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Naismith

You might want to add what state you are in, because eligibility for plans (and their names) varies from state to state.

Congratulations on the new addition.

Naismith

Being in our 60s and inspired by Covid, we just finished our third will through the years (changes both in state law and guardians/executors as our own children grew up). We paid $1,400 for an estate planning package that includes - a will. One of the issues for us is that my oldest son was never le...

Naismith

I think the main point to be aware of is that the designated beneficiary will receive the account assets, regardless of what your will may state. So, don't create confusion by trying to use a will to direct where these assets go, and certainly don't create a contradiction by having a will say one t...

Naismith

Stinky wrote: ↑Thu Jan 07, 2021 3:09 pm
I trust the IRS payment website more than I trust the USPS these days.

Amen! I can't believe how long things are taking with USPS, and how many things are being lost.

Naismith

DH and I were both teachers before our kids were school age. We never would have done this and it had nothing to do with 2 teachers taking time off. It is just a continuity issue, especially with math and sciences. It may also affect the funding for the school, which in some places is based on atte...

Naismith

A lot will depend on your state/local definitions of "attendance." Some places have a requirement of x days of attendance to get credit for the year. When I took our kids to Brasil for a 4-month sabbatical for my husband's research, I registered them as homeschoolers for the entire year, a...

Naismith

If you keep them, be really sure you remember to cash them in after ten years. You MUST pay the tax in the (30th) year of final maturity, as well as the fact that they stop earning anything at all. The only remedy for failing to pay the tax on time is filing an amended return. Nice explanation and ...

Naismith

What meaningful activities are you doing in retirement today with your free time? Sigh. The thing is, many of those activities you list are not possible now during the Covid pandemic. I returned to paid work, when I found a position in my old field that allowed work from home. I was able to get Wed...

Naismith

Since we don't need it to survive, we will give it away to charities who will help those who need it more.

Naismith

I often question why a child "needs" a car, often as soon as they're old enough to get their license. I was with you on that until I had a young person in a very competitive marching band. As a senior, she qualified for an on-campus parking permit, and could drive herself home after pract...

Naismith

1) Marry wisely - it's a major advantage to have a spouse who is fully onboard with your financial mindset Even though I bring in more than enough for a care free living, my wife refuses to spend any of it, and insists on working. Glad that works for you. I have also been employed for most of my ma...

Naismith

If you buy a Honda or Toyota just buy a new one. They price the used ones close to the new ones and you keep your cars a long time. +1 We had to buy new cars when we returned to the US, and that was our experience. We bought a Toyota Prius and Honda Fit, and there are very few of those available as...

Naismith

Two of our children took time off to serve a full-time mission for our church. That is considered an acceptable excuse to ask for a break in a National Merit Scholarship. Both of them served their missions in other countries. Upon graduation, one went to work for the US State Department and her firs...

Naismith

$800 might be a single airplane ticket. Yes but a retired person who is older should probably NOT be getting on an airplane from a public health perspective, yes? Mentioning plane tickets just rubs my face in how much our life sucks being stuck at home. Although we are not terribly old, my MIL is 9...

Naismith

With the clarification from the OP, this would seem an appropriate move. One huge warning though, for those who might be holding I bonds longer: consider your estate plan. We started buying EE back in the early 1990s, and those will still be earning 4% for a few more years. We switched to I when tho...

Naismith

Another former bike commuter working at home nowadays. Good advice all around about lights, etc. Living in Florida, commuting should have been easy. But at 6:30 a.m., it would get down to the 20s in February, and I loved my neoprene half face mask to cut the wind. Also frustrating that the temperatu...

Naismith

“Or” ownership came from former paper bonds. “With” ownership came from electronic bonds since day one. OR means co-ownership and WITH means the first named owner is the primary owner while the second named owner is the secondary owner who is like a beneficiary. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text...

Naismith

We are re-doing our estate plan, and I noticed that in looking at our savings bonds, some have a registration of OR while some have a registration of WITH. Can anyone explain the difference? Some of those bonds began life on paper, but all have since been transferred into Treasury Direct. The value ...

Naismith

We never hired an advisor per se, but we have used professional advice. 1. Starting a few years before retirement, we began utilizing the https://pralanaretirementcalculator.com/ . This is not too complicated for those who are already comfortable with Excel. There is a modest annual cost for the upg...

Naismith

Glass half full or half empty, it's your call! Sorry, I refuse to be guilted by your overly rosy attitude. If that works for you, great, but please don't assume that others will see it the same way. This season really sucks, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. We are not wallowing in self-pity...

Naismith

Also keep in mind that some FEHB plans are giving a refund for Medicare B premiums. We have BCBS Basic, and it is a refund of $800 per year for each person enrolled in Medicare B (so that's $1,600 for the household). And Basic enrollees with Medicare B can still use the mail-order pharmacy. My MIL h...

Naismith

[....] I'm curious about the experience of other retirees here who went though similar adjustment periods, especially those that have tried to re-enter the work force with finances not being the number one consideration. Not too many of us went through a "similar adjustment period," becau...

Naismith

The main issue is bikes vs. ellipticals as I see it. There were Pelotons at my gym and I tried them, but I much preferred the solid feel and smooth, long stride of the Precor ellipticals I had been using for many years (various high end models). I recommend Precor ellipticals to anyone looking for ...

Naismith

When I lived in Indonesia 2018-2019, I could access my Ally account easily, but they know you are overseas, and there were things that I could not do. Specifically, I could not open a CD online. When I phoned in (via Google Voice) and proved who I was, they opened it for me. Although I am not sure i...

Naismith

Well, making such a transition in the middle of a pandemic is not the best time to talk about how things might be in a more typical year. Virtually everything that I had planned is down the toilet because things are cancelled or not safe, since we are the only point of contact for a 90+ year-old rel...

Naismith

We planned Spring Break trips to enhance their education. Spent a week each in places like New York, DC, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia. The Philly trip was the year one daughter was prepping for the AP American History exam, and it really helped to firm up a lot of things. College trips for Spring Br...

Naismith

I prepare by laughing at the people wearing plastic gloves and masks in parks and other public places. Not everyone dressed up is unrealistically paranoid. Has it occurred to you that perhaps such people are trying to protect you, despite your rudeness to them. I was in Hong Kong on Monday, Singapo...

Naismith

I would be more worried about Disneyland than the flight itself. All those surfaces that we touch in theme parks: The metal bars in line, the controllers on rides, the seat belts...tourists from all over the world... I just got back from a trip to Southeast Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines. U...

Naismith

Schwab checking is great for ATM withdrawals, no foreign transaction fees. Also Capital One 360 and USAA. We were only expat for 2 years. We have a small local checking account that we used to pay some local bills and transfer local funds for work reimbursement. I would simply go to an ATM, get mone...

Naismith

My daughter is in this field, and a lot of her courses through the community college were online. But she was required to do an internship, and the college had the contacts to place her. The firm where she interned offered her a job. Our impression is that the pay is not great, but benefits can be v...

Naismith

Mine is 2% but we are not directly on a coast. Also, when we got a new roof, we went through the process to get a wind mitigation discount. The contractor had to submit photos of certain things during the process. My insurance is reasonable for me because they won't cover dwellings in certain risky ...

Naismith

A few years ago I converted all our paper bonds into Treasury Direct. Now it is very convenient to see what is going on. Those purchased prior to May 1995 are still earning 4%, so I'm gonna hang on to them until they reach final maturity. Unfortunately those that were purchased May of 1995 and later...

Naismith

We're in our mid-60s. There are days that I wonder how we ever had time to work for money.... Immediately after stopping work for pay, we took 1.5 years to give back by serving a mission for our church in a foreign country. Since returning home, we are very involved with family, supporting grandkids...

Naismith

I guess it depends on the ages of your kids, but for us (with only five children), we found there was about a 17-year gap between when the youngest were in school (allowing me part-time employment with minimal child-care expenses) and when we wanted to retire. During those years, I put most of my sa...

Naismith

So sorry for the loss of your wife. Yes, this is a great time in your daughter's life to do fun things with her! I appreciated the financial plan we received from TIAA. It didn't tell us much new, but did reinforce much of what we thought. He also walked us through our social security claiming strat...

Naismith

It isn't clear what the goal of your proposed umbrella is. To protect yourself when renting a car, or to ensure that your home has adequate renters/homeowners coverage? Unfortunately, I have some insights on this. While we have been overseas, our car was totaled. When we lost our car and thus our au...

Naismith

Because USAA rates are based in part on the level of USAA membership, it's difficult to make meaningful cost comparisons with other policy holders without knowing this important piece of information. Exactly. For example, officers (and former officers) are in one class. Adult dependents of officers...

Naismith

Three days is waaaay too much. I am very much into Ancient Greek history and culture, but - after having visited Athens - I can not recommend spending more than one day there. Acropolis, Agora, national museum ... then get the heck out!!! We spent two days there, and it was not enough for us. In ad...

Naismith

We loved Aegina. We went right from the Athens airport to the port via the express bus. It was so instantly relaxing. One possible issue, however, is that Aegina is a retreat for Athenians--it isn't even included in a lot of USAmerican guidebooks. And so English was not as common as in more USAmeric...

Naismith

I find the terminology being used here rather misleading. Although I was at home full-time for about 10 years, I didn't think of it as "staying" there. I was working my ass off at the hardest job I'd ever held--and I'm an Army veteran and did graduate school with three kids. I always thoug...

Naismith

Call your agent? This all depends on state law. Our kids were not added and rated until they got the actual license--and yes, we called from the Division of Motor Vehicles Office. We made our kids drive with a permit, only with us, for a full year. Later we saw that some states were actually requiri...

Naismith

I like CapOne checking, because I get a debit card with no foreign transaction fees.... This is a crucial difference for those of us who travel overseas. It is has been worth A Lot over the years. I have accounts both places (I like the CD options at Ally) but for overseas trips, CapOne wins for su...

Naismith

Graduating undergrad 1980, my university also had a PE requirement. But it was satisfied by marching band, and waived for those of us who were veterans.

Naismith

Make sure that you pay attention to the depth of the models you are considering. The newer ones are much deeper than what was around 16 years ago, and if your space isn't up to snuff, your choice may be limited to a "counter depth" model. When we redid our kitchen a while back, we left ple...

Naismith

I am also a veteran and will end up in a National Cemetery, I hope Battle Creek Michigan with my mom (Army nurse in WWII), dad (also served WWII) and my brother (two tours Vietnam). In my birth family, we tend to prefer cremation followed by burial. Much easier to ship a box than a full body, and yo...

Naismith

This should be easy to verify simply by checking your account statement. Is the withdrawal for an even $20 increment or not? Um, that only works for those in the US. When we withdraw in foreign countries, it was an even amount in the foreign currency, but generally ends up with pennies involved. Th...

Naismith

Thanks all for the great advice and thoughtful comments. We actually have a lot of ultralight equipment because another hobby is multi-day bike trips, and we carry what we need. A few years ago we did the C&O and Great Allegheny Passage trails, and left our car in a parking lot for 10 days witho...

Naismith

I have always dreamed of going to Havasu Falls https://ordinarytraveler.com/tipsarticles/havasu-falls-travel-tips-havasupai-arizona We've heard it is a magical place. Up to now, we could never take the time on business trips to Arizona, and now we are 64 and 65 years old. My husband has a conference...

Naismith

The reason to convert later would be that you are more certain of your income for the year, so you wno't accidentally push past some tax cliff due to unanticipated income later in the year. Yes, this is an important consideration on timing, even though it doesn't have to do with market value per se...

Naismith

Wow, you are starting early! A commitment to undergraduate education is important. I did grad school at the University of Texas at Austin, but would not send my dog there as an undergrad. It may be better now, but then it was all about grant funding. Faculty could buy themselves out of teaching so t...

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