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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Personal Finance / Retirement Investing
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Author: intercst   😊 😞
Number: of 1281 
Subject: Re: Don't delay your retirement, anything could h
Date: 01/04/26 7:24 PM
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No. of Recommendations: 5
{{ In summary I'm not going to make a blanket statement about Medicare Advantage,
but my multi-year experience with lots data points would be that I would
probably default to traditional Medicare if I still lived in the US. There
are perverse incentives in the process that I don't see likely to be resolved.
}}

I'll say. Here's the analysis I did 5 years ago when I turned age 65 and started Medicare.

https://retireearlyhomepage.com/medicare2020.html

One very telling insight I got from an analyst at the State Insurance Commissioner's office was invaluable.

I called to ask about the number of customer complaints for the various Medigap insurers in my state to better inform my choice of insurer. The analyst told me that they get very few complaints on Medigap because there is almost nothing a Medigap insurer can do to cause you to complain. CMS does all the benefit administration and accounting for Medigap insurers, so they just pay out what CMS tells them to pay. And for this light workload, they skim off an average of 20% of premiums paid for overhead & profit. Thus, you can safely choose the insurer with the lowest premium, they're all the same. United American seems to be the low cost operator in this space.

intercst

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This community has written 1,207 posts about Retirement Investing. The article-length ones it recommended most:
The Case for Long-Term Buy and Hold Investing · 49 recs · 2025
Transferring assets to the next generation · 20 recs · 2025
Retirement Year 8 · 17 recs · 2025
(nearly) year one of retirement has been good · 11 recs · 2026
Buying Treasuries Via Vanguard · 10 recs · 2023
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