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.
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:
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
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:
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!
