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Critical Ilness Protection.
August 17, 2015 by
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Tax Free Retirement Alternatives.
August 17, 2015 by
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Mortgage Protection.
August 17, 2015 by
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Family Term Life Insurance.
August 17, 2015 by
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10 Tips for Saving Money on Prescription Medications.
August 11, 2015 by
Prescription drug commercials do a good job of making everything about the products seem good. However, the prices actually wind up being much higher than many seniors can afford. There are several ways to save money on prescriptions.
1. Coupons
Pharmacies and discount stores take the time to send out quite a few coupons, so it is a good idea to make use of them. Searching online is even easier, and there are many apps such as GoodRX that help seniors find the best drug prices and pharmacies near them. Price comparison apps also exist. While shopping at the pharmacy, ask about a discount card. Most large pharmacies offer these to help customers save even more.
2. Generics
Nearly 80 percent of prescriptions today are written for generics. These are bio-equivalent drugs for the name-brand ones. However, they cost between 80 and 85 percent less than their name-brand counterparts. Experts estimated that buying generic drugs saved Americans a total of about $3 billion every week in 2010. Also, the 17-year patents that exist on many big-name drugs will end during the next several years. When this happens, it will be easier to find generics for several drugs that did not have these options in the past.
3. Tests
Another good way to ensure a drug is more useful than harmful without investing a lot is to ask the prescribing physician for a free sample. They often have trial packages with enough to last for 10 or 14 days, so this helps patients decide if a med is right for them. If it works well, use that time to also search for long-term discounts. There are often free trial offers from drug manufacturers in magazines or online.
4. Government Programs
There are drug assistance programs provided in many states to help seniors pay for the gap between what is covered and what they must come up with out of pocket. There are programs for Medicare Part D in addition to resources for finding treatments. The Medicare site offers more information about these.
5. Pill Splitting
Buying pills that can be cut in half will help save money, so ask a physician if a particular prescription is appropriate for this. If the pill is coated or is a time-release capsule, avoid doing this. This can be difficult with small pills, but pharmacies sell pill cutters that are tapered to cut many different sizes of pills.
6. OTC Drugs
Doctors may recommend over-the-counter drugs in some situations. For example, a doctor may decide that an over-the-counter allergy substance will work instead of a prescription one for a senior. Be sure to ask about this any time a physician prescribes something new.
7. Patient Assistance Programs
Nonprofit organizations and pharmaceutical companies sometimes provide discounts or grants to people who need financial help. Needymeds.org is one option, and discuss other options with an agent.
8. Order By Mail
Costs can be reduced by ordering long-term supplies by mail. Avoid shady companies on the Internet that cannot be verified, but use the resources provided by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. Sites listed with this organization have been inspected and verified for quality practices and upholding the highest standards. When shopping online, watch for the VIPPS seal.
9. Shop Local
Ask local friends, relatives or health care providers where to find the best prices. Many pharmacies are willing to offer seniors lower prices in exchange for a loyalty commitment. Keep in mind that they desire repeat customers and a long-term business relationship.
10. Wholesale Clubs
Costco and other wholesale clubs offer discounted prices for members’ prescriptions. In some cases, wholesale clubs may not require membership to purchase drugs there. This is often a good way to save a great deal of money.
Saving money on prescriptions takes some research and invested time, but it is well worth every minute. To learn more about options, discuss concerns with an agent.
Review Life Insurance Needs and Coverage Annually.
August 11, 2015 by
Review Life Insurance Needs and Coverage Annually
Some things need regular maintenance for them to function for you. You need to check your car’s fluids and tire pressure occasionally, and do some preventative maintenance. Same with your lawn mower. Children need occasional doctor visits and immunizations. Life insurance is no different. To ensure that your life insurance is up to date and covers your family’s evolving needs, it’s a good idea to schedule a once-per year life insurance review, in person, with a qualified, licensed insurance professional.
Is your Coverage Current?
There are a number of things that can occur that can cause a need to make a change in your coverage:
- Did you get married?
- Did you have a child?
- Did you adopt a child?
- Did you get divorced?
- Did a spouse die?
- Did your debt level change? For example, did you purchase a house on a mortgage? Did you pay one off?
- Have interest rates changed since you last shopped for insurance?
- Have you retired? Does your family rely more on savings than on your income from work? It may be time to consider a tax-free exchange for an annuity designed to generate income and preserve savings.
- Has your income changed?
- Are you now a partner in a company?
- Do you have a key employee?
- Did you inherit a substantial amount money or property?
- Will your parents rely on you for financial assistance or support?
- Have you lost weight?
- Have you quit smoking?
Do I have a sound life insurance strategy in place?
Any of these common life changes can precipitate the need for a significant change in life insurance coverage. But even if you haven’t undergone one of these life-changing events, it’s still a good idea to have a good heart to heart with your insurance agent on an annual basis. Here are some reasons to start with:
Options may expire. If you’ve had a policy for a while, you may have some options to purchase additional coverage expire soon. It may be time to sit down and review your options and see if you want or need the additional coverage. This is especially true if your health has declined, or you’ve gained weight. You may not have another chance to purchase life insurance at your original rating.
You may want to convert term life insurance to a permanent insurance policy. Term insurance provides the most face amount per dollar of monthly premium now – but it is very expensive over the course of a lifetime. Your agent can review your options and help you select the best strategy for you.
There may be new solutions and products available that may suit your needs that weren’t available a year ago. Life insurance companies are constantly evolving, looking to uncover customers’ needs and provide solutions to enhance their financial security. For example, your company may now offer a useful new rider or other benefit.
Regular reviews are also important to prevent unwanted lapsing of insurance policies. These are particularly important if you own a universal life policy and you have been paying premium out of cash value. Even if your existing insurance policy is with another company, you can still review it with us. If you qualify, an exchange may be warranted.
We’d like to invite you to schedule a no-obligation personal life insurance needs review. The purpose is to look at your current coverage and how well it dovetails with your personal financial needs, goals and risks. From there, we will determine if your current life insurance strategy still meets your needs, or if a change is warranted.
If you have a permanent policy, with cash value – whether it’s a whole life, universal life, or equity-indexed universal life policy, we can also explore some strategies that may be available to you to make use of the substantial living benefits of these policies
The Tax Advantages of Annuities.
August 11, 2015 by
Annuities are the only financial product on the market specifically designed to convert a lump sum to a guaranteed income. As such, they are powerful tools for hedging against uncertainty and risk. But they also come with powerful tax advantages as well.
The Power of Tax Deferral
Tax deferral is a powerful tool that an investor can use to magnify potential returns – over and above what you might gain using similar investments in a taxable account. Any tax you can put off paying to Uncle Sam is equivalent to taking an interest free loan from the government – and investing it.
For example, if you make a series of investments that generate $1,000 per year in the first year in interest income and you held those in a taxable account, you would likely have to pay $250-$280 to the IRS in income taxes. You would only be able to reinvest $720-$750 of that money and let it compound over time. By holding those same investments in a tax-deferred vehicle, however, you get the benefit of compounding the entire amount – year after year after year.
As investment mogul Warren Buffett has noted, this is the same as the government handing you that extra amount to invest – with no payments and no strings attached, as long as the money stays in the annuity. Yes, you pay income tax on gains – eventually – but you get to decide when, subject to RMD rules.
Annuity Taxation Basics
As long as the annuity owner is still living, they are taxed very similarly to traditional IRAs with nondeductible contributions, and have many of the same tax advantages.
- There is generally no up-front tax deduction on premium (unless you hold the annuity in an IRA).
- There is no capital gains tax. You can exchange from annuity to annuity as much as you like, using Section 1035 of the U.S. Tax Code, without worrying about capital gains or losses). If you just used mutual funds outside of a retirement account, you’d have to pay capital gains taxes on any net gains each year.
- There are no taxes on dividend income.
- There is no tax on interest income.
- Distributions are taxed as ordinary income.
- You don’t pay taxes on the entire distribution – only the part attributable to growth from non-deductible contributions.
- You must begin taking distributions by April 1 of the year after the year in which you turn age 70½.
Annuity Taxation At Death
The tax treatment of annuities depends on whether the annuity was still in the growth phase, or began paying out income benefits. If the owner dies before the annuity started paying an income, the beneficiary has several choices:
- Keep the annuity contract intact and treat it as his or her own (an option for surviving spouses only).
- Surrender the contract, take the cash immediately and pay income taxes.
- Spread out withdrawals over five years (similar to inheriting a non-spousal IRA)
- Let the contract continue to grow tax-deferred, and then take the entire annuity income at that time.
- Annuitize the inherited annuity and take payments over his or her life expectancy. This allows much of the annuity to grow tax-deferred over a lifetime! You must make this election within 60 days of inheriting an annuity, however.
In addition, surviving spouses who inherit an annuity have these options:
- Keep the annuity contract intact and treat it as his or her own.
- Annuitize the inherited annuity and take payments over his or her life expectancy. This allows much of the annuity to grow tax-deferred over a lifetime! You must make this election within 60 days of inheriting an annuity, however.
If the annuity has already started paying out income, the beneficiary must continue to take the income at least as fast as the annuitant was taking income.
Covered California Has a One-Star Rating on Yelp.
August 4, 2015 by
Covered California, the Obamacare insurance marketplace in the Golden State, has a one-star review on Yelp, the ratings site which allows individuals to post reviews of local businesses.
The Yelp page for Covered California currently has 208 reviews, 191 of which give it one out of a possible five stars. Only six reviews give the exchange a very positive review of four or five stars. Some of the negative reviews seem to come from people with a generalized opposition to Obamacare. However, many are personal stories by people who have tried to buy insurance and found it difficult.
Laura N. from San Diego writes:
Nightmare!!!!! I have been dealing with trying to straighten out this situation for months. I call once a week, go through long wait times to then be put on hold. I have been cancelled but still have to pay for payments on insurance I don’t even have even after I update information and each phone call they tell me it’s all taken care of. … Each time I talk to someone after waiting forever and on hold they tell me it’s all taken care of and then it’s never done and they have no records of my last calls only that I called for general information. I’m so frustrated and now I owe thousands of dollars and I’ve never seen one doctor.
Kris A. from Encinitas calls Covered CA a “chaotic wasteful mess”:
I have never in my life, so far, experienced this degree of disorganization, ineptitude, and inefficiency. …The fact that we cannot discuss this issue with anyone that can actually fix it is infuriating. All we can do is send letters. It is so ridiculous how much time, energy and money has been wasted in this system. … I hope this new system is changed quickly or gotten rid of completely. Sadly I supported health care reform but reforming something into a chaotic wasteful mess of bureaucracy is not a solution.
Brandon B. from Huntington Beach lost his insurance and says Covered CA is worse than the DMV:
We have spent at least 16 hours on the phone and on hold with reps and supervisors promising they would fix the issue and the billing, but they don’t and they never call back when they say they will. … This is 100 times worse than the DMV, I feel like I’m going insane, we have a baby in the NICU and this has caused my wife untold stress and time and we aren’t even to finish line yet, we may now not even have coverage.
Meesh B. from San Diego was unable to cancel her insurance and said, “I received another bill in November and again in December. After endless hours of hold times I was told that they had ‘no record of my requests to cancel coverage.’ What a surprise. … Shame on you Covered CA!”
Cal Berkeley grad Knot S. had a message for President Obama: “Good idea that has gone HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY wrong. … Obama you are alienating those who supported you. Come on I/we deserve better than this.”
Vi C in Huntington Beach has a long story about trying (and failing) to cancel her insurance. She writes in part:
I filed an appeal with covered california- kept a list of notes and reference numbers, dates and exact times i spoke with everyone since Nov. (thank god) i got an email from someone named Matt Forster stating he was handling my appeal and that it had been cancelled. No phone call, no number on his email signature… I called blue shield with a reference number he gave me only to be told the reference number did not exist or go to anything and the never received cancellation. They DID however receive a renewal for a f*****g new policy!!! … 4 months later and i now have 2 insurance policies with blue shield, been sent to collections, received no phone call from covered ca, have non existing appeals rep, and somehow a simple task is taking over my life.
Krista N. from Oakland is so frustrated she has become somewhat sarcastic:
It seems that even the most mundane of tasks is too difficult for the Covered California rep with whom I’m still on hold. He simply cannot find any way to resolve the issue of moving my health insurance start date from October 1, 2014 to November 1, 2014 — a request that was made initially 6 months ago (and repeatedly throughout the intervening months). … It occurs to me, however, as I listen to this synthesized on-hold music on loop for the 73rd time today, that I was foolish to expect a solution to such a complex request. How could anyone expect their normal, human-sized brains to conquer a task of this magnitude? Oh, it is a problem for Einstein or Socrates or Schopenhauer, not for the likes of Covered California!
Jorge from Long Beach is frustrated with the call center:
Negative five stars. Just today I got hung up on twice, with a grand total of 90 minutes waiting time. I wish they would at least hang up on me right away instead of having me wait. Seriously, how long does it take to simply hang up on everyone without even saying anything?
Kelly W. in Brentwood writes:
They have changed the plan that I signed up for, and now it is essentially the same cost but we have $6,000.00 deductibles for each person before the insurance that I am paying $1122.00 a month for pays a dime. … When I first saw it, I thought the deductibles were for catastrophic events. … If one of us ended up needed surgery or cancer treatments or something horrible. … Nope. Man, would I love to be on a commercial talking about how effing horrible this insurance is.
Typhone in Woodland Hills is upset enough to want to see a Republican in the White House, stating, “EVERYTHING ABOUT COVERED CALIFORNIA IS THE WORST!!!!!! … I am a Democrat … and I never thought I would say this. But I hope a Republican takes office and does away with this.”
V W from Palm Springs writes:
I am all in support of the Affordable Care Act. Covered CA is a nice idea but the infrastructure needed to actually provide services to everyone that needs it was not well planned out. Covered CA is INCOMPETENT. Nice and caring people on the phone if you can stand the hour hold times. … Then they can’t help you. …. SUCKS.
Dozens and dozens more stories like these exist. Many of the reviewers say they only wish they could give zero stars instead of one. And the problems with the website and the call center have been ongoing for over a year now. Breitbart News reported last September that nearly two-thirds of callers to the Covered CA call center were simply hanging up. Add to this that Covered CA enrollment, which was praised in 2014, seems to have stalled in 2015, and you have a system that does not seem to be living up to many people’s expectations.
Breitbard June 3, 2105
Can I Change My Health Insurance Plan Outside of Open Enrollment?
August 4, 2015 by
Question:
When my employer offered open enrollment last year, I enrolled in a high-deductible health plan. I see now that this wasn’t the best plan for my situation and would like to switch to a policy with a lower deductible and higher premium. How can I change plans mid-year?
Answer:
Choosing health insurance is a difficult and often confusing task, so for many people, open enrollment is a time of hand-wringing and guesswork. Unfortunately, you may be stuck with your current plan until the next open enrollment period. But in some cases, you might qualify for what’s known as a “special enrollment period.”
You may qualify for a mid-year policy change.
Your eligibility for special enrollment depends on whether one of the following “qualifying events” have occurred in your life:
Loss of coverage due to:
- Divorce or separation
- Job loss or reduced hours
- Death of spouse who maintained your coverage on their policy
- Loss of dependent status
- Marriage
- Birth or adoption of a child
Some insurance carriers allow for additional qualifying events, such as gaining citizenship. Contact your human resources representative or insurance company to find out if there are additional qualifying events under your policy.
If you experience a qualifying event, you’ll generally have a minimum of 30 days to choose another plan. If you purchased a plan on the ACA or state marketplaces, you’ll have 60 days.
If you don’t qualify, there are other ways to save.
Since qualifying events are uncommon, it may be more helpful to cut down on health care costs to lessen the burden of your deductible. Here are a few ways to save:
Make full use of your HSA.
Because you have a high deductible health plan (HDHP), you qualify for a Health Savings Account (HSA). These are typically offered through your employer and allow you to set aside tax-free money to help cover medical costs — such as that deductible. If your employer doesn’t offer an HSA, you can sign up for one before the next open enrollment period through a bank or investment firm. Most HSA administrators allow you to contribute to the account throughout the year.
You mentioned that you’re willing to pay a higher monthly premium when you get a new plan. Consider setting aside the additional money you’re willing to put toward higher premiums into your HSA until you can switch plans.
Always review your medical bills for errors.
Experts estimate that 80% of medical bills contain errors. If you’re paying out-of-pocket to cover your deductible, these errors could be costing you. Look for errors such as duplicate charges, charges for services you didn’t receive, or charges that are too high for the services you did receive.