dollar amt she was charging us and at this point she had all her money. So we went to her and she didn't want to give us any of the money back and didnt want to change the way she was working with my son so we had to call in a lawyer and at the end she did give us some of the money back..
So this is why I will never prepay because of this happening because 2 yrs(give or take) is a long time and you never know what could happen ing that time from...because if you don't prepay and you have issues with her/him or the staff you can pay what you owe and move on but if they have your money it will be harder to get them to give it back to you if you want to part ways...

ctc917

 

[Halloweenqueen]

I had the older four in braces at the same time. Only one is still in treatment and my youngest starts this summer.

I met with the finance manager from the beginning. They eventually offered 5% off the second, 10% off the third, and 20% off the fourth and fifth. I was able to take the total of the four and divide the total in 24 interest free payments. I paid about $500 a month. Boy did we celebrate that last payment!

Very happy with the results!

 

[sharona]

I would not prepay unless it was substantially more than 5% discount. DD's ortho retired suddenly due to his wife's illness unfortunately. For us, DD'S braces had just come off so it was ok, we've seen someone else for follow ups and retainer issues... but things do happen so no I would not prepay, especially someone I was unfamiliar with. What if you child just doesn't like her?

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

What I did was put the money in my Flexible Spending Account to bring my taxable income down and then made the payments from that account. Of course now I think you can only put $2,500/yr in your FSA but the number was higher when we were going thru this.

This is what we did. Dh and I could each do $2500. Also 100% of our annual contribution was available to us on Jan 1. Both kids went into braces on MLK day (2 yrs ago) so the timing worked out perfectly. The FSA covered the down payment (around 12-1500 each) plus the next 12 months of payments. We didn't have to touch any savings and still paid no interest. Ds18 will get his off in a few weeks. Ds14 needed more work and is not so compliant with wearing rubber bands so he has a while to go still. All payments were done in Jan. Yay!

 

[Mahtab Partovi]

i am about to as the same question but get my answer here.So i think i should probabl go for the annual plan, so that i could save my tax and expenses.I need to work a little hard to make the payments and get rid of this.My orthodontist have been charged me with a good amount of bills and soon i will take teh annual plan.But the type of orthodontist he is surely a very good at his work.Thanks all for sharing the information here.

 

[agie65]

To me 400 saving is not a big amount of money compare to all the money you have to fork out up front and something happens to Orthodontist. I would keep monthly interest free plan, that will also encourage you to save little more to pay monthly and keep your savings in bank.

 

[AP1209]

Keeping my fingers crossed that my DD10 wont need braces. Just went to dentist and teeth look good so far. Only two more baby teeth left. I don't need her teeth cutting into my Disney Vacation fund

 

[HM]

Are they offering a sibling discount? The place I went to gave me a discount on my daughter, since my son had already been a patient.