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Again, sorry for incomplete info earlier, was trying to keep the original post at a manageable length. Our eldercare attorney has done his thing. We've got wills, POAs, even an irrevocable trust that should guarantee the kids a little bit of money (didn't count that in the 'mid-six figures' mentione...

Sorry, should have been clearer. No, she's never going to get a dime from Social Security, either through her own work history or mine. On the other hand, if she predeceases me, I'll receive a survivor's annuity, 50 percent of her amount.

Here’s the setup. Me: 65 in August, retired last month. No pension, have not started SS yet. Would get $2100/mo now, $2300 at FRA, 3K at 70. Traditional IRA in mid-six figures at Vanguard. Generally good health (knock on wood). Wife: 66, Retired teacher on state pension. She has virtually no SS cred...

Aaaah, OK. But just to check: Federal Blue Cross doesn't require you to sign up for Part B as soon as you're eligible? That's the case with a lot of government retiree health policies (at least it is with the ones I'm familiar with in Illinois).

Does DVD Catalyst go directly from the protected DVD to a usable MP4, or is there an intervening step?

Yes, it's a one-step process, basically. For instance, if I want to (tho I generally don't), I can watch a movie on my laptop as soon as DVD Catalyst is done.

Snack time: Uncle Woody's BBQ Corn, next to Giovanni's Shrimp Truck, on Kamehameha Highway, up towards the North Shore. I like Island Style, but Baja Style is really good too.

Nothing wrong with the advice above, but here's one more option. I use DVD Catalyst 4 to burn movies from DVDs to my laptop, then transfer them via cable to my NookHD. DVD Catalyst 4 formats them to fit the Nook. Final result is dandy. I can't speak to iPad/iPhone, but the program says it has format...

My question is, "Why?" To save $104.90 a month for three or four months? Or even 11 months? What if you get sick/injured enough to need Part B services during that period? Just seems like tempting fate for not much reason. Am I missing something obvious?

Cool. That was easy. Thanks to both of you.

OK, just read up on grantor trusts in the instructions to Form 1041. Yes, this income will be reported on our personal return.

Personal return, I think.

I will need to pay income taxes for the first time this year on income earned by a family trust for which I am trustee. I've done my own taxes for years, so I'm not anticipating problems, but I wonder if anybody on the board has a recommendation for a specific program (TurboTax, TaxAct, whatever) an...

Commerce Bank now has asked me twice to sign up for my "new Pre-Approved Commerce Bank Rewards Visa credit card." The rewards? One point per dollar in purchases and "3x points for every dollar in interest accrued on your monthly balances."

Wow, talk about perverse incentives.

National Park Service Senior Pass -- $10 one-time payment gives free admission to all national parks and historic sites for you and up to 3 others in your car, starting (I believe) at age 62. .... oops, missed the earlier mention. But it's worth repeating.

Yam: I'm about 8 months away from making this decision and just starting to research plans. For an apparently healthy person, why not add high-deductible Plan F to your list? In my area, the premium difference is $1,116 a year for a plan that pays Plan F benefits after a $2,070 deductible. (I could ...

Got scammed out of $40 for two $5 jackets by a distinguished looking, fast-talking guy in Rome five years ago. I blame my son, he blames me. On the same trip, I was walking a few feet behind my son in St. Petersburg, Russia, when a well-dressed young guy very casually reached out and unzipped my son...

Our house is in the woods and 20+ miles from the nearest TV station transmitter. I bought a cheap antenna from Best Buy, mounted it on the side of the house and pointed it to the nearest PBS station ("Downton Abbey" and "Sherlock"). Only problem is this time of year, when I want ...

Washington Post interview here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/value-added-at-vanguard-perks-are-rare-and-everyone-enlists-in-the-swiss-army/2012/09/23/fcc0324c-0422-11e2-91e7-2962c74e7738_story.html?hpid=z7

So as far as guaranteed issue across the board goes, you have one six-month shot at it and that's it. That's true, but slightly oversimplified. There are some circumstances under which you still may have guaranteed issue rights to Medigap coverage, such as if your Medicare Advantage plan goes out o...

Putting the info in a safe-deposit box certainly works, but that requires a trip to the bank every time a password changes or you add a password-protected account, which probably is more often than people think about. (I'm up to 33 logons right now -- not only really important stuff like bank and in...

Brody: A diagnosis of early stage Alzheimers is all too common these days. I suspect that's what Brock means. She is functioning pretty well now, perhaps with his help, but in the future ... At any rate, that's the situation my wife and I are in at the moment, tho we're younger than Brock, and it so...

Wow, didn’t expect this many replies. Thanks to all. A couple followups. 1) When I mentioned ‘markets,’ I meant more than the stock market. Sorry if some found that unclear. My AA is an equity funds/bond funds/TIPs portfolio pretty much correlated with my age. For most purposes in most times, it’s p...

Without going into the politics of the issue, I hope, I've gotten increasingly pessimistic about the likelihood Congress will increase the U.S. debt limit prior to the early August drop-dead point, and I do believe failure to do so will have very serious, if not catastrophic, consequences for the ma...

I don't know about Vanguard's web password security, but Clark Howard reported tonight (well, the late-night rebroadcast I heard, not sure when the show first aired) that Vanguard is testing high-tech voice recognition security for telephone transactions. Are there really a lot of those any more?

Just curious, is the safe actually rated to be waterproof after being exposed to heat? For example, does it have any seals which would be damaged by heat allowing water to enter? Somewhere -- not in my safe -- I probably have the specs for the thing. But, as I recall, one reason I didn't get the ch...

I think there are arguments for both a home safe and a bank safe-deposit box, and I have both. I didn't get the cheapest home safe around, but it was close. I use it mainly as fire protection. It's heat-resistant up to X degrees for Y period of time (I forget the exact specs), and it's also -- and t...

I've done my own taxes for about as long as PC software has been available. I used to switch back and forth among programs, depending on price, and was pretty satisfied with them all. I've used H&R Block consistently the last few years -- which has come in handy, unfortunately, in keeping track ...

My answer: yes and no. At age 62, I recently bought an LTC policy that would cover me for four years and (under relatively recent federal law) would also protect an equivalent amount of assets for my wife and kids if I need nursing care for longer than that. The policy certainly isn't cheap, but it ...

I've used ATMs exclusively, and extensively, in both Europe (including Russia) and Africa with almost no problems. The 'almost' is because you have to watch the time change. If, for some reason, you withdraw near your daily limit on Monday (U.S.), you have to make sure it's Tuesday (U.S.) before you...

"The percentage differences between taking early and taking late amounts are forever." Well, they're forever until you die. Your health is obviously a factor in this decision, which is one of the reasons I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as other posters have suggested. If you die before...

I tend to track spending manually -- well, via an old version of MSMoney with no online connection -- but I was also using Mint, tho mainly to keep an eye on our investment accounts. However, I dumped it just this last weekend. It worked OK at first, but performance just seemed to degenerate. At the...

I've done it as an experiment, and it worked. Just follow the directions in the Kindle manual. But it was still moderately cumbersome. (It didn't help that what I was converting was a kind of specialized book, one with a lot of footnotes. That made the Kindleized result a lot harder to read. And eve...

In defense of Illinois (which needs all the help it can get -- see "Blagojevich, Rod"), the Daily Beast has a table today that says Illinois actually is No. 15 in terms of debt vs. GDP.

The deepest in debt, by that calculation? Rhode Island. Really.

P.S.: My bad. I just went back and reread my original post (should have done that first), and I see I didn't make it at all clear that I was hoping for an online solution to my original question. Sorry if I misled etarini, or anyone else.

Well, yeah, we write about only about three paper checks a month, to the couple of local companies that still don't take payment another way, my wife's hairdresser, etc. But our paychecks are direct-deposited to this account, I take cash out every week, I schedule e-payments for utilities, our credi...

I've kept my check register for years on MS Money using my home desktop. With the demise of Money, I'm switching to Quicken, and at the same time I want to set up a system where I can also make checkbook entries via my laptop. I don't want to retype data between machines, and I obviously need it to ...

The non-taxable portion will be relatively small (tho every little bit helps, of course). My wife received $41,700 gross last year from Illinois TRS. The non-taxable amount was $990.

My wife and I both have $100,000 term life insurance policies with AXA Equitable. We bought them back in the late '80s, when our kids were young. I expected by now -- we're both in our early 60s -- that the premiums would have climbed to the prohibitive level. But Equitable demutualized in 1992 and ...