Early retirement has become a favorite topic in the personal-finance blogsphere. There are even blogs devoted primarily or entirely to the topic. The general theme is save enough money regularly, and invest it faithfully (in S&P 500 index funds), and you?ll be able to retire at 55, 50, 45, 40, 3… Continue Reading

Health insurance is pivotal to everyone and one should opt to buy health insurance when one is younger. The rising costs associated with medical bills are not going to stop in the near future. Hence insuring oneself and their family is the way to go. Also, there are multiple advantages to securing h… Continue Reading

There?s nothing to fear folks because our healthcare crisis has been solved. It?s all good news with Obamacare. That?s the word from the US Census Bureau. According to their data, the number of uninsured in America has been falling steadily for at least the past three years. Is that what?s really… Continue Reading

In one of last week's posts, Could You Afford an $1875 COBRA Payment Every Month?, reader John touched on single-payer health insurance in a comment. I confessed that I'm coming around to the idea. But I've been doing some thinking since the comment exchange, and have come to the conclusion that uni… Continue Reading

You read that right ? an $1875 COBRA payment ? every month. That?s our new reality. Think you can afford it? I don?t know if we can either, at least not without making major sacrifices. I don?t want to beat this to the point where it turns into blatant whining ? though my guess is that just about… Continue Reading

This past week the W2 from my wife's employer came in. In box 12c was a very large number, albeit an "informational" one only. It represents the amount paid for health insurance during 2016. Including both the employee and employer portions, our health insurance premium was over $21,000 last year! T… Continue Reading

On the campaign trail and in the debates, presidential candidate Donald Trump promised to fix Obamacare. No - he actually vowed to dismantle Obamacare. He never did quite get around to articulating exactly what he would replace it with. But now that he has been elected president, we can only hope th… Continue Reading

The cost of healthcare in the US is high by any measure, but the more ominous reality is that it continues to get even more expensive. Most assume that rising healthcare costs are a natural phenomenon, or are concerned only that the growing costs of healthcare are covered by insurance or by governme… Continue Reading

In the past I stated that bad health insurance is better than no health insurance, and that is a common position in America today. But the limitation is cost. Health insurance is not just expensive, but very expensive. As in, budget-wrecking expensive. For that reason, there may be times when going … Continue Reading

This article represents my third on this topic, with the original written back in 2011. That was followed with a complete update in 2015, due largely to the fact that the health insurance landscape had changed so dramatically as a result of the implementation of Obamacare. I'm now planning to make m… Continue Reading