Search results

This is interesting to me. Recently I had severe back pain for a couple days but then it subsided. I told my PCP about it and he ordered MRI right away, which showed a bulging disc. There was no push-back from insurance either. Does this mean that the PCP can decide whether to follow 'back...

That is what I was looking for, thanks for that. So I will be in the 3rd category for 2024, and any net loss from real estate can't be used to offset other income, but that loss can be carried forward to the next year. Next year I'll probably be in the 1st category.

Never had a loss before so never needed to figure that out. Sorry for the ‘basic’ question. No accountant. Just me and TurboTax. I am sure TT would’ve done the right thing but I always go through it’s work just in case.

I am currently repairing and renovating a rental property that is vacant after over a decade with a single renter. There is a lot of repair and improvements. I understand improvements need to follow a depreciation schedule, but I also will have quite a significant amount of repair expenses...

If you plan on eventually selling the rental turned into primary, then you have a bunch of new rules to follow in order to get any of the tax exclusion on primary sales - ie $500K of gains tax free on the sale for married filing jointly. So having it as a rental for 2 years doesn't seem to be...

See Pub 523 about 1031 exchange. Looks like you need to have it as a primary for 5 years now before you can claim any tax exclusion. Also if a property has ever been a rental, you can never claim the full exclusion anymore, it will be a fraction of (years of non rental) / (total years of ownership).

Dumb question, but is it a bad thing to be put on Medicaid instead of ACA?

I have a couple bond CEFs that pay 100% of their dividend from income from their bond portfolio. All else being equal, the NAV should increase by the bond payments they receive, and then decrease by the dividend distribution (and fees). In this scenario it is clear to me where the money is...

I've heard this as well but I wonder if it includes options writers. Most options expire worthless which is bad for the option buyer but good for the option writer.

Also take a look at closed end funds which offer great dividend focused stock or bond funds with higher yield. The higher yields are due to the funds ability to use leverage and also taking advantage of periods when the fund price is at a discount to NAV. My basic living expenses are covered by...

While the market goes up over time, there can be significant periods of little gains. Most recently we had the lost decade in stocks from 2000-2009. Newly retired, it would be detrimental if my 401k goes nowhere in the next 10 years. We've had a crazy few years in the market driven by covid and...

Sure, this is what we employed people did. However, I wonder how different it would have been if you had retired in 2007?

YTD spending on all things food is $19K. This is mostly two people plus daughter home for summer. But as usual this contains some 'one-off' expenses. Probably average is around $1500/month for the two of us.

It seems to me that restaurant prices have doubled since covid. Lunches that were around $8 are now $16. Was looking forward to paying half for restaurants when my kids left the nest. We are paying about the same for 2 people that we paid for 4 pre-covid. This won't ever get better as we'll...

Picked up a rotisserie 'chicken' at the grocery store. The thing was the size of a cornish game hen!

This makes a lot of sense but I just don't know how to do it in practice. I too have a large emergency fund and just cash on hand to pay for this unexpected large expense, so that's not a concern. But I want to keep the emergency fund replenished like you. Adding a line item to my monthly...

I used a full year of real data to come up with the original $100K budget, but I focused on basic living expenses and average discretionary and kinda ignored lumpy expenses since a lot don't make sense now in retirement (kids stuff, etc). After tracking a few months in retirement testing-mode, I...

I took a swag at it based on what I was seeing these past few months. For future tracking I could add a 'lumpy' tag to all these expenses so I can look back over the year so I can see the bigger picture. Can you share your total yearly budget for all these? Just wondering if it's in the 1000s...

That's the problem and the skill we don't have. We've never limited ourselves with anything for decades. So to go from that thinking to "well this month we can only eat out twice" just feels wrong.

I raised our budget 20% (100K/year to 120K) to try to account for lumpy stuff, but this latest expense is so high and is a once in a decade type expense (lots of things needing to get done all at once as we prepare a rental for a new tenant). When the budget gets hit like this, I don't want to...

Recently retired and struggling with budgeting. Wife and I have never set or maintained a budget for our entire marriage, but I've always had a high income and we always lived well within that income. Now that we are in retirement, and have a much smaller, realistic budget as set by doing the...

I noticed my whole bean coffee bags haven't changed price (around $16) yet the bag is getting smaller and smaller. Used to be 16oz bags, now they are 10-12oz.

For this survey, there was an "I don't know" option for annual income. That's the one I picked. It was just a dumb online survey so not a big deal. But, I was playing around with the local health insurance marketplace tool, and it asked "How much income do you expect in 2025?" The description...

Newly retired - I am filling out a survey and it asks for "Total annual income" ... I don't know what to put! I have 0 wage income, some divi income, some capital gains, some rental income. Should I add up all my expected income across sources and use that? Or are they really asking "Total...

This may give you a rosier picture than reality. You might run out of non-retirement money way before you have (penalty-free) access to the retirement funds. The lump-sum add is in today's dollars so at least you get the effect of inflation but yeah you're missing out on modeling those market gains.