I completely understand. I know that I should probably be paying quarterly taxes this year, but I am ignoring it and hope I will fall under the safe harbor.
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Learning alot here about quarterly taxes and safe harbor.
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Received the Sept 2023 Kiplinger Personal Finance, and it has a 4 page article āNew Rules for Inherited IRAs, Take these steps to minimize your tax billā along with a short āA Final Gift Leaving a Tax-Friendly Legacyā. Also a one page ācolumnā āLiving in Retirementā. A one page interview article āWhat Hospice Patients Can Teach Us About Moneyā¦As you build wealth, include your lifeās purpose and meaning in the frameworkā - Jordan Grumet MD left career in 2018 with private practice to work with hospice patients, and wrote a book āTaking Stock: A Hospice Doctorās Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Lifeā.
I continue to glean information and make planning and implementing adjustments.
DH and I are definitely not 100% go-go, so a bit with the slow-go at this point. In addition to smaller/lower cost family planned trips, I saw something with a Greece/Turkey group that I will be looking into for 2024.
Picking up a few more scheduled activities - short things and an additional class that meets once a week from Sept to May (which I can miss w/o problem). Making sure to do some scheduled physical activity every week and careful on calorie intake/trying to lose weight w/o totally giving up pleasure eating.
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I saw a financial expert talk about taking care of the elderly. She recommended something I never considered ā taking out a life insurance policy on your loved one. I guess the thinking is that you can recoup costs you end up spending on their care? Has anyone done this? Thoughts?
It can be very very costly per year to take out a life insurance policy on someone who is already a senior citizen.
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Yes, this is sometime done. Iām under the impression that there can be big commission on this type of sale. The risk can be that the elderly person lives a long time and can no longer afford the very high premiumā¦ making prior payments worthless.
@Youdon_tsay 's post reminded me: For those of you who do have LTC insurance, make sure to name contacts that must be notified if any payments lapse. Aunt, who lived alone, had been paying into LTC insurance for years. No one in the family was aware of the policy until too late. Evidently she missed the payment, and supposedly the insurance company sent a reminder notice. Her memory declined quickly, and needed LTC care within that year.
Insurance company would of course not budge, saying they sent a reminder.
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that āfinancial expertā gets huge commissions for whole life insurance policies. Instead of monthly insurance premiums, just invest that money in the market.
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Insurance policy notifications to multiple people is very helpful. Sad situation about aunt.
Friends have to go through probate because the place where mom had ābuy inā - they returned it to āthe estate ofā¦ā instead of what their paperwork said. IDK if they needed to have some kind of legal document to this place, but now this is the sole thing that they had to hire an attorney for handling the probate, plus the extra costs.
Always lots of loose ends.
This was on TV so I donāt think sheād likely get a direct sale, but point taken.
Seems like, for a retired person, a life insurance policy to replace labor income would mainly be for special cases where the retired person does substantial unpaid labor for the family (e.g. care for grandkids or people with disabilities, or investment management that would otherwise have to be paid for).
But premiums for an elderly person may be too expensive for that to be worth it even in that case.
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This is why it is best to get life insurance when you are young and before you have medical issues. Got a policy when our oldest was born and it will be intact (as long as I pay premiums) until I die. We got it in case something happened while the kids were young. We now donāt need it that much, but I view it as a nice inheritance for my two kids if I am last person standing in the marriage.
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Anybody hear a little paranoid about what a market plummet might do to their retirement funds? We just saw the movie the Big Short, about the 2008 real estate market (and bank failures, market plummet) a few days ago, and lo and behold, Michael Burry (the guy who predicted all that), just placed a 1.6 billion dollar bet that there was going to be a stock market crash. My movie watching timing is terrible, apparently, and now Iām starting to worry about that.
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You may want to calculate how much margin you have above the amount needed to retire on. If a market drop is smaller than that margin, then you are still fine.
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As a rule, I donāt get swayed by these kinds of bets made by people, no matter how accomplished they are. Iād like to see a strong thesis behind the speculation. In 2008, the bet was based on a strong fundamental analysis of the irrational lending. Whatās his thesis now? Also, buying a bunch of puts is not the same as selling his holdings. In fact, per CNN:
Burry appears to have been wavering between bullish and bearish on his stock picks this year. In January, he tweeted a cryptic message to his 1.4 million followers. āSell,ā he wrote. But by the end of March, he backtracked. āI was wrong to say sell.ā he wrote.
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Plus the message to sell could become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Depending upon how many people listened to Burry, those sellers could precipitate a crash.
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Iāve never heard of the guy so heās not influencing me. I donāt try to time the market. Iām letting everything ride per usual.
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As you get older and closer to retirement or in retirement you should be reducing your position in equities. Right now you can get a CD paying 5%. I just put some money in a CD and I havenāt thought about doing that in over 15 years.
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Burry has been talking about a market crash for many years, including back in January when he told his twitter followers to āsellā, just before the 2023 stock market rally began. He later apologized and said he was āwrong to say sell.ā
He also has had huge put options on individual stocks that had similar outcomes, For example, he was reported to have puts on ~1 million shares of Tesla and taunted Tesla on social media about their impending failure. As Tesla stock price increased, he kept increasing the put options waiting for Tesla to fail. A year later after Tesla had a 100% gain since when he started shorting, he finally stopped shorting Tesla. Burry got the 2008 crash right, but gets other crashes wrongā¦ a lot.
One should have a portfolio that aligns with their risk tolerance and be aware that a severe market crash can and will happen at some point in the future, but I wouldnāt assume Burry or any individual has a crystal ball and can predict the future with good accuracy,. If Burry could predict the future with good accuracy and made these predictions public like the put option news story, Id 'expect this market knowledge to be reflected in the market trading price.
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We can live off our pensions, if need be, plus we have about 15% of our retirement monies in money market funds making around 5% if we needed to withdraw. But itās rather disconcerting when guys like Burry and Buffett start betting against the market. For retired people who arenāt putting money into retirement funds any more, you donāt get the benefit of dollar cost averaging if the market plunges.
I think Iām better off not watching movies like the Big Short.
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