What to Know About Open Enrollment This Year

November 2, 2021

Health insurance is a big consideration for folks who want to retire before the Medicare eligibility age of 65. While the Affordable Care Act has made coverage accessible, it hasn’t always lived up to its name  — especially for those who made too much to qualify for reduced premiums. Above the income cut-off, health plans could be prohibitively pricey, leaving some to opt out or settle for a skimpy short-term plan. If you’re one of them, there’s great news: All consumers are eligible for some level of premium assistance in 2022, thanks to the American Rescue Plan that passed in March. And now’s the time to sign up: Open enrollment for 2022 coverage began yesterday and continues through Jan. 15. Anyone without job-based health insurance (and those who dream of joining the Great Resignation) can check out the offerings here.

Best wishes,
 
 
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What are you up to these days?

We’re living our best life in paradise in a 55+ community that we moved into last fall. I retired at 55½ after a 32-year career as a supply chain director with a Fortune 500 aerospace company. I am currently the Chairperson of the Board of Directors for a medium-size non-profit that helps people with disabilities reach their full potential. In retirement, I have been able to exercise my business acumen through this opportunity but I never feel like it's a job.
 
My wife is a retired educator with 30 years in the classroom teaching first through sixth grades as a Montessori teacher and later in the public school system. She is a trained Guardian ad Litem that advocates on behalf of children in the foster care system. In retirement, my wife has an encore career as a writer and poet and has been published online and in-print for her poetry. She has been writing about life and various topics for over 12 years on her blog and started a new poetry writing/art project online called the ‘The Carol and Emily Project.’
 
Cool! What’s your investing philosophy?

My early career mentor encouraged me to invest at least to the company’s match in my 401(k) (a very generous dollar-for-dollar match on the first 6%) and when I got a raise/promotion, to take half of my increase and add that amount to my 401(k). Early on, I also became a Boglehead investor, and I invested post-tax salary through dollar-cost averaging on the 1st and 15th every month into low-cost index funds following Jack Bogle’s rules.
 
 At 50, I added make-up contributions to 401(k), Roth IRAs and my wife’s 403(b) and 457(b) to continue to grow the retirement nest egg. I also am big believer in asset allocation after reading a great deal on the topic early on and have used various programs including a very good retirement forecasting tool at Fidelity  called Retirement Analysis (401k provider) that uses multiple Monte Carlo simulations to forecast returns and net worth based on your savings profile, asset allocation, and income needed in retirement through a range of hypothetical market return scenarios.
 
 I was also sensitive to the ‘sequencing’ of the first 5 years of retirement withdrawals so I worked hard to position cash and short-term low-risk assets to cover those five years to allow deferred assets to continue to grow and not lock any potential losses in those first five years (we were totally insulated from the COVID-19 meltdown of March, 2020 from a withdrawal perspective and have watched as all those losses recover with very positive growth in the 18 months since then).
 
Whew! Please tell me what you’re grateful for.
 
I was really fortunate to have a mentor at my company who really enlightened me in the personal finance area. That greatly jump-started my retirement planning as a mid-20 something new engineer and helped position me to be able to retire early at 55 years old. Later in my career, mentoring to new grads and early-career team members became important to me as a way to pay it forward to the next generation.
 
This is a second marriage for both my wife and myself, and we recently celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary (with 18 years total time together).  I had no children from my first marriage back in my 20s, but my current wife blessed me with two college-age children through marriage when we first got together in 2003 and we now have 4 grandchildren (ages 13 to 3) that all live within 4 hours of us.

Retirement News From Around The Web

Daylight Saving Time Ends Soon
Some 19 states have moved to end the practice of turning clocks back, but they need Congress’ approval. NPR

Introducing The 90/10 Rule of Retirement
To ensure your best possible transition into retirement, find a way to balance your financial preparations with more lifestyle considerations, a retirement blogger recommends. THE RETIREMENT MANIFESTO

The Best Funds to Buy for the Roaring ’20s
These  funds tap into trends that will only expand, like artificial intelligence and genomic sequencing. KIPLINGER

5 Ways to Find an Age-Friendly Employer
Have you heard about the Certified Age Friendly Employer Program? NEXT AVENUE

Elizabeth O'Brien is deputy editor at Money. She has covered retirement and health care for nearly a decade. A Brooklyn resident and mom of two boys, she navigates the alphabet soup of Medicare and the New York City subway system with equal ease. You can email her at elizabeth.obrien@money.com and follow her on Twitter at @elizobrien.

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