America's Elder Crisis, Medicare Edition

[Voyager]

@teelabrown

Here in California, the gain might be considerable if you’ve owned your home for decades, and Social Security/Medicare will assume you made a buttload of money during the year of sale and your Part B might go through the roof. Yay.

When I first went on Medicare, right after I retired, they computed the Part B cost based on my work income and it was high. It eventually went down though.

@teelabrown

And I keep reading articles asking why boomers are staying put in their too-large homes in retirement rather than moving to smaller quarters. This Medicare Part B issue, the capital gains tax on the profit from your home sale, the California homeowners insurance meltdown, the 6% realtor’s fee, and in our case a sewer lateral repair requirement before home sale, might be why!

My gain would be a lot more than $500K, not that I’m complaining. The tax on the excess is a lot more of a worry than Part B, not that I’m complaining. On the bright side, the 6% reduces your gain.
We have a lot of geezers like me in our neighborhood for this very reason, and my old boss who has renewed his real estate license confirms that it is an issue.