The financial news that actually matters
Plenty of workers dream of leaving the job before the traditional finish line, but one number tends to dictate the timing: 65, the age when Medicare begins. Retire any earlier and there is a stretch with no employer plan and no Medicare card, a gap that can last months, or a full decade for someone…
Millions of lower- and middle-income workers put money into a 401(k) or an IRA and stop there, never realizing the government will effectively hand part of it back. The Retirement Savings Contributions Credit, better known as the Saver’s Credit, gives eligible savers a tax credit of up to $1,000 — or $2,000 for a married…
Retirees who leave the workforce in their late 50s often run into an awkward timing problem. The bulk of their money is locked inside a traditional IRA, but withdrawing any of it before age 59½ normally triggers a 10 percent federal penalty stacked on top of the ordinary income tax the withdrawal already owes. For…
The name invites a misunderstanding. Medicare’s yearly wellness visit sounds like the head-to-toe annual physical many workers grew used to under employer coverage, and plenty of new beneficiaries book it expecting exactly that. It is something narrower: a planning appointment built around prevention and paperwork, not a hands-on examination. Knowing the difference matters, because the…
One of the most valuable benefits available to older Americans on a tight budget is also one of the most overlooked. A federal program called Extra Help can wipe out most of what a person pays for Medicare prescription drug coverage, cutting premiums, deductibles, and copays down toward zero. Yet year after year, a large…
Turning 65 comes with one Medicare deadline that quietly shapes a retiree’s costs for the rest of their life, and it is easy to sail past without noticing. The government builds in a single stretch of about seven months for most people to enroll in Medicare, and the calendar for that window is fixed to…
When a husband or wife dies, Social Security can pay the survivor a benefit based on the deceased spouse’s earnings, often for the rest of the survivor’s life. What many widows and widowers do not realize is that a decision as personal as whether and when to remarry can quietly switch that benefit off. The…
Filing for Social Security feels final, and for most people it is. But the Social Security Administration keeps one narrow escape hatch for retirees who conclude, soon after the checks begin, that they claimed too early. It is a formal do-over that erases the original application as if it had never existed, and it comes…
Medicare Advantage plans win over millions of retirees with a straightforward pitch: lower monthly premiums, extra perks, and often dental, vision, or hearing coverage that traditional Medicare leaves out. What the marketing rarely spells out is the string attached to those savings. Most Advantage plans operate through a fixed network of doctors and hospitals, and…
When a person dies and passes a house, a brokerage account, or shares of stock to heirs, the tax code treats that inherited property very differently than the same assets sold during the owner’s lifetime. A provision known as step-up in basis resets the tax starting point on what is inherited to its value on…