Trying to get my arms around this whole health care ride from ER to Medicare and beyond. Tell me what I am missing here in properly/reasonably underwriting "enough" in my medical budget from the early years of RE and beyond...
Plan is to RE end of next year at age 55. Both DW and I are "healthy" with no real ongoing expenses other than a couple of minor meds, no medical concerning conditions. Having been self-employed for the last 30 yrs, i am accustomed to taking as much risk as I can with high deductibles with the lowest premium. We switched to a Christian non-insurance plan as of the beginning of the year which saved me significant $$ ($18K just in premiums) and anticipate staying on this plan until further notice. Current drive out budget for premiums and medical costs I have $24K/yr allocated (still 2 kids on my plan). Hopefully both kids will be on their own plan once I launch.
Once I get to Medicare, my experience from over seeing my dad's bills before he passed from cancer was his out of pockets might have been no more than $5K/yr $6K/yr for supplemental insurance, meds, etc. This begs the questions as to how much you really need to plan for once Medicare kicks in??
So this brings me to the LTC question. I get that the cost of LTC can be up there, however, if you were previously planning a RE that had a fair amount of discretionary spending and/or own a home, couldn't you argue if your condition requires LTC, 1) you wont be doing as much/any of the discretionary (i.e. travel) plans you had and those $$ will shift to your new LTC line item, and 2) perhaps you end up selling your house/take a reverse mortgage to cover these costs??
Just spit balling here as this whole health care cost issue seems to be one of the biggest bogies ERs struggle planning for.
For those of you who have driven this path from ER to Medicare to possibly LTC, how did pan out? Were you under/over prepared financially?
Plan is to RE end of next year at age 55. Both DW and I are "healthy" with no real ongoing expenses other than a couple of minor meds, no medical concerning conditions. Having been self-employed for the last 30 yrs, i am accustomed to taking as much risk as I can with high deductibles with the lowest premium. We switched to a Christian non-insurance plan as of the beginning of the year which saved me significant $$ ($18K just in premiums) and anticipate staying on this plan until further notice. Current drive out budget for premiums and medical costs I have $24K/yr allocated (still 2 kids on my plan). Hopefully both kids will be on their own plan once I launch.
Once I get to Medicare, my experience from over seeing my dad's bills before he passed from cancer was his out of pockets might have been no more than $5K/yr $6K/yr for supplemental insurance, meds, etc. This begs the questions as to how much you really need to plan for once Medicare kicks in??
So this brings me to the LTC question. I get that the cost of LTC can be up there, however, if you were previously planning a RE that had a fair amount of discretionary spending and/or own a home, couldn't you argue if your condition requires LTC, 1) you wont be doing as much/any of the discretionary (i.e. travel) plans you had and those $$ will shift to your new LTC line item, and 2) perhaps you end up selling your house/take a reverse mortgage to cover these costs??
Just spit balling here as this whole health care cost issue seems to be one of the biggest bogies ERs struggle planning for.
For those of you who have driven this path from ER to Medicare to possibly LTC, how did pan out? Were you under/over prepared financially?