As a new-ish retiree, I am sick to death of the Medicare Advantage commercials being lobbed at me nonstop during open enrollment. It doesn’t help that I’ve newly discovered old TV westerns (which I never watched back in their day). I watch them a lot now, and the insurance companies knows the audience of these old shows. January, and the end of open enrollment, can’t come fast enough.
Other than that, retirement is great!
The good news: open enrollment ends on 7 December (changes effective 1 January). The bad news: based on my experience with a couple of “retro” shows, while the volume of MA ads will decrease you’ll still be confronted by Joe Namath’s phiz. Sorry 'bout that.
A close friend (2 months younger than I am; we’re both 64) had been planning to retire at the end of the summer, but a couple months beforehand there were rumors of impending layoffs, and her boss offered to put her into the pool.
This meant that she’d get several months of severance, her health insurance would be covered during that time (meaning, less time she’d have to do COBRA before tuning 65), and I think she will get an annual bonus as well. Of course her company dragged things on, so she wound up working several months longer than planned, but it was sooooo worth it.
She said. about a week later, that she caught herself thinking “what’ll I wear to work tomorow?” then “Oh yeah!!!”.
I sort of wish my company would lay me off 
Well, not right now - it would be inconvenient, financially, though we’re better off than we were a year ago. But I’ve sort of decided that if either my husband or I has a job loss, we would just cut our losses. I’d LIKE to work until 66 (our FRA is 66 and 10 months). It’s really bizarre realizing we are this close.
My wife was listening to 60s Gold on Sirius, and they said “And we’re the channel that doesn’t broadcast Medicare Advantage ads.”
At one of our monthly lunches for the people who used to be in our group (most not working for Oracle any more) my old boss said I should come back and help with my old software. I told him fine, but it would cost him. Never heard another word, so I didn’t have to decide if I really wanted to do it.
I just got my first Advantage phone call. I don’t qualify for Medicare for another year and a half.
I’m 59 and I got one a couple days ago
I didn’t understand the thinking on the part of my otherwise competent bosses, either. When I was hired I learned that my position had been vacant for over three months and there was a boatload of catching up to do.
And when I gave four months notice prior to retiring, my position still hadn’t been posted when the day arrived. I never understood that; it seemed they were making things unnecessarily harder on themselves.
My 35-year-old daughter, who hasn’t lived in our house since college, somehow got on a mailing list and now we are receiving a deluge of Medicare crapola addressed to her. I have no idea who to contact to tell them that she’s 30 years away from eligibility.
Mine live in a constant state of reaction. There is apparently never enough time to plan, or think ahead, because they are constantly dealing with whatever shit-show has hit their desk today. And somehow, over decades, nobody has ever figured out that all the shit that hit their desk today could have been avoided by just a little bit of planning or thought 4 months ago.
Being reactive is EASY. You don’t have to plan. You don’t have to think ahead. You don’t have to put effort in now for something down the road. And that’s it too… It’s in the future. Procrastinate. Put it off as long as possible.
I’ve learned too that some folks seem to get used to living in panic mode. They think this is the normal way of doing business. Some may even enjoy the adrenaline rush that panic situations create. It can be “fun” to send everyone in your unit into a frenzy to get something done NOW NOW NOW! “ohh, look at the power I hold over these people.”
Just some thoughts on how this happens.
Very true. And I’ve noticed that businesses reward this behavior. Solving a gigantic problem gets you more visibility and brownie points than being smart enough to ensure that the problem never comes up.
Case in point. When I was at Intel, working on what was clearly a disaster, one of the sections of the processor was full of bugs and very late. The team responsible for this mess finally got their act together and, after delaying the whole chip, got it fixed.
They got rewarded with a trip to Disneyland. On Intel. The groups that did it right the first time got nothing.
Greasing the squeaky wheel syndrome.
I’ve got… two years before retirement. Working from home now 100% of the time. COVID did that, and I said “I like it, and that’s what I’m going to do from here on out”
I’m keeping my distance from big upcoming projects, and making training video trainings of how to manage the stuff I’ve developed.
I do have a big software update coming up that I am dreading. But otherwise, just keeping my head down.
For Medicare Part B, you get an 8-month ‘Special Enrollment Period’ starting the day you retire. Not for Medicare Advantage?
I was referring to the annual open enrollment period for existing participants. As you noted, initial enrollment has its own set of rules, which I imagine I imagine apply to both Original/Medigap and Advantage (after talking with a SHIP consultant about my particular situation I never seriously considered the latter, so I can’t say for certain),
Ah, yes. Since this is a ‘countdown to retirement’ thread, I’d have figured that you were talking about the rules pertaining to people who are retiring in the near future. That “own set of rules” you refer to is the set of rules that will apply to most people who are in the countdown to retirement.
Point taken. I was actually responding to @teelabrown’s bemoaning the barrage of MA ads on cable/streaming channels that cater to a more … “mature” … demographic; hence my reference to Joe Namath’s ugly mug.
Yeah, I forgot about Joe Namath. And then there’s Jimmie Walker waving his hands at me, too, in his MA ads. Way to get me to switch to watching youtube videos, MeTV.
I apologize if this has already been discussed somewhere.
So now that we’re retired, I understand that our method of paying taxes will change. Apparently, we have to do the quarterly tax estimates/tax payments? That’s completely different from how we’ve paid our taxes for forty-odd years. What do we do? Go to a tax accountant now? We’ve always done our own taxes, and Mr. brown hates paying people to do what he thinks he can do himself.
I have similar concerns, though I have done quarterlies. The thing is, your quarterlies for the next year are based on the previous (I think 2) years’ taxes. So you don’t need to worry at all that you didn’t pay quarterlies for 2023, that’s not in the cards if you’ve never had to before. In the past I’d just used Turbo and it simply tells you what your coming year’s quarterlies will be when you file the previous year’s taxes. I think you can just feel your way at this point without a super-CPA or something.
I may pay an enrolled agent anyway to file my taxes (using one from Turbo, they’ve been great) because of a mess up that cost me a ton of money in penalties for 2018 when I just used Turbo by itself because I had a really complex tax situation. I made a thread about it.
FWIW, I was told I had to pay quarterlies for 2023 and I’ve completely blown it off because my taxable income will be like 20% of what 2022’s income was, so I figured I’d just cross fingers. Wish me luck 
I was good with not paying estimated taxes until I started taking Social Security at 70 and my income increased a lot. I pay withholding when I take money out of my IRA, which helps. Most of the years between 65 and 70 I used post tax money, so my effective income was very low and there was no problem.