On the verge of retirement? Check out this basic book on preparing for retirement

Author Steve Vernon is a research scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity and president of Rest-of-Life Communications. He writes clearly and succinctly, emphasizing the basic principles. The book is targeted at persons planning to retire soon. The book "provides the information and tools you need to build the most retirement income from your Social Security and retirement savings." A simple step-by-step checklist helps you take action.

What is a fair price to pay for health care and hospital bills? What if you are a victim of overcharges?

 You may have heard stories of how hospitals charge vastly different prices depending on whether a patient is insured or not and who their insurance company is. You may also have heard that cash payers can negotiate LARGE reductions in prices if they pay cash up front. It's all true and it's all symptomatic of our absurd, unfriendly to consumers health care system. 

In his book Never Pay the First Bill and other ways to fight the health care system and win, author Marshall Allen explains how to shop for hospital prices for elective procedures before hand and how to fight extremely overpriced hospital bills after the fact. Two websites Allen recommends:

HealthCare Bluebook: https://www.healthcarebluebook.com

Explore the quality and cost of healthcare:  search for and compare the quality and cost of nearby providers.

Help lower medical benefits spend and improve the quality of care.

and 

Fair Health Consumer: https://www.fairhealthconsumer.org/

Estimate your healthcare expenses.

Get essential information on costs for thousands of procedures and learn insurance basics.

Search for Medical and Hospital Costs

Search for Dental Costs 

Find cost estimates for common services that you can schedule in advance at hospitals and hospital systems

What if you are facing unreasonable or unaffordable medical bills? There are companies that will help you challenge bills and when they succeed in saving you money they take a percentage of the savings. 

Medliminal https://medliminal.com/ is "Leading the Charge Against Medical Billing Errors"

"Over 90% of medical bills contain overcharges, costing the US an estimated $67 billion. At Medliminal, we specialize in medical cost containment. Our clients get focused and innovative solutions and services that reduce healthcare costs for all payers."

The Leading Edge of Medical Cost Containment:

"Companies and employees are both overspending on healthcare due to billing errors. Medliminal helps all payers identify and negotiate down inflated medical costs."

Medliminal will review charges ahead of payment as well as identifying overcharges and  helping you get reimbursed after payment.

Other resources from Marshall Allen's book: 

 "Paying too much for health care? Use Clinic Price Check to save hundreds to thousands by comparing prices of medical services at local health providers." https://www.clinicpricecheck.com/

National Association of Health Care Advocacy: https://www.nahac.com/ 

Find an Independent Health or Patient Advocate or Care Manager to improve your outcomes from the health care system. https://advoconnection.com/

A Podcast: An Arm and a Leg: A show about the cost of health care that's more entertaining, empowering, and occasionally useful than enraging, and terrifying and depressing.  https://armandalegshow.com/

 

How much should you pay for financial advice?

 How much are you paying for financial advice and investment management? How much should you pay?

Mike Piper, author of the oblivious Investor blog https://obliviousinvestor.com/ recently posted:

Professional Financial Advice: How Much Should You Pay?

Why pay 1% of assets under management (AUM) if you haven't changed anything in your portfolio for the last 10 years? (I've seen clients like that who are unaware that their "advisor" has been siphoning off 1% of their portfolio each year while doing virtually NOTHING). Even if you are getting a yearly "check up" with your advisor, is it really worth paying 1% of your portfolio? One-percent might not seem like much when the financial markets are returning 20-25%/year like the past few years but what about when markets are losing money? That 1% fee compounds the losses. Do you really want active management of your portfolio

 

Mike Piper wrote a through discussion of how financial advisors are paid and what your options are for hiring paid advice, as well as DIY options. The average hourly rate for financial advice is $250. If your portfolio total was $25,000, a 1% fee would equal $250. 

 

Piper's Oblivious Investor blog is loaded with consumer-oriented financial and investment advice. You can sign up to receive a weekly email which is a great way to gain information and motivation to help improve your financial situation.

What's the WORST graduate school program in terms of being saddled with debt?

 The Wall Street Journal has been publishing a series of articles on the impacts of graduate student loans that allow students and their parents to borrow unlimited amounts of money to pay tuition and living expenses. 

New York University and Baylor University are among the most egregious in terms of raising tuition (both undergrad and graduate) and luring students and their parents into unsustainable debt. High tuition allows the universities to expand their administrative staff and facilities. While a few students will be able to earn enough to eventually repay loans, many of the parents never will. Further, U.S. taxpayers are left holding the bag. 

The worst problems are in graduate programs in arts, journalism, and, especially, film.

From a recent article: "We found that Columbia's master's programs in film had literally the worst debt to earnings ratio of any major university in the country." NYU's film program is a close competitor. 

"For Columbia's master in fine arts and film, the median debt is around $180,000 and the median annual earnings is less than $30,000." Better do some research on how much you are likely to earn before you commit to taking on too much debt. Many students who repay their debt based on income-based repayment plans watch their balance grow every year due to interest. 

BTW "Columbia is, has the eighth largest endowment in the country...."

The problem is not limited to big name schools. 

Moral of the story: Just because you can borrow that much money doesn't mean you should! 

Source: https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/is-graduate-school-worth-the-price/7ccf26af-8ef8-44b9-99d8-e766c41ce106?mod=series_graddebt