When the health insurance marketplace opens in October, it will be much easier for you to purchase insurance that charge lower premiums but still provide the kinds of benefits you need, and maybe even more.

Lower monthly premiums mean you are effectively lowering your insurance costs as well. The amount of savings that you are eligible for will depend on a couple of factors; namely the size of your family and the amount of income you generate. The lower your income, the bigger your savings will be; it will also increase if your family has more than a few members (for a family of 8, the savings could be as large as $158,520, compared to $45,960 for individual plan holders). This makes it a lot easier for lower income families to avail of much-needed healthcare.

To find out if you are eligible for the lower costs of insurance premiums in the health insurance marketplace, you need to estimate your income for 2014 (if you know your family’s gross income for 2013 you can use that and adjust it for any expected changes for next year).

Another way you can estimate your family’s gross income is to add individual members wages, salaries, tips, and any kind of income that they earn during the course of the year; you can even add social security payments, alimony and child support payments, and other kinds of compensation into the mix.

While filling out your application for the health insurance marketplace, you will encounter something labeled as “modified adjusted gross income” or MAGI. This is basically your family’s adjusted gross income PLUS any tax-exempt income that you have (Social Security, interest, and foreign income). This will also be used in determining how much savings you are eligible for in the Marketplace.

When applying in the Marketplace, you need to declare your household income for this year, and your estimated amount for the next. If there are any changes in your household income you need to declare, then you really ought to do so especially if you are currently enrolled in Medicaid.

You do not have to worry about all the math involved in determining the amount of savings that you stand to receive, everything will be done automatically; all you need to do is provide the figures mentioned earlier.