The Social Security & Medicare Workbook
Run Your Own Numbers on When to Claim, How to Enroll, What Is Taxable, and What Each Decision Costs
Author
Carolyn Tate Brennan
Carolyn Tate Brennan writes plain-language guides to Social Security and Medicare, with the actual math and the rule cited beside it. They are for people who would rather run their own numbers than take a stranger's word.
Her workbooks are built around one idea: a decision you can price on paper is a decision you can make calmly. Each chapter opens with the gap a decision creates, in dollars, for one of a small cast of made-up people. It states the rule and where it comes from. It shows the arithmetic done once. Then it hands you the blanks.
No agent, no lead form, no annuity pitch.
Books
Articles
The flip age: the birthday when waiting on Social Security starts to pay
Claim at 62 and you collect 60 checks before the person who waited sees a dime. The question is not whether the bigger check is bigger. It is when it catches up.
Read the articleThe HSA six-month look-back: stop contributing before Medicare reaches back
Sign up for Medicare Part A after 65 and your enrollment is backdated up to six months. The IRS applies its zero-contribution rule to those months too. The fix is one phone call, made in time.
Read the articlePlan G or Plan N: the whole difference is $20, $50, and excess charges
Medigap letters fix the coverage by law, so the two most popular plans differ in exactly three places. Price those three against your own doctor visits and the choice is arithmetic.
Read the article