How would you like to waste a lot of the money you spend on Medicare coverage and miss a bunch of the benefits Medicare provides? Crazy question. But that’s exactly what’s happening to millions of Medicare beneficiaries. In October 2021, the insurance website MedicareAdvantage.com published the results of its most recent survey of Medicare beneficiaries. What it found was disturbing. [...]
Health Savings Accounts (HSA) for retired folks. Isn’t that a novel idea? But it’s being considered in Congress—The Health Savings for Seniors Act, H.R. 3796. As it stands right now, the only people eligible for an HSA are those aged 65 years and younger who have a high-deductible health insurance plan meaning you have to pay $1,400 out-of-pocket for [...]
The Health Savings Account has been a wonderful addition to the financial landscape of people who are eligible for one. They’re often thought of as a way to pay for qualified medical expenses with pre-tax money during your working years for things like deductibles, copays, and non-covered items—in other words, things not covered by insurance. You can’t make contributions to [...]
Happy Birthday! You’re turning 65. There’s cake and ice cream, presents, and your application for Medicare. Yep, this is when you sign up for the federal health insurance program you’ve been paying for all your working life. Signing up isn’t difficult, but there are things you need to know to get the most out of Medicare and avoid penalties (yes [...]
It’s been pounded into us that having a successful retirement requires advance planning—financial planning, Social Security planning, retirement income planning, and estate planning. And now, there’s another component to be considered—planning what happens in the event you have a decline in mental capacity. The Administration for Community Living estimates there are 54.1 million Americans who are 65 years old or [...]
In 2022, Social Security recipients got a 5.9% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). That was the largest increase in 40 years. The COLA coming in 2023 may be even bigger. Social Security calculates cost-of-living increases based on changes in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from September to September each year. According to the Bureau of [...]
1975 was a big year in financial annals when Americans were given a brand new way to save for retirement in something called an Individual Retirement Account—an IRA. You could put money into the account before taxes and the money got to grow tax-deferred. You didn’t have to pay taxes until you started taking money out, theoretically after you retired. [...]
It’s not often that politicians agree about anything, but in a rare vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives voted 414 to 5 in favor of the Secure Act 2.0, a series of changes to retirement savings plans. You can see the entire list of changes here. The bill builds on [...]
My, how things have changed. When I was growing up, if you found out someone had a trust, well, that person must be rich—they must be a millionaire (that’s back when a million dollars was really worth something). Today, though, trusts of all kinds are a common planning tool providing specific benefits to a multitude of situations. But boil it [...]
PROBATE—a word that strikes terror in the hearts of people planning the distribution of their estates. They worry that the probate process can drag on for months or years, that probate costs will eat up a chunk of what they want to leave their heirs, or that people will find out how the assets get distributed because probate is a [...]
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