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Thanks Catch. Some people work best with concrete examples, so I appreciate your specific county/individual hypothetical. Now we're on exactly the same (web)page. I'll look at those policies in my next post.
I found the more current (2016) ve…
The two HSA plans are both HMOs - Blue Cross Select Bronze Saver HSA ($111) and Blue Cross Select Bronze HSA ($118). The only differences that pops out when I do a side by side comparison are the deductibles and caps (already noted above).
For $8…
I believe you'll find that M* gives the last five dividends. That could span the last five years if the fund paid dividends annually, such as Vanguard Primecap VPMCX. Or that could cover less than half a year if the fund paid monthly dividends, su…
All of that said, Obamacare still did the right thing by forcing insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions and not allowing them to jack up your premiums when you get sick. It forces insurers to actually insure sick people--the whole po…
@catch22 - I'm somewhat unclear on your terminology, and at a loss as to the point you're trying to make.
All insurance plans (outside of original Medicare, VA, etc.) would appear to be "private", i.e. not public options offered by a government. …
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it depends on what "required" means. I'm guessing you are thinking asset allocation, but one isn't "required" to hold any cash - that's just an allocation choice.
What you mean matters because, as Catch poin…
An old one liner - a recession is when other people lose their jobs, a depression is when I lose mine. In a nutshell, that's one of the problems with using anecdotal data. Distorted perspective.
Yes, some people are worse off than before. (At l…
@LewisBraham - thanks for posting more than a line or two on your thoughts. It's a good start, especially since you're working down from your objectives (increased revenue, reduced stock market speculation, etc.)
Personally, I agree with you a…
BofA says that advising clients to buy mutual funds in a commission-based account would create a conflict of interest. Apparently they are concerned about clients subsequently moving their funds to an asset-based (wrap) account. The clients would…
This election cycle may seem like it's been going on for years, but it's only been a bit more than a year since the Donald took his elevator ride, and just five days longer since Salient completed its acquisition of Forward. That didn't happen year…
'Business cut workers' hours to under 30 so they do not have to provide insurance."
Well, there's the law ...
ACA Ruling: You can now get sued for reducing employee's hours (HR Morning)The big takeaway for employers: If employees can tie a reductio…
I'm missing what you're missing :-), i.e. I don't see the same confusion.
The supplement is attached to all four existing classes of the fund - FFXRX , FFXIX , FFXCX , and FFXMX . So no share class appears excluded from the supplement that writes a…
Dunkin Donuts is probably wrong (or at least not provably right).
[E]veryone seems to think wariness ahead of the election is affecting their business. Sometimes for the better, mostly for the worse.
Economists aren’t so sure.
“It’s essentially u…
The free market response is that people should have skin in the game.
That's why, for example, the "Doc Fix" Medicare bill passed last year (92-8 in Senate, 392-37 in House) requires Medicare recipients to share in their doctor costs. Starting …
Thanks for that data. FWIW, I get $64,080 (400% of $16,020).
https://thefinancebuff.com/federal-poverty-levels-for-obamacare.html
I may get around to going through point by point, datum by datum. But just as I don't get involved in discussions …
The piece missing is that in those ancient times the Gov't didn't spend about 1 Trillion $ to set up a web site, nor did the Gov't/taxpayers/Chinese and other debt buyers/future generations pay for subsidies.
The former is a sunk cost and thus seems…
That's a really great spreadsheet. (I don't have DFA accounts, but I was curious.)
You can put in your tax rates (LT, ST, qualified) and number of shares, and it tells you your estimated taxes for the December and for the 2016 total distributions…
I think we may be talking (or writing) past each other.
The HUD Comprehensive Housing Market Analysis I cited is a study of the entire regional market, created to "assist and guide HUD in its operations. The factual information, findings, and con…
If I'm reading the definition of the Case-Shiller index correctly, I wouldn't put too much stock in the New York City figures.
From Investopedia: "Each index measures changes in the prices of single-family, detached residences..."
That would all b…
Huge increases for sure. That's the way provider costs have been going, which IMHO ACA neither adequately addressed nor exacerbated.
To put this in perspective, here are a few articles from ancient times (pre-ACA):
The Economist, 2010, "The Insur…
The ACA imposed the same medical loss ratio provisions on Part D providers that it imposed on individual/small group health insurers - 85% of expenses must go toward medical (drug) delivery. For details and citations to code sections, see:
https://…
jerry
Could you please use the actual headline from NYT in your caption? (Just hit the edit function on the right.). Here is the actual headline as it appears in your NYT article: Think your retirement plan is bad? Talk to a teacher.
The "actual"…
The history is generally accurate, except for minor details. 403(b)s began in 1958, as noted in the accompanying NYTimes article (link is at end of article, or here).
It's true that Section 401(k) of the IRC wasn't enacted until 1978 (and didn't b…
It's on Schwab's select list (NTF) and TDAmeritrade's Premier List (NTF). But it's not like some funds (or families) that show up on virtually all NTF lists.
Unfortunately for Fidelity and Vanguard clients, as you wrote it isn't load-waived at th…
Yes, it's a load fund, but it's available load-waived lots of places.
Better yet, it looks like one can buy the Advisor share class ANAYX at Scottrade, albeit with a transaction fee. That's $17 per purchase (or $2/purchase on an automatic investm…
From the looks of it, Jaffe was just reading a line off the Natixis PR, which is a summary of what Hank observed was not a rigorous study.
Hank also caught onto the fact that both the survey Jaffe was referencing and the earlier survey that MJG …
Curious listing of share classes. What caught my eye was #4, AEPGX. Class A.
According to its SAI, the largest share class is R-6, RERGX, with $41B, vs. $26 for AEPGX. As this is an R-class, we know that virtually all of this money is in retirem…
Minnesota 2017
Down to 4 insurers; rate hikes all at least 50%
https://www.healthinsurance.org/minnesota-state-health-insurance-exchange/
Here's another site that shows the figures by insurer:
http://acasignups.net/16/10/01/update-minnesota-approved…
Here's an interesting article on the premium subsidy dynamic that I am facing this year:
“… the amount of the [self-employed health insurance premium] deduction is based on the amount of the … premium tax credit, and the amount of the credit is base…
@Old_Skeet - thanks for posting your calculations on making a switch. They illustrate concretely what you concluded - that it often pays to shop around. But also that one really does need to crunch the numbers and consider non-dollar factors as w…
If I get more for the extra money, I'm all for having the option of paying more.
That's why insurers offer some plans off-exchange - these may be higher benefit/higher price plans that don't fit well into the exchange model. For example, United …
That seems to be correct. I found a Senate markup copy of the provisions. The description of the inherited stretch IRA provision starts at p. 44 (pdf p. 46).
http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Mod Mark JCX-87-16 SFC Pensions Modification…
My bad. I didn't check the details of the plans. Aside from preventive care, lots of other services come before paying a deductible. That seems to be pretty common with CSR plans.
Seeing a doctor - just a copay, no deductible.
Getting a te…
ObamaCare Enrollees Face A Rude Awakening In Two Weeks
"A 25-year-old living in the state's vast "Inland Empire" who makes $18,000 a year will end up paying an average of $1,080 a year — after subsidies — for a Silver plan that comes with $3,000 i…
You are lucky Catch, my Blue Shield Ca went up 19.9 percent, after a 40+ percent increase last year. I've heard it called the Unafordable Care Act.
Two words: Proposition 61.
Well, there's more, like your choice to use an insurer that's raising rat…
This is a bit of a sidetrack, but is spurred by jstr's use of S&P as a prototypical index provider.
S&P's "indexes" do not have "systematic selection criteria", at least the way I would use that phrase: "entirely rules-based and containing …
Here is Morningstar's "Methodology Enhancements" (worldwide) effective Oct. 31, 2016. It answers an obvious question - if loads will no longer be included in the star ratings, why have XXXXX.lw pages? The answer is that these pages are going away…
"The intent of the many numerous changes being made (TD 9783 included) is to encourage participants and employers to increase options to annuitize a portion of their retirement savings."
Perhaps so for some of the changes. But RESA's proposed eli…
One other note - the new DOL rule (not to be confused with this bill) is considered harmful to annuities because it places such great emphasis on the cost of the annuities.
The RESA change affects how the financial soundness of an insurer is determ…
