Hello All,
I am going to be signing all my paper work in 2 weeks to get started on Invisalign. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. It's taken me a long time to get here (about 3 years of back and fourth....I think I'm a commitment phobe ). I know I definitely want straight teeth and you gotta do what ya gotta do. Anywho, I am trying to decide if I should do payments or if I should pay in full and save 5% of the cost. I know my treatment includes refinements and retainers. Does anyone have any advice on this?? Does it really matter if I pay everything before my treatment begins or is it smarter to pay as I go along with treatment??? Any advice would be helpful! Thanks!
I have been reading through this forum alot since I joined. I have seen quite a few posts about whether to pay up front or whether to pay monthly over the course of your treatment.
Alot of the comments were to do with: If you pay up front your ortho might not be as willing/helpful/interested as he would if you still owe him money (by paying in installments).
I can see where they are coming from... but surely if you have found a good, experienced and genuine orthodontist then that shouldn't be the case.
If you trust your orthodontist (which I should imagine you do, otherwise you wouldn't be going ahead with it all!) and feel that the 5% discount is worth it, then pay up front.
Personally, I would rather pay monthly (obviously only if it was interest free). But that's just me.
It all depends on how long the payment plan is for. If they will let you stretch it out over the length of the treatment, it might actually make more sense financially to take the monthly payments.
Definitely take them if you would have to borrow the money to pay upfront!
Otherwise I would ditto Chrystal on the fact that if you trust your ortho then payment upfront should be fine. I did that, and took the discount which saved me £125. My dentist has been brilliant and I haven't regretted that decision.
If the practice has a manager and more than one dentist/ortho then i doubt the dentist keeps much track of how everyone is paying. I'd expect they check your file for your treatment plan and leave payment processing up to the recieptionists and manager.
I liked the fact I felt like I had some power if I didnt pay the full amount up front. Even though it was never an issue for me, I still liked the fact. I have seen some horror stories on this or another forum from people who had paid in full and werent happy. I considered it an interest free loan. My ortho only offered 3% so my money went into a CD that paid 5% at that time. Then I was forced to pay this bill monthly so I still have my CD. In fact I'm getting ready to pay that LAST payment now! I think I just need more power when it comes to money!
Meryaten wrote:To Deb's point about what makes more sense financially, I'd say that in the current economic climate, at least in the USA, it would be somehwat hard to make more than 5% back on the money if you hang on to it and pay in installments - even CDs (Cerificates of Deposit) seem to be at a lower APY than this these days, and (of course) you can't put it all into a CD anyway, since then it is locked away for a fixed period.
I was factoring in inflation... If I could have paid my fee over the 18 months of treatment, it would have made sense. Inflation has gone over 5% here in the UK though, and the banks are currently paying reasonable interest on savings accounts.
I just did a search and found this thread.
I too was debating this although they were just put on last week and I decided on the installment method.
My ortho only offered 3% savings--that's 1.5% per year so I figured if I put that money in a cd for 2 years I might be better off.
Now I'm changing my mind because I forgot about the tax situation. If I pay upfront it drives my total medical deductions for the year well over the 7.5% of my adjusted income. so it may be smarter to pay upfront. Although I doubt they will give me my 3% back at this point even though it's only been 2 weeks.
Thanks for all the advice! I so appreciate it! I decided to go ahead and just do payments. Even though in the end it would have been a better deal for me to pay in full and save the 5%, I couldn't bare seeing such a big chunk of my savings being taken out all at once. So now I'm just waiting for the call from my ortho's office to tell me that my aligners are in. Should be in the next week or two. Wish me luck!
). I know I definitely want straight teeth and you gotta do what ya gotta do. Anywho, I am trying to decide if I should do payments or if I should pay in full and save 5% of the cost. I know my treatment includes refinements and retainers. Does anyone have any advice on this?? Does it really matter if I pay everything before my treatment begins or is it smarter to pay as I go along with treatment??? Any advice would be helpful! Thanks!
