Risk Management & Insurance

You think your Social Security net benefit is statutorily guaranteed to never decrease? You’re wrong. While the "Hold Harmless" rule is designed to prevent Medicare premiums from eating up your cost-of-living raise, there is a statutory exclusion that most retirees don't see until January. If you trigger IRMAA (the Income-Related...

You’ve been generous your whole life. In retirement, you continue to support the charities you care about, writing a check for a few thousand dollars each year. You feel good about it, and you assume your generosity is at least giving you a bit of a break on your...

For retirees who are charitably inclined, there is no single greater tool for tax and Medicare premium savings than the Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD). Yet, it remains one of the most misunderstood and underutilized strategies in retirement finance. This is what I saw in nearly 3 decades advising people....

Let me start with this: I have immense respect for Certified Public Accountants. A great CPA is a master of the tax code, a historian of your financial past. As well as an essential partner in ensuring you pay what you owe, and not a penny more. But the...

For a federal retiree, IRMAA is usually a timing problem before it is a Medicare problem. Social Security generally uses tax information from two years earlier to determine the income-related surcharge on Medicare Part B and Part D. So a taxable TSP move you make in 2026 can generally...

If your Medicare IRMAA stayed high after a divorce or the death of your spouse, you may be able to ask Social Security to use more recent income information. Both divorce or annulment and death of a spouse are recognized IRMAA life-changing events. If you are already sorting through a...

Married filing separately can make IRMAA dramatically more expensive—but there is an important exception. If you filed a separate return and lived with your spouse at any time during the tax year Social Security is using, Medicare applies a special, compressed IRMAA table. In 2026, once your individual MAGI...

The couple sat across from me, retirement just two years away, staring at a projected $5,451 tax bomb they never saw coming. They had just sold their family home of 30 years, and their advisor told them, "Don't worry, the gain is mostly excluded." He was right about the capital...

This tool helps you answer a narrower question than “Can I appeal IRMAA?” It asks whether your situation appears to fit Social Security's life-changing-event route for using more recent income information, and then points you to the next thing to verify. That distinction matters because not every unfair-looking IRMAA bill...

A Medicare Part B premium can look like a simple monthly bill until income enters the picture. In 2026, the standard premium is $202.90 per month, but higher-income beneficiaries can pay as much as $689.90 per month for Part B before adding any Part D IRMAA. The number that controls...