Family / Health / Books: Q2 2026
If you’ve been around a while, you know that I’ve sent a quarterly email called “Family / Health / Books” to help us remember that we can goals outside of work and keep me accountable to mine. If you haven’t been around a while, now you do ;o)
So, with absolutely nothing to do with accounting, here’s what’s going on with…
FAMILY
One of my non-business goals this year was to teach our oldest to drive. Fun fact about Idaho: you get your learners permit at 14.5 and license at 15. And in rural counties of Idaho, where there is often no funding for public school drivers ed classes, there’s a law that allows parents to be responsible for the on-road portion of learning. (Gee, thanks 🙃)
Happy to report both baby and mother are doing well. She is a very safe and responsible driver and there has been minimal outbursts from my side of the car. I’m proud of us both. We should have a full-fledged driver next month.
HEALTH
Not only have I been on a health journey as I enter my 40s (perimenopause research, strength training, less alcohol, more protein, etc), I’ve also been on a quest to better understand my health insurance costs. What I’ve learned, through trial and error, is that when I ask to pay for a doctor visit as a “cash pay” patient (i.e. basically treat me as uninsured) my out of pocket costs are HALF the cost of when I pay for a doc visit through insurance. HALF. Yes, HALF.*
Obviously, when I pay as “cash pay” (not through insurance), I don’t get any credit towards my deductible, but as a pretty healthy family, we haven’t hit our deductible since our last pregnancy 10+ years ago. Because of all this learning, I’ve decided to pay for everything**, as a “cash pay” patient going forward, unless we have a truly catastrophic health event that would clearly hit our high-deductible plan limit. I think this should easily save us a few hundred dollars in health costs annually.
*This is specific to my insurance provider and my local health system. Everyone will have a different result here
**except fully covered visits like wellness and mammogram visits
BOOKS
Every summer, I kick off my summer reading with an Elin Hilderbrand book. She writes beach-reads that always take place on Nantucket and over-describe food. It’s my shameless pleasure. This year, I pulled The Identicals off my library shelf.
If you need a summer read, here’s a couple I’ve read earlier this year…
God of the Woods by Liz Moore – A mystery, but not a thriller, that takes place in an upstate NY summer camp. This isn’t normally my genre, but my Mom gave it to me for Christmas last year. It was good enough that I picked it for my local book club group to read next month.
The Ogress and The Orphans by Kelly Barnhill – This is juvenile / young adult fiction about kindness, greed, community, ogres, dragons, and even a little local government tax evasion for the accountants in the room 😘. The audiobook version would be perfect for a family road trip. The narrator’s voice sounds like grandma telling you a bedtime story.
I hope you are prioritizing whatever it is that lights you up outside of work this summer.
Don’t forget to live,
Erica
PS - Friendly reminder that I wrote / scheduled this email weeks ago and I’m currently on sabbatical. If you hit reply to this email (and please do!), I’ll get back to you after July 19th.
What’s Happening in Aligned
Recently Added to the Video Library:
Tax Scheduling: Panel Discussion [5.26.26] (3 solo firm owners share how they scheduled their clients this past tax season)
Tax Season Scheduling Playbook (same content as above, but in case you’d rather read than watch)
AI Show & Tell [6.8.26] (See what solo & small small firm owners are using Claude for)
Double Demo [6.16.26] (lots of new AI feature; lots of side discussion on running an efficient accounting firm)
🤔 Question of the Week > Looking back on the first part of the year, how did your workload and pay feel?
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More details in the link above.