No pension. No health benefits.

[Jarhead*]

JG did it with no fat portfolio yet fails to state his wife still works.

Nothing wrong with that, I'm sort of jealous.

73ss454: This is an anonymous internet board, and therefore some posters should be taken with a grain of salt.

JG quit his job at 49, but had a number of years of full time and part time employment after that until he married his working wife.

Advice: Don't be overly influenced by anybody's "story", on this or any other board.

Jarhead

 

[73ss454]

Jarhead,

I'm a little slow but after a year of reading JG's posts even I figured it out.

Thanks

 

[Gone4Good]

Did the research that showed 4% would survive even the worst of times for 30 years. For a sixty-year pay out period, it's maybe 80-85% safe, but I only have maybe a 2% to 5% chance of living to age 100. The joint probability of me living to age 100 and having my portfolio survive a 4% withdrawal for sixty-years is probably still above 90%.
intercst

I guess the "SWR" concept requires a bit of faith - and I haven't been to church in years Still young (34) but could retire tomorrow to a comfortable middle class lifestyle at a 4% WR. I guess I like the belt and suspender financial security I have now. If my portfolio goes down, I still have my job. If I lose my job, I still have my portfolio. If both happen at once, at least I have up-to-date job skills.

I'm fortunately well positioned for ER someday, but the thought of subjecting my financial future to the whims of the Market Gods for as much as 60 years gives me heart burn.

 

[yakers]

I'm fortunately well positioned for ER someday, but the thought of subjecting my financial future to the whims of the Market Gods for as much as 60 years gives me heart burn.

Well thats true but things are a little relative and you need to find your comfort level. We all trust in something whether we know it or not, like it or not. I mean you could have "secure" real estate and it gets washed away. You could have a secure annuity and the insurance company folds. You could be in stocks in the twin towers. You get the idea.
You are in a good position as you have diversified sources of income. So its just how much itch to not be on a work schedule especially if you don't like your work. Some folks here look like they could take your resources and RE and make it work. At least you have choices and you know they are your choices.

 

[intercst]

I guess the "SWR" concept requires a bit of faith - and I haven't been to church in years    Still young (34) but could retire tomorrow to a comfortable middle class lifestyle at a 4% WR.  I guess I like the belt and suspender financial security I have now.  If my portfolio goes down, I still have my job.  If I lose my job, I still have my portfolio.  If both happen at once, at least I have up-to-date job skills. 

Not really, just the ability to learn from history.

My assumption is that the next 50 years won't be any worse than anything we've seen in the last 130 years (e.g. Crash of 1929 and the Great Depresson.)

If you think the future is worse, then keep working or adopt a lower SWR.

intercst

 

[ShokWaveRider]

We retired at 49 and 45 respectively, No Pension, No Health Care, No Worries.

Response to some of the following posts:

I never said we ignored the necessity of health care, just it was not a RE stopper. We still have to buy it. But we do not spend too much time worrying about it.

SWR

 

[AltaRed]

Can't imagine no worries(with no pension and no health care) unless you are a multi-millionaire many times over. Even then, it would be easy to burn up $1 million in a serious health crisis.

 

[intercst]

Can't imagine no worries(with no pension and no health care) unless you are a multi-millionaire many times over.  Even then, it would be easy to burn up $1 million in a serious health crisis.

I wonder what percentage of the population has a $1 million health crisis. It's probably more common than winning the lottery, but is it even a 1/10th of 1%?

intercst

 

[vic]

I wonder what percentage of the population has a $1 million health crisis. It's probably more common than winning the lottery, but is it even a 1/10th of 1%?

intercst

I think a serious health care cisis has a much higher probability than that. Not even a month after DH lost his job and health insurance, he was diagnosed with very fast spreading cancer. Low chance this could happen to a 20-some y/o, right? He paid 100K+ out of pocket and many more $$$$ were paid back over the next 7 years. Without a surgeon that volunteered his services for free, he would not have been dead by now. You can also be struck by a driver without insurance etc.. Do you like to take that chance? Anyone who chooses to RE in the US should seriously consider at least catastrophic insurance.

Vicky

 

[unclemick]

No health insurance since 1993. No homeowners either - out of pocket - hmmm - maybe 100k - courtesy Katirina.

People worry too much - and try to control too much - or think they have control over things that they really don't.

may price insurance someday - or not.

Heh, heh, heh, heh.

 

[maddythebeagle]

I think health insurance is cheap enough that I wouldnt FIRE without. I am also looking forward to using the HSA money to lower my taxes to take more out of my 401k and sock away.

 

[Peter]

I wonder what percentage of the population has a $1 million health crisis. It's probably more common than winning the lottery, but is it even a 1/10th of 1%?

intercst

Don't know what the percentage is, but it happened to me. My wife was diagnosed with cancer in 1984, and treatment costs topped $2MM by the time she died in 1997. The last 12 months alone were in excess of $1MM.

Fortunately all covered by insurance.

I'm afraid it's all too easy to run up bills in the 6 figure range with our screwed up system of health care. (Screwed up in my opinion, that is!)

Peter

 

[GTM]

Health insurance is a must I do not know how anyone could ignor its necessity.

As far as what type of policy one should have some say buy catastophic insurance with a high deductible so the premiums will be less.

I disagree.

Even a healthy person should have regular exams that are not covered if you have a catastrophic only plan.
I do not know the costs but full blood tests should be done once a year and other forms of preventative medicine are important. Out of pocket expenses would be very high.
And prescriptions are necessary for many people a couple of times a year.
HMO's may be a good choice, PPO's better.

Only a good plan is going to cover this.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

I think a serious health care cisis has a much higher probability than that. Not even a month after DH lost his job and health insurance, he was diagnosed with very fast spreading cancer. Low chance this could happen to a 20-some y/o, right? He paid 100K+ out of pocket and many more $$$$ were paid back over the next 7 years. Without a surgeon that volunteered his services for free, he would not have been dead by now. You can also be struck by a driver without insurance etc..  Do you like to take that chance? Anyone who chooses to RE in the US should seriously consider at least catastrophic insurance.

Vicky

Al Pacino would agree.

JG

 

[Mr._johngalt]

Health insurance is a must I do not know how anyone could ignor its necessity.

As far as what type of policy one should have some say buy catastophic insurance with a high deductible so the premiums will be less.

I disagree.

Even a healthy person should have regular exams that are not covered if you have a catastrophic only plan.
I do not know the costs but full blood tests should be done once a year and other forms of preventative medicine are important. Out of pocket expenses would be very high.
And prescriptions are necessary for many people a couple of times a year.
HMO's may be a good choice, PPO's better.

Only a good plan is going to cover this.

I have considered "going bare" but never have. OTOH, I suspect I could
work my way out of most economic problems. I might be dead first but hey................I can't afford a "good plan", so I have to roll the dice.
The annual "check ups/tests" are out, but they would be even if I had
full coverage. IMHO, if they look long enough, they will find something
and it will be expensive.

JG

 

[Martha]

Latest from Business Week on healthcare costs:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_02/b3915436.htm

All told, the U.S. will probably spend an estimated $1.9 trillion on health care in 2005, $100 billion more than the prior year. That's 15.7% of the gross domestic product. Despite such mammoth sums, hospitals will continue to struggle to stay solvent, employers will continue to face higher insurance premiums, employees will continue to shoulder a higher percentage of those premiums, and insurers -- well, insurers will continue to do very well, thank you, because they get to pass on their higher costs to the policy holders. Though not, of course, to the 45 million people who are uninsured -- 15.6% of the population.

At some point, and probably in the not-too-distant future, this level of spending will almost certainly become unsustainable. Expensive new drugs and medical technologies, a growing number of uninsured, and an aging, overweight population virtually guarantee cost increases will climb back to the 12% to 13% range in a few years. By 2010, UBS Securities estimates that health care will consume 17.4% of the GDP. "In my view, the pressure is not off costs at all," says William McGeever, a UBS health-care analyst. "I see nothing on the horizon that will moderate increases."

All of this might be O.K. if we were getting maximum bang for all those bucks, but we're not. Other industrialized nations, which have universal health coverage, spend less of their GDP on health care -- 8% to 10%. Yet they rank well above the U.S. in average life expectancy and infant mortality rate, standard measures of a nation's health. The U.S. ranks in the bottom quartile of all industrialized nations on those two measures.

Nor does the U.S. do well on more specific quality measures. In a study of a broad range of procedures in five highly industrialized nations, released last spring in the well-regarded journal Health Affairs, researchers determined that the extra spending on health care in the U.S. is "not buying better experiences with the health care system, with the exception of shorter waits for nonurgent surgery." That conclusion was backed up by a study released in December by Veteran's Administration researchers: They found that only 51% of patients nationwide receive med- ically recommended care for their conditions. So much for the oft-heard claim that the U.S. has the best medical system in the world.

Despite this dire situation, there are no serious proposals in Washington to redress the miserable cost/quality equation. President George W. Bush's main health-care reform initiative, the introduction of tax credits for Health Savings Accounts, is likely only to siphon off healthy adults from existing insurance plans, making it harder to offset the costs of treating the sick. At the same time, the shift to high-deductible policies by many employers is likely to cause some consumers to delay health care until their conditions become serious -- and more expensive to treat.

 

[Caroline]

I wonder what percentage of the population has a $1 million health crisis. It's probably more common than winning the lottery, but is it even a 1/10th of 1%?

intercst

This is hardly scientific, but I know THREE people myself who've had heart transplants.  Pre-transplant care, the operation itself, and post-op medication / treatments are well over $2 million for all of them. 

Even a healthy person should have regular exams that are not covered if you have a catastrophic only plan.
I do not know the costs but full blood tests should be done once a year and other forms of preventative medicine are important. Out of pocket expenses would be very high.
And prescriptions are necessary for many people a couple of times a year.
HMO's may be a good choice, PPO's better.

I enrolled myself in a longitudinal study of heart disease factors 20 years ago.  I get the whole ball of wax -- treadmill, diet assessment, lung-capacity test, blood pressure measurement, and complete cholesterol, blood, and diabetes screenings every three years.  I also get other tests on a one-off basis: carotid artery ultrasound, ovarian ultrasound (what this has to do with heart disease is entirely beyond me), bone-density scan, heart scan, etc.

Don't know what else is out there, but volunteering can get you a lot of free screening if you can find it.   (Some of them even pay you.) Craig's List has various opportunities, depending upon where you live.


FWIW,
Caroline   

 

[REWahoo]

This is hardly scientific, but I know THREE people myself who've had heart transplants.

I'm not much of a believer in "bad Karma", but nevertheless, I'm kinda glad I don't know you Caroline. Nothing personal, you understand...

 

[Michael]

Despite this dire situation, there are no serious proposals in Washington to redress the miserable cost/quality equation.

Washington, and the state capitals, are the primary reason it is so expensive to begin with. When the politicians get involved, things tend to become expensive and hard to get.

 

[Jarhead*]

Probably a generational thing, but I was raised in a small logging town in the Sierras, and you went to see the Dr. if you broke something, or couldn't stop the bleeding. I know for a fact that my parents never had a physical of any kind. There was also no vets in town, and if your pet (dog or cat), became deathly ill, it was up to you to put him down, to stop suffering.

I see where Caroline sure does take a lot of tests, and in talking to my daughters (Age 38 and 33), they also get annual physicals.

I have pretty much carried on the tradition of going to the Dr. if you break something, or can't stop the bleeding. (My kids are on my case about this a lot.)

I tore a a ligament in my knee about 14 years ago, and had to have it repaired. (Last time I saw a Dr.).

Caroline mentioned that she knew 3 acquaintences that needed heart transplants. I
have no reason to doubt her, but I'm 69, and have never known anybody personally that had this drastic procedure.

 

[eytonxav]

All told, the U.S. will probably spend an estimated $1.9 trillion on health care in 2005, $100 billion more than the prior year. That's 15.7% of the gross domestic product. Despite such mammoth sums, hospitals will continue to struggle to stay solvent, employers will continue to face higher insurance premiums, employees will continue to shoulder a higher percentage of those premiums, and insurers -- well, insurers will continue to do very well, thank you, because they get to pass on their higher costs to the policy holders

I can't think of many businesses that could operate with leading edge know how and services like we have in the US healthcare system, yet have the most poorly run administration capabilities standing behind these services.  Seems like a great opportunity for the consulting industry or AARP to latch onto and straigthen out.  When are we going to reach the point with these 15% YOY increases at which time the straw breaks the camels back and something is finally done to cap this fiasco.  If we can get teh whole country and government mobilized to rebuild New Orleans, why can't we get more traction on this potentially more catastrophic issue. If that happens maybe even UncleMick will get himself covered?

 

[Mr._johngalt]

Probably a generational thing, but I was raised in a small logging town in the Sierras, and you went to see the Dr. if you broke something, or couldn't stop the bleeding.  I know for a fact that my parents never had a physical of any kind.  There was also no vets in town, and if your pet (dog or cat), became deathly ill, it was up to you to put him down, to stop suffering.

I see where Caroline sure does take a lot of tests, and in talking to my daughters (Age 38 and 33), they also get annual physicals.

I have pretty much carried on the tradition of going to the Dr. if you break something, or can't stop the bleeding.  (My kids are on my case about this a lot.)

I tore a a ligament in my knee about 14 years ago, and had to have it repaired.  (Last time I saw a Dr.).

Caroline mentioned that she knew 3 acquaintences that needed heart transplants.  I
have no reason to doubt her, but I'm 69, and have never known anybody personally that had this drastic procedure.

Here is my 2 cents...........I can relate very well to Jarhead's story.
My Dad is 88 and although he is slipping now, he has avoided
doctor's like the plague. He has been in the hospital exactly
once in his life (born at home). He tore up his knee duck hunting.
That's it.

I am more of a hypochondriac myself, but as to annual physicals.................................forget it. I have to be pretty sick
to see a doctor. Unfortunately, that's been the case quite a few
times. Also, I confess if I had super insurance, I would go more often.
In it's absense, I think twice. Not necessarily a bad thing.

JG

 

[Eagle43]

I go, once a year, to get a physical. "Don't point that finger at me", I tell my doc, but he does, every time. I go because DW gripes and bitches until I do. I also read George Sheehan's last book. He was the big jogging guru. He refused to get a physical, because he was in such great shape. He ran marathons well into his 60s. Anyway, he got sick and prostrate cancer was discovered, way too late. Last part of his last book was completed by his daughter. Turns out the guy who had ran thousands of miles could not walk up the steps, at the end. It's just for peace of mind that I go, and peace in the house, too.

 

[Nords]

I don't usually chime in on healthcare issues because I hope I'm covered, but BW's rant is over the top.  Where's TH when you have a biased study and hyperextended claims?!?  

Latest from Business Week on healthcare costs:
All told, the U.S. will probably spend an estimated $1.9 trillion on health care in 2005, $100 billion more than the prior year. That's 15.7% of the gross domestic product.

"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."  Gosh, is there something else that we're supposed to be spending that money on?  CEO salaries?  I'm sure the U.S. business/population has spent more on healthcare than we spent getting men to the moon, too, but I don't see any relevance to that comparison either.

When it's their kids lying in the ICU hooked up to a bunch of very expensive medical technology, I suspect people will not care what % of GDP it's costing.  There are some healthcare decisions whose basis does not lie in efficient business practices.

At some point, and probably in the not-too-distant future, this level of spending will almost certainly become unsustainable. Expensive new drugs and medical technologies, a growing number of uninsured, and an aging, overweight population virtually guarantee cost increases will climb back to the 12% to 13% range in a few years. By 2010, UBS Securities estimates that health care will consume 17.4% of the GDP. "In my view, the pressure is not off costs at all," says William McGeever, a UBS health-care analyst. "I see nothing on the horizon that will moderate increases."

It's either unsustainable or there's no pressure on costs.  These two statements seem to me to be mutually exclusive.  If there's nothing that will moderate increases then it's not so unsustainable, is it?

All of this might be O.K. if we were getting maximum bang for all those bucks, but we're not. Other industrialized nations, which have universal health coverage, spend less of their GDP on health care -- 8% to 10%. Yet they rank well above the U.S. in average life expectancy and infant mortality rate, standard measures of a nation's health. The U.S. ranks in the bottom quartile of all industrialized nations on those two measures.

I understand that BW is trying to link a lack of govt-provided insurance to infant mortality, but I think that link is tenuous at best.  This factoid appears to neglect the fact that neonatal staffs will tackle just about any pregnancy no matter how grim the prognosis is.  If you're going to take on all the tough cases then you're going to lose a few.  If U.S. infant mortality was such a problem then you would think that the parents of kids in the neonatal ICU would be campaigning to ship their offspring to the #1 country for low infant mortality.  But I suspect that the healthcare systems in that country don't have anywhere near the resources or the track record that the U.S. has with keeping babies alive.

Here's a sports analogy-- in their early careers, baseball shortstops dive for all the impossible catches and make quite a few of them.  But they also miss a lot of them and get dinged with errors.  Later in their careers, most shortstops have learned not to dive for the impossible catches-- they pass up the chance to make the big play but, more importantly to their statistics, they don't miss it and they don't get dinged with an error.

Is this the behavior we want to encourage?  "Sorry, folks, but we have a very low infant mortality rate in this hospital and we don't want to mess it up with the risk of losing your kid.  Besides saving your kid's life would be a very inefficient application of valuable GDP resources and we want to get the most bang for our insurer's bucks.  But if you go down the road to General Hospital, I hear that they'll admit anyone."

(Note that I wrote the last three paragraphs without ever once introducing the highly emotional evocation of the words "crack babies".)  

The annual "check ups/tests" are out, but they would be even if I had full coverage.  IMHO, if they look long enough, they will find something and it will be expensive.

I have pretty much carried on the tradition of going to the Dr. if you break something, or can't stop the bleeding.  (My kids are on my case about this a lot.)

At the risk of lumping JG & Jarhead into the same category (sorry, Jarhead), are you guys both members of the same "blissfully ignorant" club?!?

Here's a sea story:  Boomer submarines used to get very little personal message traffic for the crew (low bandwidth in the 1980s comm systems).  One day the CO got a message from the parents of a sailor:  "Petty Officer's grandmother is desperately ill and could die before the end of your patrol.  But we don't want to disrupt his job/career with a humanitarian evacuation and we don't want him to worry about her.  Please don't tell him about this until we decide whether or not to ask for a humevac."

Of course the CO immediately sent for the sailor and said "Your parents don't want you to know that I'm telling you this."  He felt that the guy would want to know, would rather be with his grandmother than be working on the sub, and would be praying like crazy for his grandmother's recovery.  Sure, he'd be worrying, but it would be the constructive kind instead of an unexpected trauma magnified by the fact that no one felt he could handle the knowledge. The sailor strongly believed in the power of prayer and was very happy that the CO had told him the news so that he could get right to work with his God.

I'm no medical junkie but I go in for annual exams and all reasonable tests.  ("Reasonable" means "If I had the information this test could provide, would I change my behavior?")  If there's a problem then I wanna know about it, and I think that I'm mature enough to handle the facts.  I would hate to think that avoidance of medical technology would end up blindsiding me with a terminal condition that I could have worked on or even avoided with a warning.

Jarhead, my father used to have your medical philosphy.  One day he went to the doctor-- his first visit in a decade-- to ask about a dry patch of skin on his leg that'd been bothering him for a couple YEARS.  It turned out to be no big deal but the "routine blood tests" revealed that his diet was overloaded with sodium and his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) was off the chart.  Now he controls his blood pressure with his diet, and his aggressively cancerous prostate was removed literally a couple months before it would have metastasized the cancer to the rest of his body.  

So now he happily shows up for annual physical exams.  And I do too.

 

[MJ]

Because I was told that it was advisable to have a full annual checkup after the age of 50, I have been taking one the last 5 years. It has cost me under $250 so it was very offerable especially with a salary coming in. Now that I have ER'd, when my cobra benefits expire in 18 months or I go to a high deductable policy (in a different state), I may rething this, since the total cost of over $1k would come out of my pocket. At the age of 57+, I am still in terrific physical shape.

I'm off to a fast 22 27 mile bicycle workout before brunch.

MJ