Two months before you reach 65 years of age, you will need to apply for Medicare.  Medicare becomes your primary insurance policy at age 65, and any employer-provided health insurance becomes secondary.  If you don’t apply for Medicare, you may end up without health insurance.  This is typical for most people who have medical benefits from an employer.  If you don’t have employer insurance, you can buy various types of supplementary medical insurance.

It is important to know that even though you qualify for Medicare insurance at age 65, you may not qualify for full retirement benefits yet.  Social Security retirement benefits are accrued depending on your year of birth.  People born from 1943 to 1954 need to wait until they become 66 to achieve “full retirement age”.  People born from 1955 to 1959 qualify for full retirement at ages 66 and 2 months to 66 and 10 months.  Those born in 1960 or later qualify for full retirement only at age 67.  Delaying the retirement age is one of the things that the Social Security Administration has done in an effort to provide services for an aging population with longer lifespans.

When you apply for Medicare or Social Security, you need to have the following documents:

• Original Birth Certificate or a Certified Copy of your birth certificate
• Citizenship/Naturalization (if other than your U.S. birth certificate)
• U.S. Military Service (DD214 - Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty)
• Wages from your employer for last year (W-2 form)
• Self-employment income for last year (IRS Schedules C and SE)
• Marriage certificate as proof of marriage if you qualify for benefits as a spouse

The Social Security Administration requires to see your original birth certificate or other proof of age. They do not accept photocopies unless they are certified by the office that issued the original. If Citizenship or Naturalization is involved, they also need original documents. The office can accept uncertified copies of military service papers, W-2 or IRS Schedule C or SE forms.  If you have already proven your date of birth and citizenship status while filing for Medicare, you do not need to submit these proofs again when applying for Social Security.

You can apply for Social Security benefits online at www.socialsecurity.gov

S&P500 for the past 6 months

The economy is taking a dive. Every day you hear negative news. There is a banking crisis fueled by defaults in the repayment of subprime loans. The downturn in the housing market has caused house values to plummet and people who hoped to make a profit from increased real estate values have been disappointed. Increased unemployment has many people scrambling to get any job just to meet living expenses. It is harder to get a loan because of the banking crisis, and as if that were not enough, stock prices are down.

Have you looked at your retirement savings recently? A typical portfolio that invests in the Dow Jones or the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) Index has decreased in value by 11% in the last six months. Some individual stocks have lost 90% of their value! If you had equity investments of $100,000 in October of 2007, now you have less than $90,000 Dollars. It is at times like these that you start doubting your ability to invest your own money, and money managers come out of the woodwork offering to take charge of your portfolio and make you rich through their sophisticated market research. The problem with money managers is that they are not content to just take a percentage of your profit like the IRS. They want to take a chunk of your principal whether you make money or not.

A pushy stock broker called me recently. I had not heard of him or of his firm before. He was a really good and convincing salesman. I refused him because I was concerned that the call might be a scam, and because I thought that the fees were high. Also, other than his promises of high returns, there was no guarantee that I would make money. He had one hot stock tip. An executive of some energy company had bought a large number of shares in the open market. Since this executive was an insider, he obviously knew that there would be a large payoff. I should also jump in to take advantage of this rare opportunity. I hung up on the guy when he did not take “no” for an answer. His partner called me a few minutes later. He was equally pushy and I also hung up on him.

I had to ask a lot of questions to find out how much this company charged, but basically, these money managers wanted 1% of the principal when you deposited your money, and they wanted another 2% when you withdrew your money. In addition, they would charge over $100 per stock transaction. I figured that if I let them manage $100,000, they would take $3,000 off the top, and then they would take at least another $1,000 per year on 10 brokerage transactions needed to buy and sell stocks to implement their investment strategy. That is 4% in fees! Assuming average returns of 7% in the market, it would have been hard to keep ahead of inflation with bloodsuckers like these.

Antonio Zamora - Age 65

We have been conditioned to think that we will gain weight as we get older. This is only true if we do not adjust our diet for the reduced number of calories that our body uses as it ages. A good bathroom scale is our best friend. A scale will not tell us that our double chin or the bulge in our midsection makes us look better — it just shows our weight. We should be thankful for the honesty of the scale.

Using a scale regularly, we can keep our weight fairly constant. If our weight goes up by a few pounds and it stays up for several days, we know that it is not just water retention. We are getting fatter! It is time to eat less. We have to choose nutritious foods that will satisfy our hunger and provide all the nutrients that our body needs.

I am thankful to my sister for having pointed out several years ago that I was getting fat. Who? Me Fat? I weighed myself and calculated my Body Mass Index, and sure enough, I was overweight! We change so gradually that we do not notice the small increases of weight that add up to many pounds over the years.

So, here I am, 65 years old and at the same weight that I had when I was in my twenties. I have had to learn a lot about nutrition and exercise to achieve this. It is hard for me to believe that I am now officially on Medicare insurance. I am going to continue to try to stay in good health in order not to use it.

Calculate your Body Mass Index

The Social Security Act of 1935 established retirement benefits for workers, for the handicapped, and for victims of industrial accidents. Payroll deductions taken under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) provide the funding for Social Security. The age for retirement was originally 65 years of age, but as life expectancy in the United States continues to increase, and the sources of funding for Social Security continue to dwindle, the retirement age is being gradually extended. People born from 1943 to 1954 will qualify for retirement at age 66. Those born after 1960 will not get a full pension until age 67.

According to the Center for Health Statistics, the average life expectancy in the United States is approximately 78 years. This means that retirement income should be able to sustain you for at least 10 years if you were to die at the average age, but you are likely to live much longer than that with modern medical interventions. Social Security and individual retirement accounts (401K) are supposed to provide the funds to meet your expenses when you no longer work, but Social Security is in trouble.

One of the problems with Social Security is the uneven population growth known as the post-World War II “baby boom” between 1946 and 1964. The large population of boomers started using birth control and had fewer children who could fund Social Security. This means that Social Security will run out of money. The trustees of the fund estimate that by 2017 the revenue collected by Social Security will be less than what is needed to pay the beneficiaries. If Social Security then starts using its surplus reserves, the reserves will be exhausted by 2041. Medicare, which provides medical benefits to retirees, will start going negative in 2013 and will consume its reserves by 2019.

The United States is heading toward a crisis in social services and health care in ten years. The traditional services that serve our seniors today may not be available to those who were born after 1954. What are you going to do about it?