Bogleheads.org

My understanding is that suspending for that time (until age 70) would give her approximately 10% higher benefit, inflation adjusted, for the rest of her life. It could make for a more comfortable retirement in the longer term.

I think ours were submitted a week after yours. On one we got notified it was coming, and tracking info. The other just showed up (about 10 days later). Both were sent via express mail. After about 10 weeks, I did manage to get through to a live support person (first try got website support, who couldn't do much, but they provided a number into the renewal service). Of course the response was to the effect "yeah, they are in there and nothing is blocking them; give it another few weeks and maybe they'll get done". The one useful bit of info I got from the call was that status update (or lack thereof) on the website had very little to do with what was actually happening with the renewal. At some point soon, I might bug your congres...

Took 3months for me. Online status was very confusing as it changed status only about a week before showing up in the mail. Thank you for all your responses. Did both of you receive a tracking number or they just showed up one day? Thank you. We submitted ours online in mid-December. Updates on the portal were pretty minimal and random. My wife's status went to "received" and "in process" the first day after submission. Mine (submitted about 30 minutes later) just sat in "received" for about 11 weeks, then suddenly updated to "printed", and "mailed" a day or two before it arrived. I don't think the status ever changed further on my wife's, but it showed up in the mail a week or so after min...

The SS estimate lets you see that other factors and uncertainties are probably more important than the specific claiming choice. Leaving the higher benefit till age 70 is probably optimal due to the survivor benefit, but otherwise you have lots of flexibility. To some degree, the value of the Roth conversions may depend on your cash flow needs and plans. If you are mostly drawing living expenses from IRAs from now until you claim SS, that will tend to draw down the balances to some degree in itself. You might end up just wanting to do Roth conversion to the top of the current tax bracket or IRMAA tier. If you are using ACA for health insurance until medicare at age 65, there can be a substantial subsidy available if you can keep your MAGI t...

Beyond the charity and family basics, it obviously depends on your circle of friends and family circumstances (and lifestyle preferences). A few that I've seen done: Throw a big celebration dinner for some occasion (wife B-day, anniversary, whatever). Somewhat equivalent to a nice wedding dinner. Foot the bill for friends and family to do something a bit out of the ordinary and maybe beyond their typical budgets ("we rented this big oceanfront house in Hawaii for a week/two, hope you can come join us"). This can help with the "nobody to play with" syndrome, but it requires tact to preserve relationships. Try NetJets (or maybe more realistically for some of us, buy business class seats for international travel). Leave a $...

A few thoughts: 1) Mt St Helens could be an interesting stop. If you go in to the further in viewpoints, though, it might take much of a day. The regrowth of the forest over the years makes it not quite as dramatic in appearance as it used to be, but still quite interesting. 2) The Oregon coast is quite scenic, and as others have mentioned, slower driving (especially in the lower half). You will have longer days in May. It's doable in your timeframe, but I'm guessing it would give you at least six hours of additional pure driving time. 3) Crater Lake is nice, but may well still be pretty snow-limited in May, especially this year. 4) California Gold Rush era towns (along CA-49) can be interesting 5) Rafting on the South fork of the American ...

The problems were that at each bank too many depositors were all in the same business, which was catastrophically hit by interest rate rises, resulting in withdrawals all at the same time, and their depositors were awash in money and did not need loans, which led to the bank putting too much in fixed-rate securities--which lost market value due to the interest rate rise just at the time they needed it to meet withdrawals. In both cases, they catered to and had a huge portion of their depositors were all in the same business, and thus in danger of needing to withdraw cash all at the same time, and that their depositors were awash in cash and did not need loans. Banks normally make a lot of their money from loans, but these customers didn't ...

[Thread merged into here --admin LadyGeek] The recent bank failures have had much discussion, but most of the focus was on SVB. For myself, I feel like I have a reasonable understanding of what happened to SVB (and it has it's own thread), but the Signature Bank (SBNY) circumstances are not at all as clear to me. I'm hoping that we can have some more focused discussion on what happened with SBNY. Understanding better how to evaluate bank stocks/bonds, and (to a lesser degree) whether that impacts choices of deposit locations. ------------ At one level, SBNY seems to have been "tainted" by association with cryptocurrency. But it didn't seem that they had holdings in crypto, or investments in crypto, just that some of their custome...

Schwab has been getting half or more of their earnings by paying brokerage customers almost nothing on their sweep funds sitting around in their accounts (keeping them in the Schwab Bank subsidiary), while holding bonds in the bank and making the interest rate difference. But with higher short term rates, Schwab is going to customers cleaning up that money laying around and moving it into MM funds, OR, moving their accounts to someplace like Fidelity or Vanguard which still have decent sweep options. At the same time, Schwab bank is sitting on a big pile of bonds purchased during low interest times which have a large loss in current value but aren't marked down to real value on the books (because banking regulations). I don't know how much,...

The run was caused by the overloading of LT Treasuries. A prudent approach would have been to hold a range of durations. I hear a lot of people in this thread as arm chair quarterbacks saying how SIVB had too much in treasuries. Here’s a recap of their situation - https://www.netinterest.co/p/the-demise-of-silicon-valley-bank Marc Rubinstein's explanation today. Basically SVB ended up with a large portfolio of held-to-maturity bonds with an average duration of 6.2 years at the end of 2022, “and unrealised losses snowballed, from nothing in June 2021, to $16 billion by September 2022.” These losses “completely subsumed the $11.8 billion of tangible common equity that supported the bank’s balance sheet,” meaning that SVB was technically inso...

SVB is not all that unique in large banks.. SCHWAB has similar percentage (~70%) of it's deposits invested in securities (available for sale and held to maturities) . They also had to take a loan from FHLB to manage liquidity similar to SVB. From the reports I see on Twitter based on their monthly call reports,Schwab's unrealized losses on HTM portfolio exceed equity of it's banking entities which is pretty bad. What is better for them is that they have more equity in the parent level that it can inject into banks. But I can see Schwab's largest depositors getting nervous right now and looking to diversify which can worsen their liquidity problem. Time for schwab customers to start moving assets out? No. Assets would not be impacted either...

curmudgeon wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:42 pm Interestingly, if, say, a week ago SVB had been offering 2-year brokered CDs at 6%, I probably would have bit (within FDIC coverage limits). I suspect the reason they didn't want to raise that type of funding was that it would have made the profitability picture too clear (dismal), though there could also have been other more direct banking regulation reasons why something like that wouldn't have been possible.

I see Schwab took my suggestion

The highest yielding 1 year and 18 month brokered CDs I see offered this evening are from Schwab Bank (5.35% and 5.4%). It may hurt them a little bit to be paying that much interest, but it beats having to move their HTM underwater bonds into a Mark-to-Market category (or liquidate them).

I would note that in a recent WSJ update, they mention that as of Dec 31, about $150B of the $175B total deposits at SVB were beyond the FDIC coverage limits. I'm sure that's in significant part due to the nature of the business. Interestingly, if, say, a week ago SVB had been offering 2-year brokered CDs at 6%, I probably would have bit (within FDIC coverage limits). I suspect the reason they didn't want to raise that type of funding was that it would have made the profitability picture too clear (dismal), though there could also have been other more direct banking regulation reasons why something like that wouldn't have been possible. It is interesting that the long bond market jumped a bunch today, presumably traders betting that the Fed...

This must be the fastest large bank failure in history. At the close of the market on March 8 SVB was an ordinary financial services company with no indications of problems. At the opening of the market on March 10 it was placed in FDIC receivership, indicating insolvency. This WAS a $220,000,000,000 in assets firm. What percentage of the holdings were likely to be in "insured cash" (with the limit)? Would having money in jumbo (ultra-mega-jumbo?) CDs or similar have been protected? Other options for holdings that would be "safe"? What, exactly, is at risk, and what is not? And is any of this applicable to minor players like most BH members RM The FDIC limit is standard and per institution/insured. If you (or your compa...

A UBS analyst just claimed the First Republic is no SVB because only 8% of its deposits are VC capital vs the majority of SVB's deposits. What she does not seem to understand is the First Republic's assets are mainly its mortgage loan portfolio with an average interest of under 3% while its CDs and savings accounts only pay 1.5%. The problem is that it caters to wealthy clients who are withdrawing their money because they can earn over 5% on US treasuries. I don't know if First Republic has sufficient reserves, but AFAIK, it is in a similar boat as SVB, borrow short, lend long, and now inverted yield curve. A deadly combo. I would agree with this. VC capital was just the tip of the iceberg. One of the prices of inflation is that depositors...

[Title was "Bank stress from bond holdings - SVB". The FDIC has taken over bank. See this post and the FDIC press release 3/10/2023 .] Update: March 12, 2023: Title was "[Silicon Valley Bank fails, FDIC takes over]". New York’s Signature Bank has now been closed. See: Federal Reserve Board - Joint Statement by Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC . Use this thread to discuss bank failures. Stay focused on comments directly actionable as a personal investor. Forum policy regarding economic and political policy comments remains in effect (not permitted). --admin LadyGeek There was a major drop in bank shares today, beyond the general market down day. It was led by Silicon Valley Bank (off 60%). Decent article in the WSJ ab...

A new car dealer is going to send a tradein like that straight to the wholesaler. So will CarMax. It will in turn probably get picked up by one of the low-end used car dealers in the area (the kind at the dumpy end of town). The dealer and wholesale will have some costs and overhead in the process. For a small amount of trouble more than a trade in, you can take the car around to a couple of the low-end dealers and maybe get a bit more for the car with less trouble than selling it yourself.

This might sound silly but I am thinking about taking up walking more actively. However, I had a colleague that seriously damaged their feet from walking too much (they were doing over 30 miles a week). Does anyone recommend a good type of walking shoes if you start doing it more? It happened to me. About 8 years ago I really started pushing the walking, both length and hills, in the park by my house. I got up to 8-12 miles, several days a week. It felt good, I was losing weight, but eventually the arches in my feet started failing and causing tendonitis in the the tendons around the ankle. After wasting a lot of time with physical therapy, it was custom arch supports and a lot of patience (rest time) that have gotten me back to being able...

tibbitts wrote: ↑Sat Feb 25, 2023 11:28 am I don't have a CVT but I'm curious about these Nissan CVTs that I've read so much about, or other brands: is there anything an owner can do to prolong their life?

My general opinion is that it is much ado about nothing. Automatics and CVTs do fail expensively sometimes, and the internet lets people make a big deal about it. We had a Sentra with CVT that stayed in the family for 180,000 miles without problems (working fine when it was sold off), as well as a Nissan Rogue which now has 120,000. I do think that it's a good idea with CVTs to make sure they occasionally spend some time in the higher load part of the power band (going up the mountains, or briskly accelerating on the freeway) to keep the system fully exercised.

It's a quite decent itinerary. The Rhinefalls on the way to Basel would be worth an hour or two. Look up the "Alsace wine route" for the French part of your itinerary - the foothills of the Vosges mountains have lots of very scenic villages. Mont St Odile monastary and Haut Koenigsburg castle are good stops in that route. The "Black Forest" region on the German side is perhaps better known, but I haven't found it as interesting. On the return direction, Lake Constance and the surrounding area is quite nice, and Mainau island has beautiful grounds and gardens around the castle. Another similar option would be a bit further east with Salzburg, maybe someplace in the mountains there like St Wolfgang, and Munich. You could ...

"Open Jaw" is often a good option for travel like this; leaving out of a different city often adds little or nothing to the cost of the tickets. If you are already committed on the tickets, it's not that big of deal, but worth keeping in mind.

I really like the seat61 site for info on train travel in Europe, though sometimes he will push a train option when flying is really the better choice. For a long haul, overnight trains can be worthwhile considering. In general Eurail passes are not what they were thirty or forty years ago, and you do better looking at a different site (like bahn.de) for schedules.

It's a quite decent itinerary. The Rhinefalls on the way to Basel would be worth an hour or two. Look up the "Alsace wine route" for the French part of your itinerary - the foothills of the Vosges mountains have lots of very scenic villages. Mont St Odile monastary and Haut Koenigsburg castle are good stops in that route. The "Black Forest" region on the German side is perhaps better known, but I haven't found it as interesting. On the return direction, Lake Constance and the surrounding area is quite nice, and Mainau island has beautiful grounds and gardens around the castle. Another similar option would be a bit further east with Salzburg, maybe someplace in the mountains there like St Wolfgang, and Munich. You could h...

McQ wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 10:41 pm
But life expectancy is an average. Possibly more interesting is the odds that one member will still be alive at age X. For a 65 year old couple, using annuitant life expectancy, these chances are:
95 – 40%
100 – 14%
101 – 10%
102 – 7.5%
105 – 2.5%

To translate those odds into numbers: if all 100,000 Bogleheads were 65-year-old couples, then 14,000 would have one member see age 100; 7,500 would see 102; and 2,500 would see 105.

So what say you ncbill—are the odds of living past 99 (as one member of a Boglehead type couple) not statistically anything to worry about??

Those seem off by a few years. Both my experience and a quick glance at other tables make me think those are about 5 years off.

The $50k one-time limit keeps this as a somewhat corner case. It can be hard to justify the overheads, especially as time goes by. This feels a bit like an experiment; somebody's bright idea tossed into the bill, but scaled down so it won't have much impact.

It does seem like a way to stretch out the tax recognition of the last $50k of an inherited IRA beyond the 10 years, though.

In exchange for the above, we have an option to buy the house from them at the same $1.4m figure they bought it for. I am now in a position where I can swing that from a cash POV, but I'm trying to figure out if there are any smart ways to structure it. If we can, I think I would want to assume the mortgage at that rate, and try to arbitrage some gains. For the cash balance, I'm not sure. Of course I would prefer to not hand over $945k in cash. I need to have a talk with them to see if they are open to some sort of structure that is more "annuitized" rather than paying them the lump sum. Not sure what that structure would be though. Appreciate any input! Very few mortgages these days are assumable, so if you do a normal sale, you...

Thanks to all who have posted, especially those to whom I have not replied individually. I would remind everyone that the purpose of the story is not really to diagnose errors made by Mom and Dad. The purpose is to help you think through your retirement income planning by dramatizing the impact of unexpected longevity. To make this concrete, please re-read longinvest’ posts and consider the following contemporary example. 1. In early 2023, you are a couple in their mid-60s who can reasonably expect retirement income of $70,000 if you retire (somewhat early) tomorrow. Your income sources are a mix of fixed pension (call it $25,000), social security ($30,000), and income from investments ($15,000). You have $300,000 to $400,000 in savings/in...

I did an online renewal on 1/9/23. As of today (2/22/23) it is still sitting at "received" with no indication they are processing it. From what I have seen on some other forums this is normal and once it moves to "in process" it is within a few days of being complete. I think they were quoting up to nine weeks so it is not past due yet. Status updates seem to be very random (as acknowledged by phone support when I called after 8 weeks). Mine sat in "received" for just under 9 weeks, then went to "in process" and "shipped" in about three days. My wife's (entered the same day as mine) went to "received" and then "in process" in a couple of hours, but hasn't changed since t...

We did the online method in mid-December. The photo part was a bit fussy (it wanted to do it's own cropping, so it rejected some images that seemed perfectly fine). The website and id process were a little clunky, but not too bad. Everything then went into "black hole" state for the next eight weeks. Slightly different status between the two, but no change or update. We eventually called to make sure they weren't permanently buried, and after an hour or so on hold found out that they were there and would get processed sometime. These were dirt-simple renewals of active and regularly used passports. It shouldn't have taken more that two minutes for someone to look at them and send them on for printing, but we didn't pay for "e...

Much of this is pretty common ground, and many of us have seen this with relatives or acquaintances. To some degree it's an artifact of what I think of as financial optimism (thinking that if we can pay our bills now, we aren't overspending), and bad luck (the wide split in survivor ages plus longevity). The two financial factors that jumped out at me are: 1) retiring early - Deciding to pack in work at age 60 or 61 because Megacorp squeezed you out, and taking SS at age 62, is really something for people with more retirement savings. Even if comparable jobs aren't an option, doing something (school crossing guard, Walmart greeter, tax preparation, etc) for a few year at part time would help stretch things out and avoid having the reduced S...

With two substantial pensions, Roth conversion is much less likely to offer significant tax advantages. It still might have some use around the edges, though. It may be worth "smoothing" your income over the years; that is, looking at what your SS benefit and RMD would be at age 70/75, and do Roth conversions of roughly that amount each year now. Use that as a starting point and see where that puts you in marginal tax brackets (and IRMAA when you get close to medicare age).

I found Churchill's WWII history quite interesting (all six volumes). Not in the modern story-telling format, but quite well-written. Reading between the lines, you get glimpses of the personality (and to my mind, see why the British were fortunate to have him as a wartime leader, but understandably ready to move on after the war).

I think we've gotten sidetracked on the pledge. I wanted to be sure of the workings of a QCD, and the question was answered. Thank you all for your time. You might want to be careful about the wording on any pledge involved in a multi-year QCD plan. If a later QCD to the organization is paying a legal debt for you, that might be tricky. I suspect it's OK, as multi-year pledges are pretty common in charities, but there may be special handling involved. If you could do one in December and one in the following January, that might work for the organization to feel comfortable with it's commitments and reserves. I would note that I don't think this would work with a DAF, for two reasons. 1) you can't QCD directly to a DAF. 2) Generally a DAF wo...

indexfundfan wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 5:26 pm
My phone is Samsung and it does not belong to the higher end category. Recently I become aware of a device that adds eSim capability to selected phones which do not have native eSim built-in. It is sold by

https://esim.me/

Has anyone used it?

Interesting option. I'm not into frequent upgrades and expensive phones, so it might be a nice option for me. We have a cheap Xfinity mobile plan that works well at home but is a bit of a nuisance for overseas travel. I always worry a bit about support when things go awry with cute tricks like this... At some point I should just upgrade the phone and not be so cheap.

As to other Bogleheads: there are many mansions in father Bogle's house. Here is a personal example. My spouse and I will postpone Social Security to age 70. If we were the same age (we're not), and if we were turning 70 in 2023, we would have about $105,000 in social security income (near-max age 70 deferral). In which case, we'd need about $100,000 in other income to exit the tax torpedo. If we were 73 and subject to RMDs, we'd need a $2.65 million TDA balance to produce that much income (no pension in our world, or much in the way of a taxable account). Any less, and we'd be stuck back in the torpedo. I consider us quite affluent, and give this example to show how the tax torpedo can be a factor even in comparatively affluent situations...

MP123 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:19 pm

worthit wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 9:45 pm

MP123 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:55 pm Yes, and assuming you're HSA eligible all year you get the full catchup for the year you turn 55 (even in December). It only gets prorated if you aren't eligible all year.

Thank you. So I have been contributing 2850 annually till now. So this year I can put in another $1000, correct?

For 2023 the limit for single coverage is $3850. If you are (or turn) 55 or over this year you can contribute an additional $1000 for a total of $4850.

But they need to be aware that if their employer is contributing to the HSA as well, that counts as part of the contribution limit. It's not unusual for an employer to do something like contribute $1000 per year to the HSA for employees using that plan.

We've used an ACA HSA plan for the past few years. We used a bronze plan from Kaiser. I essentially thought of it as a catastrophic plan with nice tax features. We essentially paid out-of-pocket for any medical expenses beyond the "preventative" stuff. At the end of the year we added up doctor, dental, and vision expenses and withdrew that much from the HSA, typically maybe $1500 for the two of us. The deductible and max out-of-pocket were about the same, at $7,000 per person - one year one of us hit that and everything else for that one was covered for the rest of the year.

The ACA subsidy is not as generous when one of you is on Medicare, so it may or may not be worth managing income to get the subsidy.

An interesting space that I'll have to track. Some of these could be plausible improvements in our 60-year old house. One challenge in our case is that our solar panels are almost perfectly sized for our current electrical usage, and shifting anything more to electric would make us vulnerable to the extremely high California electrical rates. We could add to the solar, but then we'd probably lose our spot in advantageous NEM 2.0 net metering plan. Lots of details to consider, and of course tax credits are only useful if you have tax liabilities to balance them against.

Can the tax credits here be carried forward to future years?

It depends somewhat on your interests (and where you've been before). London can be a good option; lots of museums and other options of things to do. Lots of theater (and in English, so easier to appreciate for most from US). Lots of air connections. Amsterdam would be another option. I'd find it less compelling for a weeklong stay, especially in colder weather. Probably too early for the tulip round. Berlin would be a logical option, with lots to do. Prague would be an option for us; we like the city and there is a lot of good opera/music available at fairly low cost. It does perhaps get more that its' share of drunken brits on pub crawls, but we found the overall atmosphere enjoyable. Vienna has a lot going for it, including top-notch mus...

knightrider wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:02 pm

Jack FFR1846 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 2:54 pm I would not worry about having to remount bindings. It would only be the heel that would move and any ski shop can do it.

I am a US 8.5 and use 170 cm skis. What if the used ski was adjusted for someone with boot size 10 or 11. Is there enough play in the binding to adjust down?

Lots of skis floating around have "rental" bindings on them. These are binding designed for rental shops in which the rear binding can be adjusted on a track to fit various sizes of boots. Generally pretty trivial to change the size (30 seconds), but it's important to make sure the position is correct so they release properly in a fall.

If you’ve stuck with me this far, care to make a prediction? Can a large enough conversion turn things around for Cheryl 2.0, and steer her through the shoals of IRMAA? Specifically, should she drive 2023 and 2024 Roth conversions up into the 32% bracket and beyond, per cousin Celia’s recommendation? It seems unlikely that large conversions over one or two years will help, in part because the "tax torpedo" is not all that wide. Avoiding high marginal rates on a smallish chunk of income by paying somewhat less high marginal rates on a much larger chunk of income is unlikely to pay off. There still may be value in doing conversions even after claiming SS, up to the boundary of the next IRMAA; that doesn't pay taxes that won't event...

It gets worse. With 3% inflation, the 2027 IRMAA payment is expected to rise to $1171 (1.03 to the 4th power times $1,040). That doesn’t sound so bad, until one examines the counterfactual of no conversion at all. In that event, the $1,040 IRMAA payment not made in 2023 would have grown at the 6% rate projected for the TDA, to $1313. Cheryl gave up a future TDA balance of $1313 to avert a future IRMAA payment valued at $1171. That doesn’t sound … smart. I have a problem with treating tax-deferred account balances as "real money". IRMAA payments are cash out of my pocket. TDA balances are not really mine, but subject to the whims of congress and generally expected to have a significant tax haircut before I can actually use them. I...

You probably end up closer to $90/night for two, considering the "per person, double occupancy" price and adding in (mandatory) tips and port fees. And of course there will be lots of upselling going on.

Recognize that the passenger demographic reflects the pricing and marketing, and that a fair number of your fellow passengers will have been trying to get the most out of the fifteen drinks per day drinks package they bought.

But given those caveats, lots of people enjoy them. We place higher value on our leisure time, so we pay somewhat more for experiences that suit us better. The nice thing is that there are options.

Please forgive my naïveté, but can't both the shoals and the torpedo be avoided if the following conditions apply? RMDs <$100k, and all are designated as QCDs. Roth IRA is sufficient to fund all living expenses. Social Security income plus any income from dividends and interest is low enough to stay below the threshold for SS taxation, after standard deduction is taken. Yes, BUT... 1) it can be a pretty expensive process to get to that state (enough Roth conversions, and/or foregoing tax deferral at working years by doing Roth contributions). 2) your premise essentially devotes the full balance of your tax-deferred accounts to charity; a worthy goal, but not necessarily in the picture for most retirees. 3) the current tax brackets and larg...

The SS torpedo becomes less and less avoidable because that tax is not adjusted for inflation; this years' inflation (and SS increase) probably moved things up by 5 years or so. For someone who is single and at top age 70 SS benefit level, that one may be largely a lost cause. For someone with a relatively lower SS benefit, and/or MFJ, there may be some more room, but that's also trickling away. The nature of other income (interest, qualified dividends/LTCG, pension, etc) can have it's own impact as well. My inclination here would be to manage to IRMAA levels... 1) withdraw as needed for living expenses/RMDs. 2) adjust income with Roth conversions or QCDs to fit a bit under an IRMAA breakpoint. 3) assume circumstances (congress changing the...

Down 11.4% for 2022.

About 85/15 AA, but no intermediate or long bonds. Somewhat of a value tilt.

Real return this year significantly worse, of course, but the ride has been pretty good over the last few years.

So I was born in 1959, what is the new RMD requirement age? (I have seen several conflicting numbers). Am I correct that you cannot use the one time $50,000 withdrawal from an IRA to contribute to a DAF? I have seen CRATs or CRUTs only mentioned. Most news articles discussing the RMD age shift noted the age 73 in 2023 and age 75 in 2033. Which leaves things obscure for those born in 1959. I did find an older Forbes article which mentioned RMD start moving to age 74 in 2029. This was written prior to the recent flurry of mangling in the Senate, but it seems plausible that the current news coverage (mostly rewriting each other's articles) is just skipping the 2029 point. Good question about the extended QCD options. Allowing CRATs or CRUTs s...

The reason Kaiser Advantage (and all other Medicare Advantage plans) has low premiums from you is that Medicare is also paying them a monthly fee, whether you seek care or not in exchange for you not having Original Medicare. But you are also paying Medicare premiums monthly and you paid into Medicare while you worked. In other words, the money is being paid behind the scenes but it is invisible to you. I see it as Medicare is paying them to take care of a certain population of patients without bothering Medicare for each visit. In exchange for the low price to you, you are agreeing to get all medical care through the network you chose (Kaiser or other), except for emergencies while traveling. You also can’t file any claims for Original Me...

We have an assortment of accounts; and indeed many of them have specific purposes - usually tied to various tax scenarios. Some, like HSAs and inherited IRAs I expect to prune down over the next few years. I do think that it's a good idea to keep tabs on which accounts are preferable to use for which purposes. Keeping a list of the planned usages could reasonably be a part of an IPS. We like to say "money is fungible (can be used for any purpose), but the tax consequences can mean that's not quite so. Money in an HSA has one value if used for restricted purposes, another value if withdrawn for general use after age 65, and still a different value if used before age 65. Similarly, inherited IRAs have restrictions, while charities as ben...

My general plan is to project IRMAA and tax brackets each year, and see where our income is likely to fall within them. If we have significant space in the current bracket, I'll do Roth conversions to push us up near the top of the bracket. If we have RMDs, and are likely to be just over an IRMAA bracket, I may do some QCD to help get us under. I figure if I keep nibbling away at the tax-deferred in this way, I can slowly move more into tax-free and reduce the impact of the growing RMD percentages as we age (as well as the eventual filing single stage). Prior to RMDs, I'm willing to move some distance into IRMAA with Roth conversions and/or withdrawals from tax-deferred. I use "what would our income look like if we were age 73 and taki...

It may be wise to have a time and/or condition when you become an active "co-trustee" of the trust. This could be something like when current trustees reach age 75, or if one of them passes away. You wouldn't necessarily be taking any active control, but you would be able to step in if needed without going through the typical incapacitation process that is often included in trusts. Even if you are a co-trustee by terms of the trust, financial institutions will work much better with you if your parent actively adds you to signature authority on accounts (which is a separate process). It's good to have somewhat of a roadmap worked out with your parent ahead of time so that they are making decisions about handing over controls while ...