Run Your Own Numbers on When to Claim, How to Enroll, What Is Taxable, and What Each Decision Costs
By Carolyn Tate Brennan · Clear Table Press
Sold and shipped by Amazon. The Kindle edition reads on any phone or tablet with the free Kindle app.
Would you sign a $12,960-a-year contract without reading it? That is the size of the gap between claiming Social Security at 62 and at 70 on a $2,000 benefit. Medicare has gaps of its own: one dollar of income over a line, one night in the wrong hospital bed, one contribution to a health savings account after the wrong date. Each one is a rule you can look up. Almost nobody does.
This is a fill-in workbook at full letter size, in 13-point type, with a pencil in mind. Every page states one rule, shows the arithmetic done once for a made-up person, cites the government page the rule comes from, and hands you the blanks.
You do not need a financial background. You need your Social Security statement, your birth year, and about an hour. If you are helping a parent or a spouse, there is a page on how to fill it in for someone else.
This is the 2027 Edition. The rules in it change rarely. The dollar amounts change every year. Social Security publishes its figures each October and Medicare in October or November. Every amount in this book carries its year, and every one is updated in the free worksheet set as soon as the new figures are public. The next edition follows in January.
This workbook is educational. It is not financial, legal, or tax advice, and it is not affiliated with the Social Security Administration or Medicare.
The first 17 pages as a PDF: how to use the workbook, the people in it, where to start for your situation, and all of Chapter 1 with Worksheet 1. 17 pages, 0.1 MB, opens in your browser.
All 13 worksheets and 2 one-page decision sheets as one letter-size PDF. Print them as many times as you like, for a second try or for a parent. The address printed in the book is cleartablepress.com/medicare.
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 articleSign 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 articleMedigap 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 articleNo. Clear Table Press is an independent publisher. The workbook is not affiliated with the Social Security Administration, Medicare, or any government agency, and nobody from the press will call you or sell you anything.
Every dollar amount in the book carries its year. Social Security publishes next year's figures in mid-October and Medicare in October or November. The free printable worksheets are updated the week those figures appear, and a new edition follows each January, so the copy you buy in the fall is right in January.
No. The paperback is a fill-in workbook with a pencil in mind. You need your Social Security statement and your birth year. The free worksheets on this site are for printing extra copies; the book stands on its own.
Same text, same worked examples. Because a screen cannot be written on, the Kindle edition points you to the free printable worksheet set at cleartablepress.com/medicare for the fill-in pages.
The body text is 13-point and the worksheet labels are 15-point, on 8.5 by 11 inch pages. That is larger than most paperbacks, though Amazon reserves the label "large print" for 16-point and above.
Yes. Print as many copies as you like, for a second try or for a parent or spouse. No email address is required to download them.
Carolyn Tate Brennan writes plain-language guides to Social Security and Medicare for Clear Table Press. Her method is on every page: state the rule, cite the government source, show the arithmetic once for a made-up person, then hand you the blanks.
Write to [email protected] with the page and the rule. Corrections go into the free worksheet set immediately, into the next printing, and are noted on this page.