Nancy from Bolden walks through modeling medical, Medicare, and long-term care expenses in the Bolden Planner. Learn how pre-tax payroll deductions affect your entries, Medicare enrollment options, and the planner's default assumptions for long-term care costs and insurance.
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Hi everyone, this is Nancy from Bolden and I want to welcome you to day 10 of our Get Started series designed to guide you in accurately setting up your plan. In today's video, I'll discuss how to account for medical, Medicare and long term care expenses in the Bolden Planner. Let's navigate to expenses in health care and start with medical expenses before 65. Here you'll include any co pays or coinsurance, deductibles, prescription drugs or other out of pocket costs you anticipate prior to age 65. Many employers who provide health insurance and other benefits allow employees to pay for those benefits via pre tax payroll deductions which reduce taxable income. If this is the case for you, we recommend excluding this income when entering your income from work and also excluding health care expenses paid in this manner here to most closely represent your net cash flow. If you plan to leave work and your health insurance premiums will increase or decrease Prior to age 65, you may account for changes over time with multiple line items. If you and your spouse are different ages, take care to model expenses for both prior to attaining age 65 as well and make sure you include any health care costs for dependents. Once you turn 65, you will likely go on Medicare unless you have employer or creditable coverage. If you are already on Medicare or plan to enroll in Medicare at age 65, you have the option to use the estimator or enter your own itemized costs. If you will not enroll In Medicare at 65, select Employer sponsored Medicare which will turn off the Medicare costs until the end date selected. Since Jennifer plans to work until age 66, she will be on her employer's insurance until 2029. This feature is not intended to account for an employer provided Medicare supplement, Tricare for Life or FEHB supplemental coverage after age 65. If you have any of those benefits, you may want to use the itemized Medicare feature. Using the estimator, you'll select a Medicare option and premium level. Confirm whether or not you smoke, select any health conditions that might impact your costs. The plan will estimate your annual costs and reflect back a lifetime sum of Medicare expenses. The final expense section is Long term Care. The planner's default modeling includes long term care expenses over the last 28 months of each user's plan. The costs are $1,600 per month for 12 months and $4,800 per month for 16 months in today's dollars, which is the national average for a basic level of care across urban and rural areas. I would suggest researching costs in your area and at your comfort level. If the expenses you find are higher than average, you may want to add additional long term care costs in your budget. We have a variety of options available here and you'll select one in the pull down menu. Selecting Long Term care insurance will reduce the default expenses by 80% and the last two options will turn off the long term care expenses. The other options will not impact the default costs. Thank you for joining me in today's video. I'll see you in get started series 11 where I discuss the Money Flow section of the Planner.
