Let’s talk about retirement at 65 years of age. If you were retiring at the age of 65, what should you do? What are some things you need to consider? Well, number one, you should sit down with an agent or advisor that you could call or text or email anytime. Here at MBhealth, we’d be happy to walk you through that.
Here are some of the key things that you’re going to want to do. First, you need to define your date of retirement. That will trigger a series of actions that you’ll take. If you intend to retire right on your 65th birthday, you’ll want to tell your employer, “I’m done.” That’s one set of actions you need to take at that time to prepare for retirement.
But if you’re now 65 and you’re still going to work another year or two, three or five, that’s another series of actions you may do.
The simplicity of it is if you’re going to continue working, you have full benefits, you work for a larger employer—say, one with more than 20 employees—and you still have benefits, basically when you turn 65, you don’t need to do anything.
Getting Ready for Medicare at Age 65
When you are ready to retire, you need to start the process about 90 days before your retirement date. You want to apply for Medicare parts A and B first. Then after that, you want to discuss, “Do I want to use a supplement to my Medicare or do I want to sign up for Medicare Advantage?”
Another key factor you should consider when you’re going through this process is what time of the year are you looking to retire? In general, health insurance planning is best when discussed over a calendar year, January first to December thirty-first. If your plans are to retire fall somewhere in the middle of the year, maybe in March or June or August, that has an impact. Medicare policies generally change every January first. It might be a good strategy to have coverage for a partial year to get you to that next January first. Then look at all new options when open enrollment comes around. Those are just a couple of things that you really need to be mindful of.
The Timing of Your Health Insurance Changes Is Important
The key timings would be mostly for those persons who are older than the age of 65 who did not sign up for Medicare Part B. Now, they want that coverage at the age of 68, 69, or 70. At that point, getting health insurance is a little tricky, so you’ve got to really watch those dates.
In general, plan to start planning your health insurance coverage 90 days, maybe 120 days before you hit that retirement date. Have a conversation with an agent or advisor, lay out the game plan, and then you can work with these dates very easily.
I’m Michael Butz with MBhealth Insurance Agency. Contact our agency, and we can walk you through it. You can reach us at (314) 544-5400.
