Jay Burdman

Comments:

• Adam, thank you for another useful article. It seems like the percentage of articles with general info like this one used to be much higher on HD. I find the "this is my life's financial story" articles that seem to be increasing in number to be far less interesting/helpful since, by definition, they are one person's story. Wonder if I'm in the minority on this(?).

  Post: An Antacid Problem

  Link to comment from December 6, 2023

• All good points, but the one thing I never see discussed is...who's enforcing the terms of the trust??? It seems to me that the trustee can do whatever he/she wants as long as the beneficiaries are kept happy and don't sue. What exactly is preventing the trustee from distributing all the funds immediately (especially in cases where they are relatively limited) even if the terms of the trust dictate otherwise?

  Post: Trust Issues

  Link to comment from April 27, 2022

• I'm curious about your income level. The ACA was designed to provide affordable insurance to middle income people. It is the only reason that I was able to retire at 59 a couple of years ago. Without it, I would have had to work six more years. My wife and I have kept our income down during the first two years of our retirement for precisely this reason and we pay $215 per month for the two of us, which is less than we paid for group health insurance when I was working. We're pretty healthy, although a heart procedure that was billed at $300K cost me $6K last year. Also, we haven't had to change any of our doctors and we live in NY, which means we have access to world-class hospitals.

  Post: Affordable Care?

  Link to comment from April 6, 2022

• Good article with plenty to digest. One thing I don't understand is why one would keep cash in a money market fund that pays .01% but which costs between .09-.16% (essentially costing one money to keep cash) when one can earn 1% in an online savings account.

  Post: Mix and Match

  Link to comment from December 4, 2021

• Phil, I'm curious about your opinion regarding using different asset allocations for each of the three legs. A traditional withdrawal strategy (and the one I'm using) is to use the taxable account first, then IRAs, then Roths. Depending on the relative amounts in each type of account, this strategy can provide very different investing time horizons for each of them. In my case, I'll start using the IRA funds in about 6-7 years, and I won't start to use the Roths for about 18-20 years. Because of that, my stock/bond allocation is 50/50 in the IRAs, but 75/25 in the Roths. (Of course, the allocation in the taxable account is tougher to adjust if one is trying to minimize taxes (and income for ACA purposes) in the years before qualifying for Medicare.) In my mind, the overall asset allocation (which is what we all read about) is less important. (I don't think I've ever seen an article about asset allocation by account type/time horizon.) Does this make sense to you? Thanks.

  Post: Three Other Legs

  Link to comment from June 5, 2021