IT’S OPEN SEASON for many of us—time to choose our health insurance for the year ahead. It’s a topic I got seriously interested in when I took over management of 500 mathematically astute engineers. They challenged me daily to understand how the various plans stacked up against each other. I spent a lot of time looking at various ways to assess the value of the different plan choices, and came up with a framework that worked for my family.

THE NEWSPAPERS ARE full of reports that a new tax on billionaires may be uncorked. The Washington Post even ran an article estimating what the 10 richest Americans would pay over the next five years should it pass.
I take no stand on the politics of the proposal. But I have seen enough trial balloons to be skeptical that Elon Musk will soon write a 10-digit check to the U.S. Treasury. As Chuck Collins has written in The Wealth Hoarders,

WE SPEND TOO MUCH time worrying about stagflation. The term describes a period of high inflation with stagnant growth—a disastrous economic condition. It was seen at times during the worst of the mid-1970s recession, and again when inflation spiked in the early 1980s.
Do we see it today? No way.
Everyone over 60 surely recalls how difficult it was decades ago. Consumer prices were out of control. The unemployment rate jumped. Real wages were on the decline,

“I SORELY MISS the peace of mind that comes with universal health coverage.”

Those are the words of a 32-year-old woman from Canada, who is currently a PhD student residing in the U.S. When I read them recently in the comment section of a blog, they changed my thinking about health care.

I’ve been involved in health benefits, health insurance and health plans of various types since 1962. I’ve designed employer plans. I was on the boards of four health maintenance organizations.

THIS IS THE LAST year that my income won’t affect my Medicare premiums.
At issue is IRMAA, or income-related monthly adjustment amount, which is the premium surcharge for Medicare Part B and Part D if you exceed certain income thresholds. The surcharge is based on your modified adjustment gross income from two years earlier. Like almost all retirees, I’ll begin Medicare at age 65. That means IRMAA will be based on my income for the tax year when I reach age 63,

LATE OCTOBER and early November mean two things to me. First, I spend a lot of money on trenta-sized pumpkin-spice cold brew at Starbucks. Somewhere, Suze Orman is no doubt cringing in horror. But that’s not what this post is about.
Second, late October usually means I’ve moved on to other pursuits—because the sports teams I follow either have a terrible record or have been eliminated from tournament play already.
Except this year. The Atlanta Braves are still alive and competing in the World Series.

INVESTORS SHOULD diligently track two things: their portfolio’s performance and their asset allocation.
To monitor overall performance is humbling. If you’re like me, you eventually realize how much your cockamamie market-beating schemes have lagged the market—and it dawns on you that you could do much better by simply mimicking the market with index funds and occasionally rebalancing.
What percentage of your portfolio should be in U.S. shares, foreign stocks, cash, bonds and other assets?

AS A RETIREE WHO HAS traditional Medicare, my health insurance premiums will cost $4,696 this year. That comes to $391 a month. I’ve had no other out-of-pocket costs in 2021, except Medicare Part B’s $203 deductible.
Here’s how much I’m paying in 2021 for each of my health care plans:

Traditional Medicare: $148.50 per month or $1,782 total
Prescription drug plan: $29.20 per month or $350 total
Medigap policy: $213.68 per month or $2,564 total

I know some people are critical of federal-run programs.

I THANK MURTHY, a friend at college, for teaching me guitar. Instead of theories, he taught me five easy chords. I could soon play a few songs and that fueled my motivation to learn more.
The same strategy can help beginner investors. Novices often find the stock market intimidating and mysterious. Result? Inaction and opportunity cost. Solution? Simple steps.
A former coworker comes to my mind. He was uninterested in stocks, including the company shares he received as part of his pay.

I’M PLAYING ECONOMIST today, looking ahead to third-quarter GDP, the first estimate of which will be released Thursday. No, I won’t be offering a forecast. There are plenty of highly capable economists doing just that. Rather, my goal is to discuss what few in the media are talking about. Could a recession be in the offing?
According to economists Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus, a recession is defined as “a period of significant decline in total output,

THE GAMBLING TRUISM says you can’t beat the house. That brings me to a recent HumbleDollar article that discussed choosing either a Medicare Advantage plan or traditional Medicare with an accompanying Medigap policy. Almost two dozen readers weighed in with comments.
My two cents: Never forget that the managed-care companies offering Advantage plans are mostly for-profit companies that are publicly traded. The government’s purpose is to transfer its insurance risk to those companies.

DO I SOUND LIKE a broken record? Last week, the performance gap between U.S. and foreign stocks widened even further. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (symbol: VTI) has now returned 21.6% so far in 2021, while Vanguard FTSE All World ex-U.S. ETF (VEU) is up just 9.4%.
International funds’ relative weakness has become so routine that it rarely makes the financial news. What’s different this time: The economic landscape would seem to favor foreign shares,

WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN indicators for where the cost of living is headed. These are the kinds of things that hit us viscerally. Last weekend, we had family visiting, and we decided to order pizza and wings. Two large pizzas, two dozen wings and an order of chicken tenders for our grandsons cost $103. A large pepperoni pizza alone was $26.
On Sunday morning, my wife and I took our two older grandsons out to breakfast.

BACK IN THE 1950s, economists Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller developed a theory that, even today, is taught in virtually every finance class.

To understand the theory, suppose you’re running a company and want to build a new factory. To raise money for the project, you generally have two options: You can sell shares to investors or you can borrow money. No one disputes that basic framework, but Modigliani and Miller added a twist: They argued that,

NOBODY, INCLUDING ME, wants to spend their hard-earned money on health care. That, of course, is illogical if you’re being treated for an illness or relieved of discomfort. Nevertheless, we don’t want to use our own money. That’s why we have health insurance—to cover everything. Or at least that’s our expectation.

When I ran employee benefits, I had many debates with workers about their health care bills. When a doctor charged significantly above the reasonable and customary fee,