@Anonymous wrote:$20k coast to cost? You got yourself a deal. It cost $16k just to take HEMS from scene to a hospital, even if it's 30 miles away.
It actually cost a bit over 30k but the company was willing to take 20k and bill me for the rest. It wasn't an "emergency" EMT style deal but it did require a monitoring nurse and my mom was in a stretcher. The crew consisted of the nurse and two pilots. It was a small jet and we had to make one stop for fuel.
It was arranged at the last minute. I probably could have made arrangement the next day since I can verbally authorize bank wires. When they tried to authorize the charge, Citi declined even though it was within my avail credit probably because of the size and that it was a "card not present" services purchase. However, I called Citi's CSR and they escalated it and worked with me to get the charge approved through their automatic system. They tried a manual authorization but since the billing was also outsourced (these charter air ambulances are small ops) we had to get Citi to change some sort of internal account flags to allow the purchase to procede. I really hand it to Citi though because they were diligent in helping us overcome the tech issues.
I piggybacked and rode with them. No TSA, just hop aboard. Very nice flight, refueling was fast at a small TX airport. They had personel and ambulance transport at both ends so we were at my home pretty fast. The next week I wrote a check for the difference.
One of my goals since abandoning my decade long, cash only, no debts, no credit cards approach to life has been to get my credit to the point where I can splurge now and then when needed. Hopefully the next time will be for a nice vacation or something more pleasant.
Etoa:
I have sometimes reflected that it's probably not that common for someone to use a secured credit builder card to charter a jet though the circumstances were unusual to say the least.
Also, in many ways that purchase was not only my largest but most satisfying because I was pretty overwhelmed by the medical and other issues surrounding my mom. It's created quite a warm feeling towards Citi.
$300 cellphone bill. About to spend $7000 for a heat pump and AC unit.
