Susanne Krivit

Comments:

• I hear discussions on various retirement podcasts on buying LTC. Most the "experts" are salesman that give you little real information. My husband and I have a shared benefit rider on our policy and a 5% annual coverage increase. It is pretty robust coverage since we live in CT where care is very high compared to other places. But my question is not "Should I buy LTC?" (since I have it) it is "Should I keep my LTC policy?". No one even discusses that. One thing no one mentioned here was that in order to self insure you have to set aside the money to cover LTC and that money should not be invested in any variable assets since you never know when you will need it. That does not appeal to me, so I tend to want to keep the policy even though the premiums continue to rise.

  Post: Is buying long-term-care insurance a good idea?

  Link to comment from May 18, 2024

• New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine allow you to switch from Medicare Advantage to Original Medicare and a Supplement plan without underwriting. For some reason few seem to know about this.

  Post: Fully Committed

  Link to comment from April 20, 2024

• Since I live in Connecticut I am able to have Medicare Advantage now while my medical needs are few and original Medicare later with a supplement plan when I need it. I am saving $3K - 4K a year now with Medicare Advantage and it is worth it to me.

  Post: What Advantage?

  Link to comment from March 27, 2024

• I so much enjoyed reading your story. It reminded me that in certain ways, things have changed since your parents were young. Some of the specific choices they made were what was expected of them, but today we the flexibility to make other choices if we so choose. Men do not have to be the sole support of families. Women do not have to give up their careers in order to be home makers. Women do not have to be the caregivers to their elderly parents and men do not have to manage the finances. But these things all still need to be done, and someone needs to do them. That has certainly not changed.

  Post: My Parents’ Retirement

  Link to comment from March 13, 2024

• I'm worried I will not be able to manage our finances in the future due to gradual cognitive decline. My husband has no interest in it and relies on me. How do I get him more involved?

  Post: What are your top financial worries?

  Link to comment from March 9, 2024

• I'm entering the last full year of my "delay period" where I am living primarily off my retirement savings prior to turning on Social Security at 70. It came time for me to rebalance this fall in order to replenish the cash buffer I have been living on since 2017 when I retired. This could be referred to as re-balancing since what I did to replenish the cash buffer was sell the 5% of my equity holdings that were above my target allocation of 60%. What always confuses me is all the different opinions out there about when to rebalance. Since I don't believe I can time the market my decision as to when to rebalance is primarily based on when I need to replenish my cash, although if the market is tanking, I would likely hold off for bit (and having a generous cash buffer does help with that), but this year I did not hesitate to sell and market has been going up so fast that I am already back up over a 61% equity allocation.

  Post: Lean Against the Wind

  Link to comment from December 23, 2023

• OK, what does "But maybe I need to step up my game" mean? Also, can anyone explain how to deduct foreign income from a mutual fund or ETF on your federal taxes using Turbotax? I have read endlessly on the subject and still when I get to Turbotax to actually have it calculate my taxes I can't make sense of it. For the sake of argument, let's say the fund is 100% foreign and I want to take the tax credit not the tax deduction. Thanks!

  Post: Happily Ever After

  Link to comment from December 16, 2023

• Every time a buy a car I look around to see the best way to buy it. I have bought new and used over the years. I keep cars until they become unreliable. My current car is leased. This is the first time I have leased. The deal was just too hard to pass up, plus it is electric and I liked the idea of having a "3 year trial" before I bought it. I do plan to buy it in 5 months when the 3 year lease is up.

  Post: Is buying a used car always the smarter financial choice?

  Link to comment from November 11, 2023

• Excel is my friend but it's a lot of work to keep it up. And I use Turbo tax to test various scenarios. I have not found a good app to use as a Roth conversion calculator. I have tried several and found them lacking. What I currently do is use Turbotax and plug in different conversion amounts to see where my federal and state taxes go, then check cut offs for Medicare. Since taxes change every year, it is work to keep up with and I wait until late in the year to make decisions due to 4th quarter distributions from brokerage accounts being released in late Nov. and the possibility of needing to re-balance. Once my RMD's kick in I will likely find it will not work for me anyway, but I still have a couple of years to go until that starts.

  Post: What are your favorite financial apps and websites, present company excepted?

  Link to comment from October 28, 2023

• I would have taken better care of my teeth especially in my teenage years. I have huge expenses now resulting from replacing old dental work I had done in my 20's and 30's that could have been avoided. It is by far my largest expense today and limits other things I would much prefer to spend my retirement savings on. I live in an area with high medical/dental costs and dental insurance replaces only up to $2000 a year even with the best policies. That is a drop in the bucket for me.

  Post: If you could live your financial life again, what would you do differently?

  Link to comment from October 28, 2023