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Bankruptcies in continuing care
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AUTHOR: Joe Kiefer on 7/7/2025
FIRST: R Quinn on 7/7/2025 | RECENT: William Perry on 7/14/2025
THE MOST GALLING moment came when the notice of a sheriff’s sale was nailed to a tree in our front yard. The message to passersby was all too clear: “Deadbeats live here.”
Except they didn’t. Our house was in foreclosure—but the debts weren’t ours. They belonged to the people we had bought the house from. How did we escape what turned out to be a two-year ordeal? Three words: owner’s title insurance. How did we get caught up in such a mess?
MY WIFE AND I PAID just $234 in federal income taxes on 2021 adjusted gross income of $98,370, giving us an effective tax rate of less than 1%.
How did we end up paying so little? It all started with my October 2020 layoff. I was age 57 and had, until then, enjoyed a 34-year newspaper career. One of my immediate concerns: getting health insurance coverage.
That turned out to be easy in 2021.
Comments
Jonathan wrote in July 2022 of being the victim of check-washing: https://humbledollar.com/2022/06/a-dirty-business/
Post: The future of mail and how it affects finances
Link to comment from January 3, 2026
In today's Wall Street Journal, Jason Zweig has a (related?) take on changes in target-date funds, saying: "Leave it to Wall Street to take a cheap, simple, elegant idea and junk it up with fees, complexity and opacity. ... Many of these funds are getting cluttered with extra holdings. Things might get worse if so-called alternatives managers have their way and start stuffing illiquid, risky and often expensive private-markets assets into them." https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/do-you-really-know-whats-inside-your-401-k-c480ec9c?st=pda75i&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Post: The annuities are coming, the annuities are coming‼️
Link to comment from December 5, 2025
Morningstar gives an overview of continuing care retirement communities in this article published Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. I leave the task of assessing the accuracy and usefulness of the article to those of you who have experience with or at least more knowledge of CCRCs. Is a Continuing Care Retirement Community Right for You? | Morningstar
Post: CCRC – continuing care retirement community
Link to comment from August 6, 2025
On a perhaps-related note, Morningstar's Christine Benz has another column out this week as part of her years-long examination of long-term care issues: The Hidden Crisis in Long-Term Care | Morningstar
Post: Bankruptcies in continuing care
Link to comment from July 11, 2025
Here is a gift-article link (hoping it works for everyone; sometimes they do not.): https://wapo.st/463eDeC
Post: Some people are never satisfied
Link to comment from July 10, 2025
Morningstar's Christine Benz wrote yesterday of speaking at a small overseas CampFI "camp meeting" in April: https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance/my-baptism-by-fire-lessons-financial-independence
Post: Going too far with FIRE: The downside of being in the financial advice business – RDQ
Link to comment from May 30, 2025
In addition to index funds generally incurring less in capital gains because of low turnover, Vanguard's special mutual fund structure, which now can be copied by other firms, allows avoiding most if not all capital-gains distributions. Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX) has not paid a capital gain (short-term or long-term) since 2000. In contrast, State Street Core Equity Fund, an active mutual fund that looks a lot like the S&P 500, has dumped huge capital gains on investors in recent years.
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Link to comment from April 20, 2025
This story was in the news Wednesday: Trump administration plans to end the IRS Direct File program for free tax filing, AP sources say https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-trump-4bb0bca02fab9b3d06ae6f45ac67b7ab
Post: Now taxes are filed, I have a question: How did you prepare your taxes?
Link to comment from April 17, 2025
This column on Social Security from the Conversation was cited in a Wall Street Journal newsletter this morning: Social Security’s trust fund could run out of money sooner than expected due to changes in taxes and benefits
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Link to comment from April 16, 2025
Given that Mike Piper is a big part of this discussion, I will note that he has disputed describing the 8%-per-year increase in Social Security benefits after Full Retirement Age as an 8% return. Here is a link to his 2020 post on the subject: https://articles.opensocialsecurity.com/8-return/ Key excerpts: "To know the actual return you would get from delaying Social Security, we’d have to know how long you will live (and how long your spouse will live, if you’re married). ... (W)e can calculate an expected return based on life expectancies. But that figure turns out to be nowhere near 8% in most cases. For an average unmarried male, the expected return from waiting to file for Social Security works out to about 1.8% above inflation. For an average unmarried female, it’s about 3% above inflation. For a married person, it depends on the difference in ages between the two spouses as well as the difference in primary insurance amounts. (In short, it’s usually significantly higher for the higher earner in the couple and lower for the lower earner in the couple.)"
Post: Open Social Security – interesting finding on optimization and mortality tables
Link to comment from January 15, 2025