Word for word from the sample. Each excerpt opens the page it comes from.
Money · Will your money last?
It has to work for both of you, then for one.
“Your plan has to work for both of you, and then for your spouse alone. It assumes you live to 88 (2054) and your spouse to 90 (2058), so your spouse would have about 4 years on their own. In this forecast, the money lasts through 2057.”
$872Ksavings today
$104Kyearly spending in retirement
$2.61Mleft at the end, in today's dollars
A year-by-year forecast in today's dollars, with three spending levels and two market downturns tested against the same plan.
Read it on page 6 →Money · What could change the outcome
If one of you dies first.
“The survivor keeps the larger of your two Social Security checks for life and the smaller one stops. Survivor benefits can start at 60 at the earliest, and are smaller if started before full retirement age. So the higher earner's start age matters for both of you: waiting raises the check whoever lives longer will keep.”
Both casesyou die first, or your spouse does
$2,793a month the survivor keeps
2035the year the term life policy ends
Each case shows what arrives, what stops and whether the money lasts for whoever is left, including when a life policy would and wouldn't pay.
Read it on page 14 →Benefits · When to start Social Security
Your trade-offs, not our pick.
“Living longer favors waiting. Starting at 70 instead of 62 pays $1,885 more a month for life, and the extra checks catch up with the head start at about age 80.9. You planned for age 88, past that point.”
$2,444a month starting at 62
$4,329a month starting at 70
About 85when waiting catches up if early checks are invested
Each starting age is run through the whole forecast, with the case for starting earlier and the case for waiting side by side. It never tells you which age to choose.
Read it on page 41 →Home · Stay, adapt, downsize or relocate
The question that decides it.
“Two questions settle most of this. What would it cost each year to hand off the upkeep you don't want? And where are the people you'd want close by?”
Your home decision is written from your own answers: what you want from home, what stands in the way, your realistic paths and what each would take.
Read it on page 24 →Taxes · Selling a rental
A rough tax estimate, from your figures.
“Using your figures: a sale price of $560,000, less about $18,000 in selling costs, less your adjusted basis of $200,000, leaves a gain of about $342,000. The home-sale exclusion doesn't apply, because this isn't your main home.”
$342,000estimated gain
About $82,000federal, investment-income and state tax
4 optionsthat could change it
Then the ways the tax can change: a 1031 exchange, holding the property, an installment sale, or making it your main home first.
Read it on page 50 →Health and care · Paying for long-term care
What help at home would cost where you live.
“Medicare generally doesn't pay for it: it covers short-term skilled nursing or rehabilitation after a hospital stay, not ongoing personal care.”
$38.00an hour, in-home care median in D.C.
$39,520a year for 20 hours a week
$79,040a year for 40 hours a week
Costs use your state's rates, followed by what Medicare, Medicaid and long-term-care insurance would and wouldn't pay.
Read it on page 35 →
