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Episode #629 - Healthcare Before Medicare: What Happens When You Retire Before 65?

“I held it up and I tried to channel happy dog thoughts toward Cerberus, Alpo commercials, two little puppies, fire hydrants” - Rick Riordan.

Roger: Welcome to the show, dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence to lean in and rock it. My name is Roger Whitney, and if you want to retire prior to Medicare age of 65, you will have to battle Cerberus, the three headed dog that guarded the underworld.

ROGER INTRODUCES THE CERBERUS FRAMEWORK AND OUTLINES THE FOUR-WEEK SERIES ON HEALTH CARE BEFORE MEDICARE.

Roger: In this case, there are three major challenges in navigating health care before Medicare. And we're going to talk about them today. And this is going to kick off a month-long series on navigating health care before Medicare. And today we're going to talk about the challenge. Next week we're going to talk about the options that you have for health care. If you're not at Medicare age then we're going to talk about how to optimize and navigate the incentives around ACA subsidies, etc.. And then in the last week of the month, we're going to talk about how do we bring this all together to get an action plan so we can slay Cerberus and have a strategy so we can retire before we are Medicare age? So that's the plan for this week. And every week we're going to have listener questions that we're going to answer. We're going to do a smart sprint today because this is the first episode of the month, and we're starting this in February. We're going to have at the end of the show what's on our bookshelf, what I've been reading, what my team has been reading, maybe give you some ideas to enhance your reading throughout the year. We'll do that at the beginning of every month.

If you want to get a summary of the show and links to books and resources that we mentioned, I encourage you to sign up for our weekly email called The noodle. I love that name where you can noodle every Saturday on how to rock retirement. You can sign up for that at the noodle.me, and the cool thing is, when you get that if you hit reply, that actually comes directly to me. And so you can ask a question, correct my pronunciation, give me some helpful hints, and maybe share some wisdom so you can do that at the noodle. All right. With that said let's get this party started.

HEALTH CARE BEFORE MEDICARE: THE THREE HEADS OF CERBERUS

Today we're going to start the series on health care before Medicare. And we got to set up what are the challenges that we face. And we're going to use Cerberus, which was the three headed dog that guarded the gates of the underworld in Greek mythology. As our image of what we have to battle, we want to navigate health care before Medicare. We're going to have to get past the three heads of the health care service. Now, Greek heroes were successful, but they needed a strategy and you're going to need a strategy to navigate these challenges. So today we're going to set up the challenges. Next week we'll talk about some options, some tools we have to approach this three headed dog.

“HEAD” #1: THE TRUE COST OF HEALTH CARE WITHOUT AN EMPLOYER SUBSIDY AND WHY IT CREATES STICKER SHOCK IN RETIREMENT, ESPECIALLY WHEN PAID FROM PRE-TAX ACCOUNTS.

All right, what is the first head of this health care Cerberus. And that is the expense of paying for health care without having an employer plan. So when you retire, assuming you worked at a corporation that had health care, you're going from a subsidized plan to a non subsidized plan, and that can make health care seem really expensive, perhaps for the first time. But the real truth is that it's always expensive. It's just that you're not getting an employer subsidy to help pay for what health care is. It's all on you. And as a self-employed individual, I can relate to this. And we'll use myself as an example because I've had to navigate this in being self-employed. And so what do I mean? That it's not just suddenly expensive, it's always expensive.

So I'm going to go to the Kaiser Family Foundation annual Employer survey for 2024. Now the Kaiser Foundation, when it comes to health care before Medicare, is a great resource. And we'll have a link to that in The Noodle that has some ACA resources and some calculators. And they do a lot of research on this. But according to their annual survey, if you are single and working at a company that has health insurance, the average total premium for a single person is about $808,950 a year, and the average employee contribution is about $119 a month, so about $1,430 a year. Now, that doesn't mean that's what health care costs when you have an employer plan, because the average employer contribution, according to their survey, is about 84% of the premium, or just over $7,500 per year. So health care is expensive for a single person. Even if you're working, you just have the employer benefit of subsidizing that. Now for family coverage, according to the Kaiser survey. The average premium on an annual basis for family coverage is $25,500 a year. The average employee contribution. So this would be you if you're working at a company on average anyway, is $525 a month or about $6,300 a year, and the employer is picking up 75% of the premium, or just over $19,000 a year. So we're talking 10 to 25,000, depending on whether you're single or have family coverage. But when you're working, the employer picks up the lion's share of that. So it seems much more reasonable. But then when you retire, all of a sudden the employer contribution to your health care goes away and now it's you. And that is what makes it seem like such a sticker shock is because you never really see the employer contribution. You don't even really see it on your W-2. You don't see it typically on your compensation summary, it happens in the background.

And this is the burden that employers have. That is real money towards employee compensation that just goes away. So to use as an example of this financial impact, I'm just going to use my wife and I, Shauna and I when it comes to finances. Now we are under the ACA program, the Affordable Care Act, which is the government scheme to try to get everybody covered. And the nice thing about the ACA is when you enroll in open enrollment, they can't exclude pre-existing conditions. But if you're not getting any subsidy, the cost is roughly the same.

So Shauna and I pay and I'm rounding here $27,800 per year for coverage for her and I. And that's with zero subsidy. So we're paying a little bit more than the family coverage average, according to the Kaiser Institute. And then each of us has a max out of pocket. I will round it here. We're just going to use round numbers about 10,000 each for max out of pocket. And because Shauna has a particular ailment, psoriatic arthritis. She hits that in the first month, month and a half every year because the biologic type medicine that she takes costs a lot of money. And so out of pocket if you're getting no subsidy and I'm 59, Shauna is 60 and we're paying almost $40,000 a year, most of that being premium. So that's a challenge. If you don't get any subsidies from the ACA. We'll get into that later in the series. This is a big shock And one is you have to have the money to be able to pay it. And how? For however many years you are, until you hit Medicare, you're going to have to navigate that financially and navigating that can come with some issues. So when you're battling this head of the Cerberus, you're going to have to find where you're going to get the money. Now, if you have after tax money and savings accounts or after tax investments, that can help fight this head of the Cerberus. But if your lion's share of your money are in pre-tax accounts, an IRA or a 401, well, you may have to draw money from the IRA or in the 401 in order to pay this portion of your retirement expenses, because the money's got to come from somewhere, right? And if it comes from pre-tax accounts, it could exacerbate everything.

What do I mean by that? Well, let's assume you have to pay 25,000 a year for health care. Which kids are getting no subsidy and the only place you have to get it is your IRA. Well, that means you need to take 25,000 out of your IRA, but then that becomes taxable income. So you actually have to take more than 25,000 out in order to get your 25. That means if I need to net 25,000 in order to pay for my tax bill, assuming I'm in the federal bracket of 12%, not including if I have state tax, I'd have to take out 28,400 in order to get my 25,000. So I'm taking out more money because I'm incurring this taxable expense. Now that's going to increase your tax bill. It also could move you up tax brackets in the event that you already have a lot of taxable income, it could move you into the 22% bracket or the 24% bracket. So there's this second order consequence of having to cover this bill. Another one is if you're using or trying to use subsidies for the Affordable Care Act to help offset the cost of your premium. And we're going to talk about that in episode three of the subsidy structure as it is today with the Affordable Care Act, where you can get government assistance, essentially to help offset your premium. Well, that's based on your modified adjusted gross income. So if you're taking money out of an IRA to cover your ACA insurance premium, it's going to increase your income, which may lower your subsidy. Oh, it's starting to get confusing already. This is a nasty head of a Cerberus. We got to manage. And then if you're closer to Medicare, taking money out to cover your premiums could increase your income, which you could potentially get through. You know, Irma brackets. Just a lot of stuff going on here. So the financial challenge this head is one that we're going to have to navigate and figure out.

“HEAD” #2: COVERAGE CHALLENGES, INCLUDING NARROWER NETWORKS, FEWER PLAN OPTIONS, AND THE POTENTIAL LOSS OF TRUSTED DOCTORS AND SPECIALISTS.

Roger: So the second head of the Cerberus is the fact that you have to change your health care services before you retire. If you've worked at a company for a long period of time, you've likely been on the same plan or similar plans for decades, and you have the doctors that you like. You have a rhythm in operating, how to navigate claims and filing and prescriptions, etc. but when you retire and you look for alternatives generally in the Affordable Care Act under the Affordable Care Act, a lot of people will experience what's called a narrowing of your narrow range, narrowing of your network. Your options get less attractive because corporations they've they're able to have collective power and and relationships. And you probably have a relatively robust plan if you're at a large corporation. Well, now you're going to go likely into the network, Affordable Care Act again. We'll talk about that next week where your options could be limited. So you may go from a PPO to an HMO, and that's going to limit the options of your providers. What doctors you're allowed to see. It may limit or increase the deductibles related to your plan. So we see a narrowing of networks because the the health care network that you're in becomes much more restrictive.

Now this can become again exacerbated if you need specialists. Well, one is your current doctors that you've been before. I even get to that. Your current doctors in your plan may not be in the plans that you sign up for when you retire, and that's a big disruption because you know you're building relational currency with your doctor. They know you. They understand the history. They know the context, they know how to communicate with you. And unless you find a plan that has them in there. You may have to switch doctors and that can be very disruptive, especially if you're dealing with health care challenges. Now the other part of that is if you have a health care challenge that requires a specialist, getting access to those specialists can get a little bit harder. Well, one is you may have to switch specialists because your plant, your new plan doesn't have what your corporate plan had. But getting access to those specialists can be hard. One a lot of them just aren't accepting new patients, and those that are accepting new patients can have long wait times. Your rheumatologist, if that's how you pronounce it. Shauna has one.

You may have 3 to 6 months to get to some of these specialists, because they're so in demand within these plans. And that can that just makes it difficult if you're dealing with a challenge. Now Shawna has psoriatic arthritis and she has this issue of she has a rheumatologist. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly that she loves. And luckily she's integrated into their practice. So even if they're not accepting new patients, she's in. And recently we had to re-up or redo our healthcare because every open enrollment period you can select a new plan. And the plan that she was on last year in 2024, 25, it was available to her for 26, but the premium had increased significantly, like 4 or $500 per month. And there were other plans that were less expensive that were very similar, except that this specialist wasn't on those other plans. And she has a relationship with that specialist. She likes that specialist. Everything is working well. So we ended up having to be stuck in this plan and just eat the increase in the cost, because we didn't want to lose access to that specialist because that's been working well and managing this health challenge.

So you can see how this narrowing can make it very difficult when you retire before Medicare. All right. That's the second head of the Cerberus is number one is the money part. Number two is getting coverage that fits your doctors and the challenges that you face, and understanding that you're going to have less options. It can be very restrictive.

“HEAD” #3: INCREASED COMPLEXITY IN CHOOSING PLANS, MANAGING CARE, AND NAVIGATING ACA SUBSIDIES BASED ON MODIFIED ADJUSTED GROSS INCOME.

Roger: Now let's get to the third head of the Cerberus. And that is increased complexity doesn't have to do with your health care. Doesn't have to do with your money. But boy is this a big one. You're navigating having to choose plans without a lot of information and with a lot of complexity. Go to healthcare.gov. Walk through the process. You're going to be comparing, say, two HMO bronze plans. They're going to look almost identical, but the cost is different. And there might be subtle differences that you can't see initially. And we're really not in a position to evaluate that? Well, most of the time. And I can tell you from my personal experience trying to navigate it, someone who knows a little bit about this stuff, it's hard and I get tired head really quickly. So we'll talk a little bit about how you do that, but it's going to increase the complexity of just simply choosing a plan and navigating open enrollment.

And then it's also once you have your plan, you're going to have to find your doctor. You're going to need to make sure they get on that. You're going to have to navigate the benefit process with your plan and not have a benefits department like you might have in HR to maybe assist with some of this stuff. You're going to have to deal with claims and negotiation with providers. That gets really difficult. Now, from personal experience, more my wife's than mine, she has been on the phone for hours navigating the approval of getting the referral back to the doctor because a referral expired by a day. She's been on the phone for hours with the pharmacy and getting approval for the biologic that they need. This is complicated stuff. It's not a full time job, but it can become difficult. And that could be even worse if this is an area that you're really not comfortable with. t's a little intimidating. So this is a head that we got to battle.

And then lastly, the last part of the complexity is if you're looking to get subsidies from the Affordable Care Act to help offset the expensive cost of health care, that can be difficult. It's based on modified adjusted gross income, and that definition means different things for different benefits. We'll talk about that in episode three. So we got to figure out how do we navigate how we realize income based off of modified adjusted gross income in order to get the subsidy that we're targeting? and you always have to project beforehand to the Affordable Care Act, what you say your income is going to be and if it's different, they have to reconcile that. So you might get negative surprises. And you know, investments have random dividends or capital reinvestment. You get a job or consulting job you didn't know you're going to get. And that has downstream impact on your income, which changes your subsidy. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm getting tired head right now.

Okay. We're setting up the challenges. We got first head, the expense, second head coverage, third head complexity. Our goal for this series next week we're going to talk about what options do we have for health care and what are the basics of those options. So we'll talk a lot about the Affordable Care Act episode three. We're going to talk about how do we use the health care system. Not use in a bad way, but yet take advantage of subsidies. If we're do them in terms of decisions we make on how we realize our income. And then in the last series, we're going to try to put together a framework so you can navigate this a little bit more thoughtfully on your own, because it can be slain. You can get to the underworld, which I guess in this case is retirement before Medicare. All right, all right. We've set up the challenges. Don't get too pessimistic yet because we should be able to slay this. Now let's get to some of your questions.

LISTENER QUESTIONS: ROGER RESPONDS TO LISTENER QUESTIONS ABOUT SAVING DISCIPLINE, THE 4% RULE, GEOGRAPHIC COST DIFFERENCES, VALUES-BASED PLANNING, AND HOW TAXES ARE MODELED IN RETIREMENT CASE STUDIES.

Roger: Now it's time to answer some of your questions. If you have a question for the show, you can go to ask Roger and type in your question. Helpful hint if you leave an audio question, we try to make that a fast pass and answer those with priority because we love to hear your voice. So today we're just going to go through a few because we had two questions last week.

So our last month, Andy from New Jersey had a comment on Lucy and Henry, who are a retirement plan live subjects. Hey, I was thinking, more importantly, than if Lucy and Henry can retire. Maybe they should explain how they saved over $3 million, paid off their student loans, had a child paid for daycare, funded their education, paid off their mortgage all before they were 46 years old. I think these facts need investigation. That's a good question, Andy. And we talked a little bit about it on the live broadcast, but that wasn't definitely wasn't the focus of what we were doing. My understanding from my conversations with them is they didn't receive an inheritance. They didn't have super duper stock options. That hit is that they decided early and this is in their early 20s. So let's assume it's 20 years that they just weren't going to inflate their lifestyle. So as their careers grew and they, you know, they both are in tech, I think on average, would they say they made about 150, 100, 150 throughout that 20 year period. But that wasn't just linear. They grew that over time, but the kind of health care or the kind of expenses that they modeled in their planning session that we did mirrored what they've been doing for a long period of time. So they're spending, say, 60, 70 a year, and they're consistently saving to their 401, consistently saving to Roth every extra income that they received, bonus or pay raise added to the size of the shovel in order to save. So a lot of this was savings based, just simply consistent over time, over time. And as they got more money, they didn't inflate their lifestyle. They didn't buy a car. They didn't start going out to eat more. They watched every dollar it sounds like. And if you do the math, it works.

Because the other thing that they had over those 20 years, except for a brief period here and there, was a great tailwind of markets. They were about 90% equities. And from 2005 to 2024, the 20 year annualized return for the S&P 500 was around 1,011%. So this is a fantastic tailwind. Yeah, they had to wait in there. And but really other than zero eight not much this. I think they are. They exemplify the power of compounding. And we think of compounding as investing. Right. The compounding of returns over time. But the real compounding the real power of compounding his habits, and it sounds like they have been very consistent in maintaining their lifestyle without inflating it. And they sound perfectly happy the way that they did it. And then every extra dollar they get just added to the pot to all of the things from investing to paying off loans, etc.. And they didn't change houses, they didn't upgrade their cars, they didn't go into real estate because they got excited about it. They didn't change their investment strategy that I'm aware of because they thought maybe I should go from passive growth to international growth. I should try private equity or I should try this. The consistency over and over, they didn't allow novelty, in my judgment, to distract them from the system in the process that they built in novelty is a big one. Just as an aside, novelty gets us all into trouble and we love novelty and our retirement planning process. And I think your retirement planning process should be really boring, but it should be consistent and not get distracted. I think that's how they did it from our conversation. So hopefully that's helpful. And Henry and Lucy, if you're listening and you want to share your perspective, shoot me a quick email and share me your thoughts.

Now, Scott in Virginia only has one pet peeve in his life, and that is the word iterate. He says, Happy New Year, Roger. Please retire the word iterate as well. I love the show. It's my one and only pet peeve. I'll do my best, Scott. Let me pull it out every now and then. But I'll but I'll lighten up on it. Okay.

Our next comment comes and I don't see the name here, so I apologize for that and they say, I love your show. learn a lot from it. Great. Quick question about the 4% rule from this week's episode. Wade found Notes in Retirement Planning Guidebook. By the way, we're going to have Wade on as soon as we get him scheduled because there's a revised retirement plan guidebook. So he and I are going to chat about that. He's been waiting for the health care stuff, by the way, before he could get it published. So Wade will be on soon. But in his guidebook, they said that the 4% rule is based on a 30 year retirement period. I've noticed this time frame limitation doesn't come up much in discussion for someone in their 40s and 50s. Wouldn't that be important? I understand this rule still serves as a useful baseline, but I'm curious if there's newer research extending the timeline or if I'm missing something. I have no clue. Oh, it's Angelica, I have no clue if there's more research. I don't think it's something to use at all in retirement planning other than a back of the napkin. And for that basis, I think whether it's 40 years or 50 years likely doesn't make that big a difference because you're not going to use it in any way. It's just from back of the napkin. I just don't I reject it as anything more than a heuristic for retirement planning. And so I don't give it that much more thought.

And then we had a correction from Jeff related to the same topic. Hey Roger, love your podcast. Don't want to be that guy. But then the newsletter you said if you aren't familiar with the 4% rule, it was developed by a professor. Bill Bengtsson is not a professor. He's a well educated but is a financial planner and author. Great point. That was not correct. He is not a professor. He's a practicing retirement planner or was and an author.

Next comes from John, who has a question and an observation. The first, I think, is the observation. As I listen to the podcast with Henry and Lucy, I was stunned with $50,000 as their base. Great life living in the suburbs outside of New York City, this would be impossible. Although my mortgage is at two and 5/8, my annual mortgage and taxes is $40,000 a year. And that's before the enormous electric, electric bills, homeowner, auto, umbrella, insurance, etc. so that puts me much higher than 50 K without eating anyway, good for them. New Jersey and New York Metro areas are expensive. This is a really good point, John. you have an extreme to where they live because they live in a very rural area in the Midwest, and the costs are just demonstrably different. And that is something we all have to navigate. And that is not just simply, you know, these are two extremes. You're outside of New York City. They're in, you know, the rural area of a midwest state, which, is a lot less expensive. And yours has benefits, and theirs has benefits in terms of lifestyle. but there are other decisions that aren't quite as dramatic that really make a difference as well. And the natural one that I always come back to. And maybe it's the one I think of first is I can remember multiple times doing planning for someone living in Minnesota and them considering moving to Florida just based on taxes, not even cost of living. It made a material difference for them to leave Minnesota and go to Florida because of the tax scheme around pensions and IRA and income and all of that other stuff. Literally, they had more money to retire earlier or go, go. If they moved from Minnesota to Florida. It was just dramatic. Now they had that values choice, is it worth being in Minnesota versus moving to Florida? Because obviously they have very different types of weather and activities and environment, all that stuff. Then that's the values based decision, and very similar to what I'm dealing with in our slow migration to Colorado. I live in Texas. The tax scheme, we don't have a state tax, but we have very high real estate taxes in Colorado. They have a state tax, but they have very low real estate taxes. There are differences depending on like in this case. Let's take Texas. And in Colorado if you don't have really high income. Colorado may be a better place to retire because your income isn't really high. So you're not getting hit too hard on the income tax. And your real estate taxes are significantly less expensive. Versus if you have super high income, Texas is more advantageous. Now there is this. I take those things into account for myself, but I don't let them drive the bus. I let what I want my life designed to be like and then have this as a consideration. But you're right. I get it John.

Now, let's get to your question. I have a question on the values worksheet that you shared. Why is question two about being angry or frustrated? It made me a little sad when the rest of the worksheet was uplifting and made me happy and reflective in a good way. I suppose it was to be aware of and do not plan a future that would include this. Is there an alternate number question you could suggest? Well, the reason that question is there, John, is it's even when you're trying to find a definition for something, sometimes it's easy to identify the opposite of what it isn't to help you reveal what it is, rather than just trying to identify what it is. So it's meant to triangulate a little bit to get clarity. And we have it at the beginning, because thinking about what you don't want helps bring more clarity to what you do want. And I think it's it's worthwhile exploring that it's nothing to get sad or depressed about, but finding out what you don't want in your life can help you discover what you want in your life. Let me see if I can use an example here to explain. So like one of my values is adventure. And in the worksheet, I'm trying to remember this because I did this a while ago, a long time ago. But if I start with what is it I don't want in my life, what is it that really frustrates me? Being indoors and working at a desk all day, that I'm never at my best self when I'm always just indoor doing stuff, you know, working and watching TV or, you know, I like to be indoors. But that helped clarify. Wow, I, I love it when I mountain bike. That's maybe one of the reasons why I mountain bike, because I'm out in nature. And I realize if I don't have adventurous things a few times a year that are planned, it makes me less of who I am. So it's a way of triangulating it. So hopefully that helps.

Next question is related to Henry and Lucy as well. And it's from Jennifer. Jennifer says love the case study question on Lucy and Henry Henry's expenses. How do you model income taxes? Does Lucy's estimate on base case great life include the estimate, or do they project taxes in your calculations? Thanks for all you do. Good question Jennifer. So all the numbers they shared were not including any income taxes. And that is from a software perspective being calculated in the background. But also we always what I would suggest doing is we always keep a five year cash flow estimate in a very basic spreadsheet to know what income sources they have, what their spending going to be. In that way, if we think we're going to take an IRA distribution, we can adjust the income tax estimate based on the amount we think they need to take out of an IRA, etc. and in their case, because they had like what, 710,000 and after tax investments, they almost had no income tax because they have a high standard deduction and they're using their money from their after tax account, but that's where you would account for it. Whereas if they didn't have that money and they had to take money from an IRA, I know they're 47. So they they couldn't. But if they had to, then we would have to adjust the taxes to account for the money that would be caused, the tax that would be caused. So it's not that's not included in their numbers. All right. Now it's time to set a smart sprint.

SMART SPRINT: ROGER ENCOURAGES LISTENERS TO REVIEW THE HEALTH CARE ASSUMPTIONS IN THEIR RETIREMENT PLAN, ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE RETIRING BEFORE MEDICARE AGE.

Roger: And we're off to set a little baby step we can take in the next seven days. Not just rock retirement, but rock life. All right. In the next seven days, just evaluate the estimates you have in your retirement plan for health care. If you're already on Medicare, put in the Medicare amount and then put in what you estimate as you're out of pocket expenses, because we're all going to have some of those. If you are not retired and you're before age 65, evaluate what number you're using. Are you using the full boat with no subsidies for healthcare? And that would be for a family, let's say 25,000 a year or 9000 a year if you're single. Or are you counting on subsidies? Just evaluate what that number is. To start to understand this more. And as we go through this series, that will be helpful to refine a strategy for you to slay the Cerberus.

WHAT’S ON THE BOOKSHELF

Roger: All right. We're at the end of the show. We're going to hang out and talk about what's on our bookshelf. We haven't talked about books in a while, and we get a lot of people that like it. So we decided at the end of the show, at the first of every month, we're going to go just geek out on books. So since the last time I talked about it, I've read four books in the middle. I just finished one. I read four books that I'll talk about. A lot of these were audiobooks because I've been driving a lot. I've been going to Colorado 11 hours each way. So some of these are audiobooks. Some of them are. All right. So the first one I just finished last night, Robert E Lee by Alan Goodloe. Forgive me if I'm pronouncing it wrong. It's a biography about Robert E Lee. I would give it, for me, a seven out of ten. Good book. Well written. Told a lot about the Civil War. So if you're into the Civil War, it definitely follows that timeline, really focusing on Robert E Lee. I felt like I got a little bit of a sense of who he was as a man. It sounds like he wasn't that deep of a man from an intellectual standpoint, he wanted emancipation. But he thought it would be gradual. He thought of himself more as a federalist or a union person. But out of Virginia, he had a lot of pride in Virginia. And that sort of pulled him down the lane of, going to the Confederacy. And he's more of an engineer than a soldier. He ended up being a soldier and a general, but was trained as an engineer. Good book worth reading if you're into that stuff.

The second book I read was Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green. I had heard about this book. John Green really is focused on tuberculosis. This is like his interesting problem. It gives an interesting, interesting history of tuberculosis, which is consumption, you know, coughing up blood in the old West movies, etc., and talks about how pervasive it is has been in human society and even today, because of some of the inequities from access to health care in poor countries and how this really could have been eradicated. But because of all this mismatch, and in getting the actual treatments to the right people and money involved and everything else and these, what I like about it was it's an interesting history from the viewpoint of using tuberculosis to weave a thread. And I also like that John cares so much about it. He didn't just write about it. He's trying to be an advocate to help improve the treatment for tuberculosis, to help improve human life in areas that it's affected. So a good book. I enjoyed it. The next book I read was Reporter by Seymour Hersh or Sy Hersh. He was the reporter. He's like an old school deep journalist like Bernstein, Woodward and Bernstein. He worked on that, that story. He revealed massacres in Vietnam. I read this book because I saw a very interesting, I think it was a Netflix documentary on him, which is definitely worth watching. I enjoyed it, but he's definitely like a hard nosed reporter with a point of view of investigative work. Interesting. I'd watch the documentary before I'd read the book, unless you're really into it.

The last book I read was from a friend called In COVID's Wake, which was a debrief of Covid and how we all navigate that. It was extremely well researched. Interestingly, it was given to me by a good friend where we had some differing thoughts related to that time and how policy and things played out. And I really enjoyed the book. So if you're into that type of stuff, you can check that out. All right.

Now some books from the team Nicole was kind enough to leave an audio message. So let's listen to her review.

Nichole: Hey, Roger and retirement answer man listeners. This is Nicole, and I just finished reading Stacy Schiff's “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America.” I thought it was a great read. I love history though, so I was super into learning more about Franklin as a person. I thought it was fascinating to see what was going on in Europe that was influencing the American Revolution. We don't learn about that in history class a lot of times, so I thought that was kind of a unique take that I wasn't aware of before. That being said, it's very well researched, it's very detailed, and there's a lot of convoluted prose. So I did end up having to grab a dictionary a few times. For that reason. I would say a three star read instead of four, but hey, maybe you'd enjoy it too. So happy reading!

Roger: I'm going to give this book a five star simply because it forced Nicole to get a dictionary because this girl's vocabulary is awesome. So anything that makes her get a dictionary makes me smile because she's always correcting my words because she's so smart. All right, I'm gonna share a few more from the team.

This one's from Kevin Liles. It was written by Jordan Grumet. The purpose code, how to unlock, meaning maximize happiness and leave a lasting legacy. We'll have links to all of these books, by the way, in the noodle. So if you want to check one of them out, we can give you a link there. A few thoughts from Kevin. Forget what others are doing. This book challenges you to find your own way to live a life of meaning and purpose. And I love that you're your own unique person. You can learn from others but don't follow their script. Follow your own. He gives it a five out of five.

Our next book comes from Troy Katterheinrich, a planner in the entire agile team. The book is habits of the Household by Justin Whitmore. Early Troy says, following Atomic Habits by James Clear, I thought this would be a great read, and my wife Hope highly recommended it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and this book is fitting for a parent with kids at home. One thing that struck or stuck out was the family age chart, where you track how old your kids will be at different stages of your own life. This chart highlights milestones and the number of summers you have left with your kids at home. This reminded me of the asymmetry of aging and retirement. Each year is valued differently with more emphasis on the early years. I'm reminded that I only have now my habits compound into who I become each day. So that's Troy's book, a four out of five. He gives it.

We're going to do one more here. And this is from Mark Ross: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches by Carl Richards. We had Carl on the show where we talked about this before the book came out. Mark says, I am a visual learner. This book is super helpful for understanding personal financial concepts that I could read about at length, but these simple sketches are awesome. It sparked some ideas. I have been creating sketches to communicate in other areas of my life, so I am digging this one by two out of five.

All right, I got more books, but we're running long on time and I want to value your time and mine, so we'll do this at the beginning of each month. I hope you have a wonderful day.

The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only, and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance references are historical and do not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal, tax or financial advisor before making any decisions.