ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Micah Shilanski, CFP®, is a distinguished financial planner known for his deep commitment to providing exceptional advisory services to his clients. As the founder of Plan Your Federal Retirement, Micah has dedicated his career to helping federal employees understand and optimize their benefits to ensure a secure and prosperous retirement. His expertise is widely recognized in the industry, making him a sought-after speaker and educator on financial planning and retirement strategies.
Micah’s approach is client-centered, focusing on creating personalized strategies that address each individual’s unique needs. His work emphasizes the importance of comprehensive planning, incorporating aspects of tax strategy, investment management, and risk assessment to guide clients toward achieving their financial goals.Micah Shilanski 00:00
Have you ever wondered what one of your largest expenses in retirement is going to be? Well, if you have stay tuned for this. FERS Federal Fact Check. Hi, I’m Micah Shilanski, with Plan Your Federal Retirement, we have a good question that comes today that talks about a large expense you have in retirement, all right, but it’s not your largest expense, but it’s what people think is going to be their largest expense in retirement. People often come to me and says, Micah, health insurance, or health expenses, is probably one of the largest costs I’m going to have in retirement, and I can understand how that could feel that way, but I’m going to tell you that’s probably not the case. Most of, if not all of the people I deal with, the largest expense that they’re going to have in retirement is taxes. That’s right, the IRS, right, the income taxes you pay is probably going to be your largest expense, but let’s put that one aside for a future video. Let’s talk about what we’re concerned about being our largest expense, and that’s your health insurance. Whether it’s health insurance or paying for medical expenses, we have a good question that came in, and I get this question a lot. It says, I’m 65 now and still working, but when I retire in a couple years, I’m interested in keeping my monthly health insurance down. Is it more effective to keep FEHB only or get Medicare Part B? I know best would be both, but if I have to keep my monthly costs lower, that is a great question. Now, a couple things that come into mind with this question. Well, number one is, most of the time when we’re thinking about this, you can get an FEHB plan with Medicare and the FEHB plan when you get under Medicare, you can get one that works with it, and it’s going to lower your cost. You can even get plans that have a reimbursement if you sign up for Medicare Part B. So most of the time, what I do is, I do encourage clients to get both. I do encourage them, potentially, to switch to another plan that works a little bit better with FEHB, instead of, you know, Blue Cross, you know, standard and basic, and use those terminologies, we all know what they are, right? The standard is the kind of more premier one, and you have the basic plan, the FEHB, Blue Cross, Blue Shield basic plan actually has a reimbursement if you sign up for Medicare Part B, and it’s a little bit less. There’s also other plans, like giha that work really well with Medicare, so a lot of times, what I encourage clients to do is move to a plan that worked really well. Keep in mind, by maintaining FEHB into retirement, you can always switch plans every open season, even in retirement. So if you happen to switch to a plan you don’t like, you can go ahead and fix it next year, but I’m still opening a fan as much as we can of having both FEHB Medicare Part A and Medicare Part B. Do you like this content and you want to help other federal employees learn about their benefits and go ahead and share this out. Our goal is open another 1 million federal employees with a retirement, we cannot do it without your help. If you want more information on your benefits, then visit our website at planyourfederalretirement.com, take care!