Dressed for the Occasion

     Jerry Seinfeld has a comedy bit about how men wear the same clothes for most of their lives. Whatever they were wearing when they were in their 30s -- that's the style they wear for the rest of their lives.

     It was certainly true of my dad. He started his career in the late 1930s. He worked in an office. By the time I came along he was wearing his 1940s-style suit with wide lapels. He had a white shirt, oxford shoes and fedora hat.

     I remember he used to pay me 10 cents to shine his shoes. I would watch him shave in the morning, using a shaving brush and a mug of shaving soap. In the winter he wore a vest, complete with a pocket watch, with a thin chain draped across his stomach. And this was his style, right up until the day he retired in the mid-1980s.

     You can see the kind of clothes he wore if you watch a black-and-white movie from the 1940s. Or, maybe featured on Mad Men, which was channeling the 1950s, although I'm sure the Mad Men suits were cut with a little more style.

Standard fashion

     Then, after he retired to Florida in the mid-1980s, my dad adopted the leisure wear look that had been popular in the 1950s -- the Polo shirt, casual Polyester slacks and loud sports jacket. He never went so far as to wear the white shoes. Too flashy. But he did sometimes don a straw hat -- the kind Dick Van Dyke wore in Mary Poppins.

     My mother was marginally more up-to-date . . . but not by much. She never wore slacks, only a dress or skirt. And I remember she wore a hat in church. It was a big day (whenever that happened, sometime in the 1960s) when the ladies were no longer required to wear a hat in church. Horrors! But you'd never catch my mother in church with a bare head.

     I make fun of my parents, but in truth, I'm no different. As I confessed a few blog posts ago, I'm a man of the 1990s. I still wear my Dockers, my polo shirt -- my corporate casual dress shirt when I go out to a restaurant. For special occasions I still wear the navy blue blazer that I bought in the 1990s  (although B made me buy a new suit for her son's wedding last spring). And dress shoes for me? Penny loafers.

Fashion of the future

     At least I'm better than my friend Mike. He's recently retired, but when he was working he went to a lot of meetings, conferences, conventions and golf outings. His style of dress? Whatever they gave him for free at one of his meetings 10 or 20 years ago. Hats, shirts, jackets, umbrellas. He's a walking advertisement for corporate and government meetings from the last decade.

     But what has me worried is my son. He wears a black cap emblazoned with the word "Devil" across the front. He sports a hipster's short beard. He invariably dresses in skinny jeans and a black t-shirt with the name of a rock band on it --  "Bad Breeding," "Fight Like Apes," "Warm Brew," "Rat Fist," "Night Riots."

     Now, to be fair, my son is not quite 30 yet, and he is in the music business. Still, is he going to be wearing a "No Brain" or "Karma Killers" t-shirt 40 years from now when he goes in for his Medicare checkup?

    

Who Pays More for Medicare?

     Medicare premiums are going up 52 percent next year. But only for 3 out of 10 people. The other 7 beneficiaries have no increase at all.

     Before you panic, here's the background. The experts have told us that we should wait as long as we can before signing up to take our Social Security benefits, even to age 70 if we can last that long.

     The idea is that the longer you wait, the bigger your monthly payment. You can start Social Security as early as age 62, but you take about a 25 percent pay cut compared to what you'd get at full retirement age, which for most of us is 66. Or you can hold off past your regular retirement age and collect a bonus. Every year you wait, up until age 70, you get almost 8 percent more in your check.

     Of course, you give up the income in the meantime; but still, an 8 percent raise every year. Where else can you get that?

     And then Social Security pulls a fast one on you.

     First of all, the government says there will be no increase in Social Security benefits next year. Benefits are tied to inflation; and the government claims there has been no inflation for 2015, so the increase for 2016 is zero.

     But medical costs have gone up, and Medicare needs more money. So, as reported in USA Today, as well as a follow-up article, here's what happens next year. Everybody who's already receiving Social Security benefits -- who has Medicare payments deducted directly from Social Security -- will be "held harmless" from an increase, because Social Security is not going up.

     But everyone else on Medicare will face premiums that will be raised high enough to make up the difference. Those are the people who will pay the 52 percent increase. That includes people on Medicare who have not yet signed up for Social Security, as well as anyone who first enrolls in Medicare next year. Altogether, about 30 percent of Medicare beneficiaries will pay the higher amount.

     So for example, if you're on Medicare and make less than $85,000 a year as an individual or $170,000 as a couple, you paid $104.90 this year for Part B of Medicare. For 2016 you will also pay $104.90.

     But if you've taken the so-called expert advice to delay Social Security, then your Medicare premium will jump from $104.90 to $159.30 -- for the 52 percent increase.

     There are a few ways to get around the increase, as outlined in this Kiplinger report. One way is to quick, sign up for Social Security before the end of October. But before you do, make sure you know what you're giving up, which is all those future 8 percent annual increases.

     So of course I'm one of the 30 percent. Am a sucker for not signing up for Social Security sooner? Well, here's what I'm trying to remember. The reason for the increase is because there's a mandate that premiums cover 25 percent of the actual cost of Medicare. Think about it. Those of us on Medicare only pay a quarter of the actual cost of our care.

     Even at $159 a month, we're still only paying a little more than a quarter of the cost of what the medical insurance should really be. If you'll still be paying $104.90, you're getting an even better bargain, paying less than 25 percent of the actual cost.

     So I can't complain (even though it sounds like I am). But as mystery writer Michael Connelly says, "Can't complain, because nobody listens."

     Here's a chart of 2016 premiums, courtesy of Medicare.gov, Boston College and USA Today:

A Walk in October

     It's early fall here in the Northeast when, as the poem by Helen Hunt Jackson begins:

     The golden rod is yellow
     The corn is turning brown
     The trees in apple orchards
     With fruit are bending down.

     Helen Hunt Jackson (1830 - 1885) was born in Amherst, Mass. She wrote poetry and several novels, and became an activist for Native Americans. Her most famous work was Ramona, a melodrama about an orphan who was half white, half Indian, and her full-blooded husband and their struggles to develop land of their own in California.

     I do not live on a farm, and have no apple trees. But for some reason Jackson's poem always comes to mind when the leaves start to turn, as they were just beginning to do yesterday as I took a walk down the road . . .

     They say the colors aren't going to be so great this year because of all the dry weather, but it looks like they're starting to come out.

     Here's where the path opened onto a field.
 

      I think this is poison ivy.

      Around the bend was a pond.

      And then, I don't know. A haunted house?

     When I got home I wondered if I should pick the last of my tomatoes,

      and saw that B had started to prepare for the fall holidays.

     Look at this . . . she found apples somewhere and baked a pie!

Are You Happy Where You Are?

     I've written a few posts on happiness, the most recent one this past August called  How to Be (Truly) Happy. But the search for happiness comes in many forms, both at home and abroad, both inside ourselves and out in the world. 

     Anyone who's followed Laura Lee's blog knows that she recently moved into her new dream house in the Colorado foothills, Now she's making new friends, seeing new places, and enjoying her new town of La Veta. She is also enjoying some wonderful vistas, so if you want to see some fantastic scenery, take a look over at October in Southern Colorado. And if you have a little extra time, wander down to see the golden aspens, the golden clouds, and the gold up on Cripple Creek.

Colorado Rocky Mountain High

     By contrast. Meryl Baer likes the ocean, not the mountains. A few years ago she and her husband retired from Pennsylvania to the Jersey Shore. But waiting and worrying about another major storm approaching from the south has forced her to re-evaluate living on the edge of the Atlantic.

     So watching the waves crash up onto the beach, she wonders: Does she stay? Does she relocate? Where in the world would she go? Perhaps you want to blow over to her site and give her some advice at Shorely the Best.

      Meanwhile, our group's newcomer, Linda Myers, takes a different approach by going in search of happiness in strange and foreign places. Many of you know her blog Thoughts from a Bag Lady In Waiting, and probably are aware that she likes to travel. She recently returned from a trip to Eastern Europe and wrote a post called Reflections on Our Trip, thinking about what she learned from her journey, both tangible and intangible.

      Reflecting on her travels helps her clarify what's important to her -- learning the history of a place, experiencing the sublime feelings of being close to the water, and then the more practical things like if you walk five to seven miles a day you can eat gelato whenever you want and still fit into your clothes, and if you want to be happy on the road, be kind to your feet, especially if you're walking on cobblestones.

     And keeping on that more practical note, none of us would be happy if our identity was stolen. On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about the new credit cards with chips, which are safer because information is stored in a chip and you need to enter a PIN to complete the transaction. For the full story slide your mouse or keypad over to Do You Have a Credit Card with a Chip?

     You might also want to check out her post on how T-Mobile customer accounts have been hacked through their credit reporting agency. All the more reason to be careful, whenever you try to communicate over the cables or the airwaves.

     Finally, in 10 Signs of Sustainable Happiness Kathy Gottberg shows how we all want to be happy internally, by practicing gratitude, staying healthy, feeling competent, being loved. But she goes on to point out, “In order to have an experience of real happiness and well-being that is enduring and sustainable, it must extend out to other people and the world around you."

     In other words, it's not enough to achieve happiness for ourselves alone. Perhaps it's not even possible, for true happiness involves other people and the meaning they bring to our lives.

      In another post called Carl Jung and the Art of Aging Well, Gottberg tells us what the great psychologist discovered about happiness and the aging process. “A human being would certainly not grow to be 70 or 80 years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species to which he belongs,” wrote Jung. “The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.”

     So for Jung, as for all of us, the aging process is not merely one of inescapable decline of body, mind and relevancy. It is, instead, a time of progressive refinement of what is essential in life. And in that, we can all find true happiness.

A Minor (But Important) Point

     In a post last week I mentioned that I agreed with a lot of Hillary Clinton's policies and ideas. Or at least some of them. She seems the most sensible of all the candidates I've seen ... so far.

     So she's supposed to be a health-care expert. But she has flubbed on this one.

     Here's the point:  Currently, if you get your health insurance from your employer, the income you use to pay for health insurance is tax free. But if you pay for health insurance on your own -- including most people paying for Medicare -- you first have to pay tax on the money, and then use what's left over to pay for your health insurance premiums.

     That's fundamentally unfair, don't you think? The government has set up a two class system -- those who get health insurance tax free; and those who don't.

     Now instead of fixing that discrepancy, Clinton wants to add to the unfairness -- or, if you will, make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

     She made news the other day by reiterating her proposal to repeal the section of the Affordable Care Act that involves the so-called "Cadillac tax" on health insurance.

     The tax, set to take effect in 2018, would be a tax on so-called Cadillac health insurance plans, ones that exceed certain thresholds, which are proposed at $10,200 for an individual and $27,500 for a family.

      In other words, the ACA is scheduled to cap the amount of tax-free income employees can use for health insurance. Clinton wants to do away with the cap, allowing employees to get a tax break not just on the first $27,500 they spend on health insurance, but any amounts even above that, with no limit.

     Meanwhile, those of us who do not get health insurance from the workplace, we get no break at all. We pay tax on every single dollar we use for health insurance. Our cap is not $27,500. It's not $10,200. It is $0.

     If Clinton wants to get rid of the "Cadillac tax," and the ACA can afford it, then go right ahead. But first we should fix the unfairness already embedded in the system. She should call for allowing those who buy their own insurance to take a tax deduction -- at least up to $10,200 a year for an individual and $27,500 for a family. In other words, let's repeal the two-class system of health insurance, before we give extra tax breaks to those who are already favored with a tax exemption.

     Yes, it's a minor tax point. But it's important, because we're all supposed to be treated equally; everyone's supposed to be the same in the eyes of the law.