Telling my partner what this actually costs

The comparison shopping is worth doing once a year and not worth doing every month, in my experience.

Something worth knowing: prices moved over two years and I only noticed because I was tracking. Worth checking occasionally.

My experience is that this got easier once I had a plan for a year rather than reacting month to month.

The thing I underestimated was how the cost affects the decision-making. I was reluctant to raise problems because of what a change might cost.

I would gently say that if cost is about to force you to stop, talk to your prescriber first. There were options in my case.

The arithmetic is the arithmetic and there is no shame in it. I sat down with a calculator and a cup of tea and worked out what it actually costs me per year.

Coming back to say I have kept it going for two years, that it has been tight in places, and that the planning is what made it possible.

What I would say is have the cost conversation. Mine produced two alternatives and neither had been mentioned unprompted.

I keep a small buffer specifically for this so that a bad month does not force a decision I would not otherwise make.

This is the honest version, and the honest version is harder to write.

What it displaced in my budget was the honest question, and answering it properly took me an evening and was worth doing.

My prescriber knew about an option that was cheaper and I had never asked, for a year, out of embarrassment.

Hettie, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

My review appointments cost money too, and building those into the annual figure changed my sense of the total considerably.