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If you have a urological disorder and need to intermittently catheterize yourself in order to urinate, you might get sick of buying catheters. Even if you wash your own and sterilize them, you’re still going to have to buy more eventually. So, how can you save money on this particular medical expense? Here are three ways that you can save on each intermittent self catheter.

1. Shop Around

You might have a particular place you like to buy your catheters, and that’s fine. What is important, though, is that you shop different brands. There are actually name brands in catheters. The cost difference between a brand name and an off brand may not be the same as the cost difference between Gap jeans and Wal-Mart jeans, but it can still mean savings for you.

Of course, there could be quality issues here, too. You may need to buy just a few of the cheaper catheters before you get a whole bunch. Make sure you like how they work and feel before investing in a lot of them.

2. Compare Costs of Reusable and Disposable

It’s easy to assume that reusable catheters are automatically cheaper. This is only true, sometimes, though. For instance, if you’re only going to need catheters for a couple of days, disposables might be a better option. Plus, you have to count the extra costs of time and effort involved with reusable catheters. Even though you don’t really have to boil them anymore, you still have to spend your valuable time cleansing them. If time really is money, you may feel like you’re saving by using disposables.

3. Buy in Bulk

As with most things, you can get a cheaper per-item cost on catheters when you buy in bulk. If you’re going to be self-catheterizing for a while, you will probably need a lot of these things. Whip out your calculator and see where you can get the best cost for a big order of intermittent catheters. Of course, you don’t want to buy more than you’ll use, since that’s just wasting cash that you probably would be better off hanging onto. Just make sure you run the numbers first to make sure that what looks like savings actually is savings. You might be surprised sometimes to find that you could actually save more by buying less.

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