Yay! my great new dental insurance finally went into effect!

It has been such a long time since I’ve been insured that I’ve unfortunately found myself suffering from some unnecessary dental pain. The good news is, my new employer provides an insurance policy that is really, really good. So, I’m planning on having my teeth fixed up right. My policy is so excellent, it turns out, that I’m actually pondering getting more done than just regular basic dentistry measures and looking into some cosmetic dental work done as well. My family has been asking about doing some of those fancy new clear braces or some laser whitening, so I’ll see what sort of prices we can get on dentists who do that sort of thing.

The major difficulty, for us, is figuring out how to find a dentist in our area. I feel bad saying it, but our family doesn’t even have a regular family dentist that we have a history with.We live in Tampa, Florida, so I’ve been on the lookout for a Tampa Bay dentist that has a good reputation and has a wide range of experience with the things we’re looking for. It’s difficult to find! There are a lot of things you want to consider when you’re searching for a dentist. For example, I don’t know if I would want to visit a dentist who didn’t get the bulk of his experience in another area of medicine.

As far as the most current dental services go, I’ve genuinely been considering the idea. The newest and most up-to-date techniques have really been taking off these past ten years or so. I keep hearing about them on TV, how much better they are than the usual dental techniques. I’ve been looking around the internet for “sedation dentistry Tampa” and I’m impressed by how much the training and techniques they use is just way beyond what you would have expected to get 30 years ago, so I’m hoping that my family will be able to enjoy such good dentistry now that I have a a job that provides dental insurance like this. No more Tampa dental emergency for us!

Getting some plumbing work done? I have been an Edmonton Plumber for the last 19 years, and the most common response I get from clients is “Why do plumbers charge so much?” This article is meant to explain for you why we as plumbers charge what we charge. Most of what I am writing about will be based on prices in Canada and with the Canadian dollar, but you will get the idea of where the costs of doing business comes from. I hope that after reading this you feel better paying a higher price then going with a low ball handyman that may not be in you and your families best interests at hand, and you may not want to be a diy plumber.

When I first started my Edmonton Plumbing company I failed miserably at the whole price objective thing. I needed work and would low ball other plumbers to get the jobs. Often the clients that did hire me were not the best clients, and many times they were the cheapest people in the city. Which means that they wanted the job for a low price and wanted all extras for free. This almost put my company into bankruptcy, which is not good for me, or for my clients.

In Edmonton the average plumber charges 150-185 to come to the door, then 85-92 per hour for every hour after that. If you have a very small job that only takes a half hour you could expect a bill for 192.50 to 231. This price is high, but for good reason. The employee that comes to your house gets paid for his or her time. As well as the costs for the van or truck to get there. The costs for the plumbing company for that half hour of work is as follows:

Plumber’s labour                   65.76

Other staff labour                  26.44

WCB                                      3.29

Employment Insurance            4.11

Vehicle                                 15.00

Guarantee                             46.00

Advertising                             8.00

Overhead                              30.12

Total                                   198.72

As you can see this leaves about 13.03 for profit. Can you see now that there is a lot more to running a business then what someone might think. Yes, there are some plumbers that work out of their homes, have no real advertising costs, and do everything for themselves. These companies might make more per billable hour, but they have a lot more non billable hours to work. For instance when I first started I worked about 45 billable hours per week, and about 20 non billable hours each week. Not counting any overhead if I charged 85 per hour for 45 hours but worked 65 hours then my real hourly rate was only 58.85. Which when you think about the fact that I could work for any plumbing company in the city and make between 41-47 per hour the risk reward ratio is not as high as what you may have thought. One other thing I have not mentioned is that there are many clients out there that rip off the people that work for them. These are called losses. 

After reading this you might think why would anyone want to do this? There is a lot of enjoyment that goes along with building your own company. And as you build you do make more money, plus when you are ready you can sell off the company for a capital gain.