According to research from Fidelity Investments, retirees should expect to pay $295,000 for healthcare during their retirement years, and this doesn’t include the costs of long-term care. Guest speaker and author Philip Moeller says that while retirees can find many ways to lower their healthcare costs, it takes a lot of time and effort.

A major decision facing those turning 65 is whether to choose Traditional Medicare plus optional prescription drug and supplemental insurance or sign up for an all-inclusive Medicare Advantage plan. While premiums for Medicare Advantage may be lower, your choice of doctors, facilities and prescription drugs may be limited and out-of- pocket expenses could be higher.

People who aren’t committed to seeing specific physicians in person may save money by using telemedicine providers. If your physician is recommending medical procedures, get a cost estimate from your healthcare insurance provider, or use web sites that offer comparison pricing for these procedures.

For prescription drugs, don’t automatically have your physician send your prescription to a local pharmacy. Bring it there yourself and ask the pharmacist if lower-cost generic alternatives or discounts are available. Prescription drug price comparison web sites can help you find lower prices at local pharmacies and national buying clubs. You may also want to ask your physician to help you legally purchase prescription drugs from Canada, where prices are often significantly lower.

If you’re still working and your employer offers a Health Savings Account (HSA), try to take full advantage of this option. Contributions are pre-tax, and all withdrawals you make for qualified healthcare purposes are tax-free. While you can’t contribute to your HSA once you’re enrolled in Medicare, you can use the balance in your account to pay for most Medicare premiums, co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses.

Finally, if these decisions seem overwhelming, look for help. Your state offers free counseling services to help evaluate your various Medicare options. If you’re friends with a retired nurse or doctor, see if they’re willing to serve as your healthcare advocate—and pay them for their time. And make sure you fill out a healthcare proxy form that gives someone you trust the legal authority to make healthcare decisions for you should you become physically or mentally capacitated.

For further research: 

• State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIP) National Network: Find free Medicare counselors in your state
• Doctor on Demand and Teladoc: Online telemedicine sites and apps
• Rally and Healthcare Bluebook: These sites provide comparison pricing information for healthcare providers and medical procedures in your area
• GoodRx.com: Find the lowest local prices for prescription drugs
• Philip Moeller, Get What's Yours for Health Care: How to Get the Best Care at the Right Price

The start of a new year is always a good time to take a closer look at where you are financially and figure out whether certain changes may help you boost your retirement readiness. While there are many things you can do, here are four steps you might want to move to the top of your "to consider" list.

First, look over your year end investment statements to see if your portfolio needs rebalancing. Even with the economic havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the stock market generated double-digit returns last year. This may have boosted the stock allocation in your retirement portfolio higher than you originally intended. To restore your targeted asset allocation, consider selling some stocks and reinvesting the proceeds into bonds or cash to get your portfolio back in balance. This is something you should do at least once a year, and even more often if you can.

Second, think about converting some or all of your Traditional IRA assets to a Roth IRA. Even though you’ll have to pay taxes on the converted amount, once this money is in your Roth IRA and you’ve held the account for five years, you’ll never have to pay taxes on any withdrawals you make after age 59½. And, unlike with Traditional IRA and 401(k) plans, you’ll never have to take required minimum distributions. The earlier you complete the conversion, the longer you’ll benefit from the Roth’s tax-free compounding.

Third, if you have dividend-paying stocks in your taxable investment accounts, consider using some of this dividend income to help pay for everyday expenses. Since most dividends are taxed as ordinary income whether you spend them or reinvest them, thinking of them as an additional source of annual income may make it easier to rationalize spending them. More importantly, if spending dividends in the years leading to your retirement can help you delay taking Social Security or tapping into the principal of your investments, then you’ll boost the odds of having more money to live on when you’re ready to retire.

Finally, if you’re approaching retirement and are having trouble figuring out these complex financial issues on your own, now may be an ideal time to seek out a fee-only fiduciary financial planner. These professionals can conduct a comprehensive analysis of your investments, projected Social Security and pension payments and your estimated income needs to help you determine if it makes sense to implement any of these new year’s financial resolutions or other strategies to help smooth your path toward a more comfortable retirement.

For further research:

Next Avenue, 3 Smart Money Resolutions for 2021

If you and your spouse or partner make less than $150,000 (if filing jointly) or $75,000 (if filing as individuals), you should have received an economic stimulus payment ($2,400 for couples, $1,200 for individuals) that was part of last year’s COVID-19 relief legislation. In January of 2021, you should also have received an additional payment ($600 for individuals/$1,200 for couples) as part of the new relief legislation passed in December.

If you didn’t receive your payment, you have several options. The IRS Get My Payment tool will tell you whether the IRS sent you these payments and in what form–a check, a debit card, or a direct deposit to your bank. If the IRS says it’s sending your second payment as a check, you can see when it’s being sent using the U.S. Post Office’s Informed Delivery service, which will provide you with digital images of the exterior, address side of all mail sent to you.

If you never received your payments, there may be several reasons. A check or debit card may have been set to an outdated or wrong address. Or, if in the past you filed your tax return electronically and used a now-closed bank account for online payment or refund transactions, the IRS may have tried to deposit your checks to that account and failed.

If these or other situations left you without stimulus payments or the full amount you were entitled to, hope is not lost. You can claim a tax credit for these amounts on your 2020 Form 1040 or 1040-SR. These tax forms will include a Recovery Rebate worksheet you can use to determine how much of a tax credit you’re eligible for. You’ll enter the amount on line 30. Even if your income level doesn’t require you to fill a 2020 federal tax return, file it anyway if only to claim the stimulus amount you deserve.

For further research:

Terrysavage.com, Get the Original Stimulus AND the New One!

Many people who are approaching or in retirement are asking similar questions: What value do I offer if I no longer have a full-time job? What will I do all day? Can I afford to live the way I want do? In his new book, Shifting Gears: 50 Baby Boomers Share Their Meaningful Journeys in Retirement, author and retiree Richard Haiduck offers valuable insights into the aspirations and concerns of those who are experiencing the joys and challenges of their golden years. Most don’t plan on kicking back and doing nothing. By desire or financial necessity, many are working part-time or joining the gig economy. They continue to support the causes they believe in, through direct action and charitable giving. They’re starting new hobbies, speaking their minds, and pushing back against society’s outdated attitudes about older Americans. For many, the pandemic has not changed their retirement lifestyle at all.

The biggest worry among most of Haiduck’s interviewees is whether they’ll have enough money to live the way they want to during a retirement that could last decades. Those who are approaching retirement facing this financial uncertainty should consider working longer, delaying taking Social Security until age 70, boosting contributions to their retirement plans, and envisioning how they want to live when they retire. Many could also benefit by meeting with a fee-only fiduciary financial planner who can help them gain a full understanding of their projected income and expenses during retirement and what they may need to do now to shift as smoothly as possible into their life after work.

For further research:

Next Avenue, Shifting Gears to Retirement: The Joys and the Challenges

When you’re reviewing quarterly and year-end performance in your 401(k) and brokerage account statements, it’s important to consider how much you may be paying in annual fees (expense ratios) to mutual funds and commissions to brokers. These combined costs could be as high as 2% per year. While this may seem small, over several decades of investing, these costs could potentially reduce the value of your retirement nest egg by tens of thousands of dollars. And if you’re retired and now invest mostly in low-yielding bond funds, these costs may actually wipe out the small amount of income these funds generate each year.  

It’s up to you to research how much you’re paying in investment costs, and whether less expensive options are available. For example, most mutual funds come in various share classes, each of which have different expense ratios. Shares of funds you purchase on your own may have significantly lower expense ratios than different share classes of the same funds you purchase through a broker, which may add on as much as 1% in additional “marketing” fees to pay brokerage commissions. Not to mention added “back-end” sales charges if you sell shares before a certain time period has elapsed.  

If you invest on your own and you’re not a strong believer in the ability of mutual fund managers to make the best investing decisions, consider investing in index funds and ETFs that offer broadly diversified exposure to different segments of the market at a fraction of the cost of actively managed funds.  

If you’re working with a broker, ask them to disclose the total annual costs of the funds they’ve sold you. If these costs seem too high, ask them to recommend cheaper alternatives that have similar characteristics and track records—but make sure you won’t have to pay back-end sales charges if you make the switch. If your broker doesn’t take your cost concerns seriously, consider firing them and hiring a fee-only fiduciary investment adviser to manage your portfolio. These professionals charge you an annual fee (which they will fully disclose) and never accept commissions from fund companies. In exchange, they’ll be able to tell you exactly how much you’re currently paying in mutual fund fees and recommend lower-cost options that align with your investment objectives and risk tolerance.   

For further research:  

• NextAvenue, How Did Your Investments Really Do in 2020? 
• TerrySavage.com, Fund Fees Cost Your Fortune