If you or someone you’re close to is about to walk into the labyrinth that is Medicare, take a look at the December issue of Consumer Reports, now on the newstands. This month CR is running the best, clearest guide to Medicare I’ve seen to date.
Medicare’s rules are astonishingly complicated and booby-trapped with land mines. The government and a vast slew of vendors send you hundreds and hundreds of pages of information and sales pitches. As well-intentioned as most government writers are, the copy they pour out is verbose, involved, sometimes contradictory, and often impossible to figure out.
CR has boiled the entire mess down into two pages of do’s and don’ts. Their article explains why you should get signed up for Medicare before you turn 65, how Medicare Part B works and what will happen to you if you fail to sign up in a timely way, how to avoid being screwed out of Medigap coverage—and why you really need it—and what the advantages and disadvantages are of Medicare and Medigap.
It’s crystal clear, easy to understand, and mercifully brief. This thing should be offprinted and sent to everyone who’s coming eligible for Medicare.
Hmh. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Consumer Reports before I let the subscription lapse. Now that I’m feeling flush again (sort of…), maybe I’ll re-up. It’s a useful resource for the frugalist and the wily consumer. If you’d like to subscribe, you can click here
🙂
Thanks for the recommendation. I have a colleague who is 68–we joke that he keeps working because figuring out how to retire takes more time than working. Plus, he doesn’t want to clean out his office!
Funny, I’ve said it before. I suspect that if you made a complete list, your blog would yield a tax loss.
@ frugalscholar: That certainly would be true if Funny were not running through the S-corp. But it’s not a sole proprietorship: it’s one of the several editorial functions of The Copyeditor’s Desk. In fact, CEDesk was incorporated specifically to hold revenues from FaM. The S-corporation doesn’t pay taxes. Thus when I buy, say, a subscription to a magazine whose content is relevant to FaM’s subject matter, the corporation pays for it with what are effectively pre-tax dollars. I don’t have to write it off, because it’s expensed through the corporation.
If I wanted to use some of the S-corp’s income to buy something irrelevant to the business, then I would have to either use some of the “salary” the corporation pays me or draw down a dividend (within reason), either of which would (of course) be taxable.
I should have a hefty tax loss this year from other sources. Just the cost of Medicare, Medigap, and long-term care insurance amounts to more than 7.5% of my income; toss in that $700 pair of glasses I bought, and voila! My medical costs should easily be deductible this year. Plus almost every penny we’re paying on the “modified” mortgage — i.e., temporarily modified to a 40-year term — is interest. The new accountant believes that, because of the way the District’s adjunct contract is written and the lack of facilities we get while on the District’s site, I should be able to write off at least a portion of my office costs and mileage to and from campus.
With any luck, I’ll get enough of a tax refund to cover the cost of the proposed new air conditioner.
Despite all the problems with (and deliberate undermining of) public health care here and in other countries where it exists, I am so thankful and relieved not to cope with that maze.
@ lagatta: Qu’est que c’est que “le gaz de schiste”? Shale oil? Surely not… Natural gas?
Shale gas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gas It is a kind of natural gas, but its production can be very problematic for the environment, with the so-called fracking (fracturing) process. The wiki article has a summary on the controversy.