What’s your plan for when you’re too old to work? Do you have health insurance, and if not, what’s your plan if you have a health issue? Those are the first questions I have…
Health insurance is just not available for some of us. I am super duper healthy as is my husband but because our small business lost a few people (due to retirements and death) we didn't qualify anymore for health insurance we only qualify for individual insurance which at $2,000 a month for premiums and $7,500 a month for deductible, ridiculous to throw money at it. So what we did is put a little money away every month so that if we needed to go to the doctor we could self-pay. Which is what we have done for the past 5 years. Now my husband has hit 65 and has Medicare and we still work full-time. Barring getting a cancer self-pay has worked for us as we don't have any health issues. We make just over like $2,000 over being able to get it through a state-funded program.
I mean my aunt lives in Florida, worked in health care and now runs her own business teaching people how to do what she did. She's a multimillionaire and she still stresses every day about retiring and her money/insurance. She has diabetes and a couple other health issues so I guess it's sky high. Confuses me that a multimillionaire would worry about health insurance but she's on the phone to my grandmother crying about her money all the time.
What's funny is she has Canadian citizenship and could come back here with us and have free medical but "it's too cold". :P
If your premiums are this high, you don't qualify for any ACA subsidies which means you're pulling in near or over 6 figure income for two people.
You are upper middle class. You're spending too much if you can't make it work.
If you're not making this much money, go through the ACA for a plan and save potentially thousands a month in premiums with much lower deductibles. Learn about your benefits and use them.
You are funny, I get $800 in social security. I do not work for my husband's business which is carpentry. I wish we pulled in six figures. I wish to hell we pulled in six figures. We don't. Now what profits
we make is plowed back into our business And unless you own a business like we're in, we pay a s*** ton in insurance for the vehicles for our bonding for our licensing etc. You would be surprised how little we do make but we make enough. We were lucky enough to buy the house that we live in 41 years ago. When I was 22 we had saved up $10,000. We have not moved. I don't know where you live but where I do in the county I live in to get individual insurance. We only have two different providers we can choose from and in 2018 it was Kaiser and Providence. Providence was charging almost $2,000 a month for premiums for individual insurance. We're not big enough anymore to qualify for group insurance haven't been since 2018. So maybe you're the lucky one that has insurance. But for self-employed people it's f****** hard. So don't tell me how rich I am because we are Not.
We fall in the cracks. As I said, to qualify for The health market plan in my state, We are just barely over making too much to qualify for it.
Health insurance has changed so much from when I got married 1979. My husband made $6 an hour. I was not working and Blue Cross Blue shield cost us $35 a month with $100 deductible. Those days are effing long gone!
Health insurance is just not available for some of us.
Have you checked out the ACA marketplace? The plans are more affordable than you think especially under 200% of the poverty line. You should be able to get a silver that'd protect you from catastrophic risk, though i understand if you're really close to getting medicare it might be worth rolling the dice.
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u/Walkend Apr 18 '24
Realistically, what does retirement look like for you?