Each state has a Dept of Health with an Office on Aging. There is a division with in the Office on Aging that can help sort out the various Medicare options, supplements, etc. and work with folks on their individual situations and families. It is paid for by tax dollars plus volunteers who are trained. They are unbiased and can tell you the pluses and minuses of various scenarios. I believe if you opt not to sign up for MediGap or Medicare Advantage when you 1st qualify the companies can refuse to accept you if you later want to get such policies, but Iâm not sure on the details (we have Hâs insurance plan from his employer acting as our MediGap/MedicareAdvantage plus Part D plan, so I didnât catch all the details).
@HImom, thanks for the info. I didnât know about the Office Of Aging. Iâm going to look into that when I get closer.
Yes, we have had them come and speak at some of our events. I like that they are unbiased as they donât work for any of the private companies.
Thatâs great @HImom. This stuff is extremely confusing. Iâll take all of the free help I can get!
Itâs fine to ask them early and at least have a better idea of the plans you might want to be exploring more. They know about special assistance programs that are rarely mentioned as well.
There are different ways financial planners are getting various insurance products to cover LTC - neighbor is buying into some kind of product. H and I have âthe gold standardâ with unlimited benefits; we have been paying for the policies for a number of years (before many companies got out or raised premiums for new policies which are extremely high cost/un-affordable). It is just like homeownerâs insurance - you hate to need to have a claim (you never want to have to use) - always hoping to live a great life and die in oneâs sleepâŠ
Just looking at 401k to see how we did for 2017. In a few weeks we have our semi-annual meeting with our financial planner too.
Key is keeping good cash flow and savings going into retirement - build up a good nest egg. Saving early and using the time value of money. Saving and investing - can always learn as one goes along.
Friend of my sister were farmers in Iowa - had a pretty sizable pig farm operation. They learned about getting stocks and investing - which was fabulous for them to âdiversifyâ. It helped them have another stream of returns. And farming is probably more risky than many actions on Wall Street - pricing of their products based on futures marketsâŠ
Well I stayed up to check our 401k account. 2017 was a very good year, our return was 20.47%; 20% in balanced -value; 20% in large cap stock value; 30% in large cap stock growth; and 30% in small cap stock blend.
Since I have been more closely tracking, 2013 was our best 401k return, 25.87%.
We do aggressive with these allocations because we have other investments which balance off our risk ratio. When the markets slow down, will move investments accordingly.
As much as some are not fond of our countryâs leadership, our economy is doing pretty well.
Well, for sure the stock market is doing pretty well.
Yes, the stock market is doing well. But is the benefits of that reaching down to the bottom half? I question that. I think it is/will create more class disparity.
I agree @doschicos. I sat on the plane with a lovely couple, and she was reading a book by TheMotleyFool. I did my best, without slagging on her book, to discuss one of my two heroes in life, John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard. Mr. Bogle could easily have been a billionaire, but he knew what was âEnough,â and chose it as the title for one of his books.
I worry about the sheep, because there are so many of them, being led one way and then another, getting sheared each step along the way and voting against their best interests. Maybe thatâs capitalismâs fatal flaw; it doesnât work well with an uneducated citizenry. As for MotleyFool, if you followed their stock picking advice, hereâs how you did:
[img]https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2018/01/09/Photos/NS/MW-GB415_downlo_20180109122401_NS.png?uuid=e24ac40a-f561-11e7-a8a4-9c8e992d421e[/imcg]
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Motley Fool is a bunch of sneaky shorts and shills.
That is incredible that the Motley Fool picks did so bad. Wow!
In their early days, Motley Fool had some good general investing advice. Then they found that to make money in the business, they had to hawk stocks and sell ads, and things went downhill. If you arenât interested in doing the research yourself itâs hard to know where to go for advice and asset management, and a lot of people do get fleeced.
I didnât know they were hawking stocks. Glad I never followed any of their advice then.
Oh they do, and with an agenda. Paid shills.
The way we found our investment guy Don (who manages about half of our portfolio; I manage Hâs 401k and H is getting educated between Don and me) is that we attended a two evening âRetirement Planning Todayâ course that Don gave at our local UniversityâŠit is a binder/info packaged by someone else covering 8 sections, life planning for retirement through estate planning.(course fee of $49 covers the materials and class). Don teaches the course to attendees, and people interested in learning more with their individual situation set up an appt with Don or one of his two colleagues. Don also does the retirement free dinner meetings (as many do to gain clients) using a firm that sends out the info/invitation to select potential clients. We met with Don several times before we moved anything to him. Don and his two colleagues also does âstate of the marketâ short meeting twice a year - open to public and clients - lunch time and early evening for client/prospect convenience - where one also learns what is going on with the markets by their analysis/othersâ analysis. We attend those meetings as well.
One does have to do their own âresearchâ. I like getting Kiplingerâs, Money, reading internet links, etc. Books. I went to Barnes and Nobles and spent time looking over the books before buying a few.
With many ways to diversity, it can be as simple or complex as one wants to make it. Do need to understand fundamentals.
Most that are on this thread are doing the things to secure their financial future.
Unfortunately many lower income or paycheck to paycheck folks are not doing things to secure their future. Some are not taking care of their health either. So to go into retirement age being sick and poor is a failure to plan and execute for many â some have some unfortunate situations that put them there. Some never think about financial future or other important things.
Motley Fool is not so much worse than anyone else, they just picked unluckily (Under Armour mostly). Bogleheads generally donât pick stocks: âdonât try to find the needle in a haystack; buy the haystack.â
@doschicos, I havenât read the article yet (waiting until I get back to my hotel room), but you could get old waiting for the gains accruing to the wealthy to trickle down to the rank and file. Our portfolio killed it in 2017 (PRIMECAP up 30%, employer almost as much, etc.), but as I talk with our landscaper, who has kids getting ready for college, he hasnât seen it, and there is resistance among his clientele to raising his rates. To add insult to injury, he gave his money to a client of his, a âwealth managerâ neighbor of ours, and he, net-of-fees, wasnât much better than flat in 2017. Heâs a nice guy, smart about grass, trees and hiring workers, might have voted for Trump, and heâs bewildered.
@saillakeerie, my companies have health insurance plans like yours so in effect I pay it for myself. ShawWife had two knees replaced this year and I do a lot of preventative stuff to avoid back problems so we have been spending the deductible.
Because the company that employs me is a C-Corp, the premium and many uncovered medical expenses including co-pays can be paid from pre-tax dollars. I think someone who is self-employed or employed as a member of an LLC can deduct either the cost of the insurance or other medical expenses by itemizing but not both. Our marginal tax rate combining federal and state has been roughly 45% so the deduction has been valuable. At the time we set up our structure, self-employed people could not deduct health care costs.
Neither ShawWife nor I plan to retire. Weâll see it play out, but I fear a major deterioration in what Medicare covers. Assuming I am still working, I could continue to cover us or supplement Medicare, I would think. But, if Medicare (and many other things really deteriorate, we would probably think about activating Plan B.
@IxnayBob, I agree. I think there is tons of evidence that the money wonât trickle down in meaningful ways â companies arenât going to raise wages and little or no evidence that the reduced taxes will have a meaningful impact. Companies are going to buy back shares and get bigger C-Suite bonuses (for being economic geniuses). Some of that is already baked into stock prices.
The thing that likely will help is that because tax rates are lower, it will make some marginal investments (that wouldnât have made sense with higher taxes) feasible with the lower taxes. These new investments (in otherwise marginal businesses) should probably create some jobs. But, as a member of the entrepreneurial class, I wouldnât invest time and money in adding a new line of business if it were just going to be marginal. So, I donât imagine that this produces large number of jobs.
Although this may seem confusing to Trump voters expecting more, to the extent that a key segment of Trump voters was voting for him because he was going to create economic benefit for them rather than the wealthy in terms of better jobs or wage increases, that segment will eventually be very disappointed. However, I think the evidence is stronger that most Trump voters voted for him for other reasons, so the likely failure to deliver better jobs / better pay / better prospects for the white non-college education segment may not lead to reduced support for Trump.