Today, our guest is our friend, James Lange. He is here to talk about his personal experience of having a daughter diagnosed with a disability and then going through the process of making sure she will have the finances in place she needs to succeed even after he and his wife are gone. He has recently co-authored
, and he shares everything he has learned through his personal experience and writing the report. We hope this episode will be incredibly helpful for those of you in a similar situation.
James Lange shared what he sees as the three critical steps to ensure that your child with a disability is going to be financially secure for their lifetime.
The first critical step is to ensure that a child with a disability qualifies for either Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). SSI is a government-based program that provides a monthly cash flow and essential benefits for disabled individuals with limited income and assets. Parents should typically apply for SSI when their child reaches 18. SSDI should typically be applied for when the parent reaches retirement age. SSDI is primarily based on the work credits earned by the parent or parents. While the child’s disability is a determining factor, it is the parent’s work record and credits that are primarily considered for SSDI eligibility and benefits. It is important to approach the application process by emphasizing the child’s permanent disability and limitations rather than focusing on their adaptability. Understanding the qualification requirements and seeking expert guidance can increase the chances of successfully obtaining these benefits.
Step 2 involves comprehensive estate planning to secure the child’s financial well-being while maintaining their eligibility for SSI or SSDI. You have to pay extra attention to the creation of a special needs trust, which allows parents to provide additional benefits for their child without jeopardizing their eligibility for government assistance programs. The trust should be carefully drafted to meet the qualifications for a designated beneficiary and maximize the distribution benefits from inherited IRAs and retirement plans. Consulting with an estate attorney experienced in special needs planning is crucial to ensure the trust aligns with legal requirements and protects the child’s financial future. Lange shared that even though he is an attorney, he opted to get the help of someone with this specialized knowledge.
The third critical step focuses on utilizing ABLE accounts and Roth IRA conversions. ABLE accounts, aka Achieving a Better Life Experience, are tax-advantaged savings accounts designed to help individuals with disabilities and their families save and invest to cover disability-related expenses. An ABLE account functions similarly to a 529 plan, allowing tax-free growth of contributions made. This account offers a source of income that does not disqualify the child from receiving SSI benefits and provides flexibility in covering qualified expenses related to their care.
To open an ABLE account, the individual must have developed the onset of a significant disability before the age of 26. Each state sets its own criteria for opening ABLE accounts, and people from any state can typically open an account in any state offering the program. ABLE accounts have an annual contribution limit of $17,000 [2023] and generally cannot have more than $100,000 contributed to them.
Roth accounts, particularly Roth IRAs, hold significant importance for children with disabilities due to the potential benefits they offer in terms of tax-free growth and extended distribution options. When a parent with a Roth IRA dies and leaves it to their child with a disability, the child can stretch the inherited Roth IRA distributions over their lifetime. This means they can take out smaller annual distributions based on their life expectancy, allowing the remaining funds to continue growing tax-free. In contrast, non-disabled beneficiaries may be required to withdraw the entire inherited IRA within 10 years of the original owner’s death. This extended distribution timeline can provide substantial financial benefits to the child over their lifetime.
Contributions made to a Roth IRA grow tax-free, and qualified distributions are also tax-free. For children with disabilities who may rely on government assistance programs like SSI, tax-free income from a Roth account does not count toward income limits that could potentially disqualify them from receiving those benefits. This allows the child to benefit from tax-free growth and maintain their eligibility for essential assistance programs.
Lange said that once your child turns 18, the focus should be on qualifying for SSI and continuing to work on your estate plan and Roth IRA conversions. Qualifying for SSI can be a challenging process that may require professional assistance. He highly recommends seeking professional help with the process. After 62, or retirement age, Lange said to begin transitioning from SSI to SSDI, which provides higher benefits and more flexibility for the child. SSDI benefits continue until the child’s death, with periodic checks from the Social Security Administration to verify ongoing eligibility. Again, it is crucial for families to seek professional guidance in these areas, especially considering the complexity and criticality of the financial and legal aspects involved.
As a thank you from James Lange, he has made WCI listeners a generous offer. He will send you a digital advance reader copy and a hardcover copy of his forthcoming book Retire Secure for Professors and TIAA Participants. You will also receive digital and print editions of the full Special Advisory Report for Parents of a Child with a Disability as well as the one-sheet summary Highlights Edition of the Report. And finally, you will be added to the shortlist to receive a free hardcover copy of Jim’s next book, Retire Secure for Parents of a Child with a Disability, which will likely be published this fall/winter season.
If you are the parent of a child with a disability, this is a massive resource that could mean a difference of up to millions of dollars. It is crucial to get this stuff right. This is also important information if you are a medical provider, attorney, or financial professional who may need to help your patients and clients in these areas.
To read more of this important interview and to be sure you don’t miss any of the critical information, please read the WCI Podcast Transcript below.
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To learn more about umbrella insurance read the Milestones to Millionaire transcript below.
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Transcription – WCI – 317
INTRODUCTION
This is the White Coat Investor podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We’ve been helping doctors and other high-income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
This is White Coat Investor podcast number 317 – Financial planning for a child with a disability.
Now is the perfect time to review your last tax plan. Are you taking advantage of all the available tax saving strategies? Have you used all the deductions that can reduce your taxable income? Cerebral Tax Advisors is a White Coat Investor recommended tax firm who specializes in helping medical professionals lower their personal and business taxes. Their services are flat rate, and they focus on their client’s return on investment. To learn more schedule a pre-consultation, visit www.cerebraltaxadvisors.com.
All right. A few things I want to make sure you know about today. The first is that we have a new email series. This is separate from Financial Bootcamp. We call it WCI 101 – Financial Basics. And the goal of it is to bring you up to speed.
We’ve had lots of requests for more basic information available to people just starting out in their financial literacy journey. We want to help you make well-informed financial decisions, avoid getting ripped off, and learn how to transform your high income into lasting wealth.
And so, the staff here at WCI has put together some awesome emails. They’re all short. There’s like 41 of them, and you’ll get two a week until they run out. And then you get signed up for the monthly newsletter. That’s it. It’s all free. Just like 98% of the content we provide you here at whitecoatinvestor.com. It’s totally free to you. You can sign up for this at whitecoatinvestor.com/basics and start receiving simple free financial lessons in your email every four days. I encourage you to check that out.
Another thing you should be aware of is this podcast is very much driven by you and your desires and what you want. And so, based on feedback we’ve been getting, I’m adding some information to the Milestones podcasts. Those are the ones that drop on Monday. This podcast drops on Thursday. The Milestone to Millionaire podcast drops on Mondays.
It’s traditionally been an interview with somebody who’s achieved a milestone, and we use that milestone to inspire you to do the same. And we still have one of those interviews in each of these episodes, but what I’m adding is some additional information.
There’s another segment after the interview that talks about some sort of basic, most of the time basic anyway, financial topic that you need to know about. So that’s another great place to get some basic financial information.
By the way, a couple of things you should be aware of that are going on right now. If you’re interested in coming to WCICON for free, better than free, actually getting paid to come to WCICON, here’s how you do it. You go to wcievents.com between now and June 15th. You click on the Speaker tab and you apply to speak. And speakers come for free and we pay them to speak.
So, if that sounds like a fun time for you to come out to Orlando and hang out with us and have a great time meeting all kinds of people and actually helping them, then please apply. You basically come on a premium ticket. You come to the premium dinner and it’s really a great time at the conference.
I highly encourage you to do that. It is a competitive process. Most people who apply don’t actually get accepted. But we definitely take new speakers every year and try to keep the best of the ones who’ve spoken before while giving plenty of variety to people that come every year to the conference.
We’ve been getting a lot of questions. We actually start getting these questions in late winter most of the time about the WCI scholarship. But yes, we’re going to have a WCI scholarship again for current professional students in the 2023/2024 year. You can start applying for that as of June 1st. whitecoatinvestor.com/scholarship.
We will also need volunteer judges. They can just email [email protected] with Volunteer Judge in the title. You can’t be a student or a resident and be a judge, but anybody else can be a judge. We don’t decide who wins the scholarship. It’s the judges who do that. It’s the audience who chooses who gets the money that we like to give back because of all the success we’ve been able to have doing this White Coat Investor thing. So, thank you for supporting that. There’s also a way there that you can contribute your own money that will 100% go to the scholarship winners.
INTERVIEW WITH JAMES LANGE
All right, great interview today. We have James Lange coming back on. So, let’s get him on the line. I’m excited to have James Lange back on the White Coat Investor podcast. Those of you who’ve been to WCICON the last couple of times, know him from the talks he’s given there. He’s been a keynote speaker there for us.
He’s also run workshops there with us. He’s been on the podcast. I think we’ve had some guest posts from him. He’s written a whole bunch of books, eight bestselling financial books. It’s been quoted all over the place, 36 times in the Wall Street Journal, and he also likes to give you stuff.
Last time he was on here, over a thousand of you took him up on a book that he sent you. There’s going to be some giveaways today as well. And so, pay attention and we’ll tell you how to get those as we get into this.
But his most recent passion is helping other parents like him who have a child with a disability achieve financial security for that child. So, here we have somebody who has all this financial expertise. Accountant, attorney, all this authoring he’s done, but he also has actually had the experience that we’re going to be talking about today.
He has collaborated with two complimentary experts to create a special advisory report detailing the three critical steps to maximize and protect the financial security of a child with a disability. These reports, both the highlights version and the full 55 page version, as well as two other books that are coming out soon are in the mini bonuses you’ll get if you give them your email address essentially today, and we’ll give you the URL to do that later. At any rate, welcome back to the podcast, Jim.
James Lange:
Well, thank you so much for having me, Jim, and thanks for that very warm introduction.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. I’m not going to reintroduce your whole background to the audience, but I want you to tell them how you got involved in this subject we’re going to be talking about today in planning for parents with a child with a disability.
James Lange:
Well, specifically, the one sentence version of my background is I have done a lot of studying and writing in both the areas of Roth IRA conversions and planning for IRA owners and retirement plan owners after death, and more recently, the Secure Act.
And then I’ve been doing it more or less academically, and for my clients, and of course I had a retirement and estate plan myself, but when she was about 22 years old, it became pretty clear that our daughter, Erica, was permanently disabled and would never be able to work. And that’s where the extreme worry and anxiety and sleepless nights took over.
And the first reaction is, “Well, just gut it out. Make more money, work longer, save harder, buy life insurance, do everything you can so that she’ll be okay the rest of her life.” And then I thought, “Well, why not use my background and not only do that stuff, but then also be smart about it?” And I put together an effect a program that is replicatable by most IRA and retirement plan owners.
And then as you know I’m a great proselytizer, I wanted to tell the world about it, and I got two other great experts. And that’s what I am doing actually right now, telling the world how a parent with a child with a disability can best provide for that child, both while you’re alive and after you’re gone.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
You mentioned that there are three critical steps that any parent that has a child with a disability should take. Let’s just open with that. What are the three critical steps?
James Lange:
Well, the three steps, and then we can go back to each one of them, is first getting a child qualified for SSI, that’s supplemental security income or SSDI, social security disability insurance, or perhaps starting with one and then switching to another. That is a government based program. And that not only gives your child a cash flow from a monthly check coming from the government, but also a lot of critical benefits that Debbie McFadden, my co-author, calls the Golden Ticket.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, so step one is SSI, SSDI. What’s step two?
James Lange:
Step two is getting your estate planning right. And it’s not an easy thing to do because typically, particularly for a child who is on SSI, and this can be even after you’re gone, that child has a very, very limited amount of money they’re allowed to hold outright and very limited amount of income they’re allowed to have.
And in effect, SSI is a poverty program. What you have to do is you have to plan your estate. And typically the answer is a special needs trust. And after many years of experience, attorneys that work in this area know basically how to provide as many benefits from that trust as possible, but at the same time, not consider that an asset for the purposes of qualifying for SSI or SSDI.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. So, step one is SSI and SSDI. Step two is the estate planning. What’s step three?
James Lange:
All right, step three. I would say that most attorneys and people that work in the area will know of step one and step two. But step three, and to be honest, I kind of found it like Mr. McGoo. It wasn’t like I thought about this quite a bit. It’s actually doing a series of Roth IRA conversions and getting money from the taxable world to the tax free world. And specifically most important other than Roth IRA conversions, and there’s a variety of tax free ways you can go, but there is one tax free vehicle specific for children with a disability called the ABLE Act, which actually acts very much like a 529 for children with a disability.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay. So, step three is dealing with your retirement accounts, and that you are Rothifying those and taking advantage of ABLE accounts. Okay. Let’s go back to step one. SSI and SSDI. What are they? What’s the difference between them? When should parents apply for each of those?
James Lange:
Okay. SSI is really a poverty program and for probably anybody listening, and even for the vast majority of people, if your child is less than 18 years old, they’re going to add your income and your assets to see if your child qualifies. And almost certainly they will not.
So, the best advice, typically for parents with a young child, now you should certainly get started with your estate plan, you should certainly get started with getting Roths and money in tax free, but typically you don’t apply for SSI or SSDI until the child is at least 18 years old.
Debbie McFadden, the expert in this area, says, apply the first month after your child turns 18. And she actually has some great tips on how to successfully get your child qualified, where the vast majority of these applications are rejected or turned down on the first try.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
It turns out it’s tricky to get, huh?
James Lange:
Yeah, it is. And if you like, I’ll tell you some of the secrets, or maybe that’s going too much into the details.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, let’s get into a couple of them. We’ve never been afraid to get into the weeds on the White Coat Investor podcast, so I think this is probably useful information for anybody listening to this. So, let’s go at least into it a little bit.
James Lange:
Okay. And this kind of goes against the gut instinct of the parent, the child, and the doctor who is writing a note for the child. Because the parent wants to brag about what the child can do. The doctor wants to say how much progress the child is making and how they’re adapting. And the child themselves wants to feel like they can do things.
So, the natural instinct is to say, “Well, I have this disability BUT”, then try to say how they are adapting. That’s the exact wrong approach. What you’re trying to do here is to say that I have a disability, this disability is permanent, and that I can’t do the things that other people can do. And it’s really important that the doctors understand this because the doctor’s notes are very important in the termination.
We want to say what the child can’t do. They can’t dress themselves, they can’t get a job and keep a job, they can’t pay bills, they can’t go to the bathroom, they can’t climb steps. Now maybe there’s some adaption that they could climb steps, but the straightforward answer is no, the child can’t climb steps.
Debbie uses the example of her own daughter, who is an above the knee amputee and world class climber. But when she was young, Debbie applied and said she can’t climb steps because without a special adaption, she could not.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, this might be a good chance to let’s pause for a minute and let’s talk about your co-author and her experience. Debbie McFadden, I understand she adopted a child out of a Russian orphanage who later became a quite an impressive athlete.
James Lange:
Yeah. She’s just a wonderful person and a true champion in this area. She was the commissioner of the disabilities… Maybe I forget the exact name of her title, but she was the big cheese in the disability world. She was one of the instrumental authors of the Disability Act of 1990, which is just critical legislation to help millions of children and adults with disabilities.
And she was over in Russia working in her capacity, and she was in an orphanage, and she met this little six year old girl. The six year old girl was born with spina bifida, couldn’t use either of her legs, her parents didn’t know how to care for, brought her to an orphanage that had limited resources. She didn’t have a wheelchair. She learned how to walk more or less with her arms.
And Debbie just went there and fell in love with this little girl. And the girl didn’t speak English, she was six years old. Debbie brought her home to the United States. She got her proper medical care. And when she was very young, Debbie noticed this girl was a phenomenal athlete.
And to make a long story short, she started competing in wheelchair racing competitions. And then she went on to win, I believe, 20 Paralympic medals, multiple world championships, multiple marathons, and is one of the most famous, if not the most famous athlete with a disability in the world. And then she is also a great communicator fighting for the rights of people with disabilities.
And then she has another daughter, the above the amputee, Hannah, who is a world-class climber. So, she really just has just done phenomenally well with these kids, both of whom applied and received SSI when they were younger. And Debbie is spending her life and her career helping parents get their children qualified for SSI and SSDI.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. So let’s get back to SSI and SSDI. SSI is determined based on age and disability and limited income and resources. SSDI is based on disability and the work credits, not necessarily of just the individual, but also the parent. So, what’s the bottom line? You have a disabled kid, when do you apply for each of these?
James Lange:
Well, typically you’re going to apply for SSI when the child turns 18, and then that pattern is going to continue. But remember, there’s extreme limitations on SSI. The most important being that the child has very, very limited income and very limited assets.
Where SSDI, the child can have income, the child can have assets. Now, there’s going to be a limitation on earned income, but basically a much more liberal program in terms of what the child can have.
SSDI is going to be more attractive and there’s also typically a higher benefit. Now, like you said, that is a work related program. Typically the child will not have had a work program, but if the parent does, then the parent can use their own work record for the benefit of the child. In fact, that’s actually what we did. When Cindy turned 66, we applied for SSDI for our daughter, and based on my wife’s work record, our daughter qualified for SSDI, which gave her a monthly income and lots of other benefits that we can talk about but I don’t want to go too far, without your prompting
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Sure. Okay. SSDI. I’m not entirely clear when can you apply for SSDI.
James Lange:
Legally you can apply at age 62, but I think that we’re both in agreement, in general, the rule is to wait till either full retirement age, which would be 66 or 70, depending on let’s say the difference between SSI and SSDI, and depending on the different work records of the parents, it might determine whether you start at 62 or 66 or 70, but it’s going to be somewhere in that range.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
But it’s when the parent is getting to retirement age, that’s when you’re applying for SSDI for the child.
James Lange:
That’s correct.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Well, let’s turn the page a little bit. We mentioned step two is some estate planning. And a lot of that estate planning I know is geared around making sure the child still qualifies for that SSI benefit. So, you’re trying to provide for them without disqualifying them for SSI. Talk about some of the steps you can do there to create that.
James Lange:
That’s exactly right. Typically what you’re going to have, particularly for SSI, where the child, even after your death is still going to have those income and asset limitations, is you want to get the child as many benefits as possible, but you don’t want the child to be deemed having those assets or that income or whatever income is coming. We have developed these special needs trusts, and the trusts really have to be drafted correctly.
And the other thing is, there’s two problem areas in this trust. Number one, you have to make sure that the trust is going to not eliminate or disqualify the child from receiving SSI. And two, we have those four old conditions that actually have been put present for many years for trust when the underlying asset is an IRA and a retirement plan.
Before 2020, we were able to stretch or defer the inherited IRA over the life of the beneficiary. After 2020, it was only 10 years but if the underlying asset is an IRA or a retirement plan, and the instrument holding it is a trust and we want to stretch that or defer that income, or in the case of a Roth tax-free distributions, we need to have all these conditions that very frankly, most attorneys botch in this area.
It’s really important to go to an estate attorney who understands both the special needs trust and draft in a way to meet the qualifications in order to qualify designated beneficiary.
So, you want to make sure that your child qualifies for both. And then I’ll also tell you the difference if you like, about the difference between let’s say your child as a designated beneficiary of an IRA and my child.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, essentially you want that trust to preserve their status as a designated beneficiary so you can stretch it longer. Is that correct?
James Lange:
Yeah, that is correct. But the other thing, and this is really critical. When you die, and let’s say you and Katie die and you leave money in an IRA or even a Roth IRA to your kids, and I’m going to assume that all your kids will be fully able, and not disabled at yours and Katie’s death.
Well, they will have to withdraw all that money and pay tax on it if it’s an inherited IRA within 10 years of yours and Katie’s death, or if it’s a Roth IRA, they’re not going to have to pay tax on it, but they’re still going to have to distribute it within 10 years of your death.
My daughter, assuming she maintains her status as being deemed disabled, she’ll be able to stretch that inherited IRA or inherited Roth IRA for her entire life. And I’ve been saying pay taxes later for 40 years and that’s in effect what you’re doing but after death. Or in the case of Roth, she won’t have to pay taxes on it, but instead of having to take it out and have it distributed and being returned to the taxable world, like your kids would, my daughter will be able to stretch that for her entire life.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, you mentioned pay taxes later, and that’s not just a motto for you. That’s actually the name of a URL and it’s a URL worth paying attention to today. Because if you go to paytaxeslater.com/wci, you’re going to get all the goodies that James has given away for this particular podcast. The books, the special advisory report and the one sheet summary of that. If you want the one page version or you want the 55 page version, you get both. And you get Retire Secure for Professors and TIA participants. That’s actually a hardcover copy. He’s going to mail you a copy of that book as well as a digital advanced reader copy.
That’s where you go to sign up. You go there and they ask you your name and your email and your mailing address. And I think that probably puts them on your email address. You send them emails later, but obviously it’s email, you can opt out at any time.
Okay. So we have now talked about the estate planning. We’ve talked about SSI, SSDI. Let’s get into a little bit of the nuances with both ABLE accounts and Roth accounts and Roth conversions. Let’s start with the ABLE accounts. There may be some people on this podcast that don’t know what an ABLE account is. Can you explain to them what an ABLE account is?
James Lange:
Yeah, it’s a little bit like when you’re trying a new food and somebody says it tastes just like chicken. And you go, “Oh, okay.” Well, the ABLE account is like a 529 account. You put money in, presumably on behalf of the child with a disability. You don’t get a tax deduction for that contribution and the money grows tax free. And assuming that the money is taken out for qualifying use, which is pretty liberal in terms of what is deemed a qualifying use, the distribution will be tax free.
And this is particularly important because remember we have these income limitations for SSI. Now we have a source of potential income growing tax free with this ABLE account and you can roll the 529 like in our case when we thought Erica was doing fine and that she was going to go to college, we loaded up our 529 account and now she’s not going to be able to finish college. So we can take that money and we can then in effect transfer that to an ABLE account where she will be able to continue tax-free growth and take distributions out for her care.
And this is an area that very few people, even a lot of the experts don’t know about. By the way, for people who have estate plans, they might have to be changed to allow this transfer to an ABLE account, but it is a great thing. The only limitation is, it can’t be funded for more than $100,000. And it’s run by just like the 529 plans. It’s run by the different states. So it’s not like a national plan. Utah would have their plan. I don’t know who the provider is. I think Utah’s 529 plan is Vanguard. It might be Vanguard. But you’re most likely going to have a good set of choices for investments and for the state that holds the money.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, I first wrote a post about ABLE accounts back in 2018. I’m looking at it now. It probably needs a little bit of updating. ABLE it was the Achieving a Better Life Experience Act. That’s where the name comes from. That’s why it’s called an ABLE account. That was the acronym they used.
Basically you can put in a total of the gift tax exemption each year into the account. Right now that’s $17,000 a year, but it can’t get bigger than about $100,000 or you can’t contribute to it once it hits $100,000. I can’t remember which of those rules it is.
James Lange:
Yeah, that’s right. You can’t contribute more after it hits $100,000.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, I think you used to have to be disabled before age 26, but I’ve got this vague recollection in my mind that that changed recently. Do you recall if that changed with the Secure Act 2.0 or something? Or I recall that’s not a rule anymore.
James Lange:
I’m not sure if this relates to the ABLE Act, but having the child be disabled before age 26 is a requirement for qualifying for SSDI. So, when we applied, we had to show that Erica was qualified earlier in her life, which was harder obviously because you had to get doctors and notes, etc of an effect her history. Offhand, I can’t remember if that’s a requirement or not with the ABLE Act. I will just say that practically everybody I’ve spoken to who should be using the ABLE account is not to the full extent possible. And tax free is always a wonderful way to invest and be creditor protected. And again, that feature of being able to use it and not be considered income that will disqualify you for SSI is a great feature.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Now I think there is a really interesting rule with ABLE accounts. I believe if the disabled beneficiary dies, that some states actually take the rest of the ABLE account and use it to kind of pay back Medicaid. Have you ever run into anybody that actually had that happen to them?
James Lange:
I haven’t had that yet, but remember I’m typically working with parents with a child with a disability, so most of these kids are still young. I don’t have any personal experience. I remember reading something like that, you would think it would be fair that you would be able to transfer it, like you could a 529 plan. But I would have to say, I don’t know.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, I think you may be able to change the beneficiary, but if they’re still the beneficiary when they die, I think some states kind of have that unique rule. I don’t know, maybe it’ll change over the years. It wasn’t that long ago that only a few states had ABLE accounts. I think almost all of them have ABLE accounts now, but I remember when I wrote this post five years ago, it wasn’t available in every state. Every state didn’t have an ABLE account. So they’re pretty new.
James Lange:
Yeah, you were ahead of your time but even now, they are not anywhere near as utilized as they should be.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. But a lot of them, just like a 529, you get a state tax break for them. Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, at least back when I wrote this post, all offered state tax breaks. So if you have a disabled kid, you need to know about ABLE accounts. Just like everyone else is dealing with 529s, your kids may not be going to college, but they probably need you to be funding one of these accounts instead.
James Lange:
A quick note on college. If you qualify for SSI, that not only gives you a monthly check, that will give you either Medicare or Medicaid, it will give you vocational training that includes college tuition. It will include a master’s degree to hopefully get your child qualified to work. It will include, I know my daughter is on a special Massachusetts insurance program. It really is the golden ticket that gives you a lot more than just your monthly check from the government in addition to the estate planning benefits.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Pretty cool. Okay, let’s talk now. We’ve got James Lange on here. We have to talk about Roth IRAs and Roth IRA conversions. But you feel like there’s a special place here for parents with a child with a disability. Why is that?
James Lange:
Well, the technical reason is because as I mentioned before, if I die, let’s say with a million dollar Roth IRA, my child will be required to take minimum required distributions of the inherited Roth IRA based on her life expectancy. So, let’s say to make life simple that she has let’s say a 40 year life expectancy after I die. She’ll only have to take out 2.5%, 40 divided by the million or $25,000 out of the inherited Roth. And then the rest of the money continues to grow tax free.
After that, she’ll have to take one over 39 times the balance, just like she could under the old pre 2020 pre-secure act rules where a fully abled beneficiary of an IRA or an inherited IRA or inherited Roth IRA, that account all must be withdrawn within 10 years. And the difference just that alone, being able to stretch that benefit over their lifetime can amount to a million dollars and then combine that with tax-free growth for the rest of her life compared to 10 years after my death is also an enormous difference.
While, yes, I am generally a Roth IRA conversion advocate, for most people at some point in their lifetime, it becomes even more mission critical for somebody that has a child with a disability because we can stretch that inherited Roth IRA over their lifetime.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well explained. Good job. All right. So, the three things, three critical steps. SSI and SSDI. Step two is the estate planning, especially a special needs trust and taking advantage of the retirement accounts that are assets in that trust. And then step three of course is establishing ABLE accounts and considering Roth conversions maybe more than you would if you didn’t have a disabled child. Those are the three critical steps to take care of.
All right. Let’s talk for a minute about the order. We’ve talked about the steps. Is there a special order to do any of these action steps in? And what should people be thinking about if they’re kind of overwhelmed as they listen to this? What’s step one? Where should they start?
James Lange:
Well, that would depend on the age of the beneficiary. So, let’s say for discussion sake that your beneficiaries is very young and it’s very obvious to you that there is a very good chance that your child will be deemed disabled. And let’s assume that you are working and you have some kind of income and some kind of assets.
So, what’s going to happen is your income or assets will be added to the child, which even might be zero that will disqualify the child. So there’s no point in even applying before the child is 18. On the other hand, there is a chance that you’re going to die. So you want to get the estate plan set up properly.
And the other thing, and by the way, that’s really a critical thing. And just like I would say to any parent of a young child, you want to have your guardianship provisions in place. Even if you’re totally broke, it becomes even more critical to have some kind of plan of care in the event something does happen to one or both parents.
So you want to get your estate plan right, and two, it’s probably dependent on where you are in your career. It might be time to be thinking about Roth IRA conversions for yourself as well as your child just to get this thing going that will most likely help you and will certainly help your child after you’re gone. So that’s let’s say the order, if you will, for somebody before the child turns 18.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
And 18 is one of the two magic ages here. Things happen at 18, things happen at 62. So now we’re going to break into the next group.
James Lange:
Okay. All right. Between 18 and 62, presumably you’ve applied for SSI. Hopefully you were approved the first time. We were rejected, we went back and by the way, we won. And to me it should have been obvious given our daughter’s problems, but it wasn’t an easy win. It took roughly a thousand hours for my wife to document all the historical problems that our daughter had. So, that’s a real fight. And I wish we had had Debbie McFadden in on that fight with us. It would’ve been a lot easier and we probably would’ve won the first time.
But anyway, presumably you’re qualifying for SSI, you’re getting your estate plan in shape, you’re getting your Roth IRA conversions at least started. And then the next phase is going to be after 62 at the earliest, maybe 66 or 70, depending on what makes the most sense for your individual family is switching from SSI to SSDI because that’s going to eliminate the income and the asset limitations for your child to give them typically a higher benefit and it’s going to provide more flexibility for you and your child moving into the future.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
And does that SSDI continue until their death or only until your death?
James Lange:
No, that actually will continue until their death. Now, there is a potential requirement that every once in while the Social Security Administration can ask for, let’s say an audit to see if you still qualify. Presumably if nothing changes, then you’re going to still qualify. On the other hand, if they catch you playing basketball, then you might have a problem. And this by the way is relatively new, that if the Social Security Administration deems your child qualified as disabled, the IRS will respect that designation.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
I find it fascinating. You’re an attorney and you couldn’t get your child to qualify for SSI on the first application. What hope do the rest of us have? What should somebody do? Is the first step to call an attorney that specializes in this before you even bother trying doing it on your own?
James Lange:
I hate to say it, but it’s such a mission critical issue. There are a lot of people who are do-it-yourselfers and if you are a do-it-yourselfer, learn about it, whether through my material or somebody else’s material. Again, the key is, your child can’t do this, they can’t do that. The doctors have to be coached. You could do this on your own. I think that is a very worthwhile use of your money to either go in initially or after you’ve been rejected, let’s say trying again the appeal.
Honestly, given the amount of time my wife spent on it and how close we were to getting disqualified, if I could do it again, I would’ve gone to a professional immediately. And by the way, that professional doesn’t have to be an attorney. Debbie McFadden is not an attorney. You can practice this and there are people who do this and some of them are very good at it and well worth your money to do that.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
There’s a warning here I think for all you doctors out there. You may not have a disabled kid, you may not care that much about this particular podcast episode, but the difficulty of qualifying for Social Security Disability should make you really consider getting yourself an individual disability insurance policy so you don’t have to deal with this hassle. It is very hard to qualify for Social Security Disability compared to getting your guardian or principal or standard individual physician specific disability insurance policy to pay out.
James Lange:
Yeah, I would agree with that a hundred percent. And this might sound like a plug for the report, but if any of your patients have a child with a disability, it would be great to help educate them on what they can do. Because the vast majority do not have the resources, and I don’t mean financial resources, I mean the knowledge resources of what they should be doing.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, for sure. A very good warning for those in pediatrics and other primary care specialties, those in PM&R. These are all specialties that interact with lots of people with disability.
James Lange:
And frankly it’s in the physician’s interest because the physician would prefer to be a full pay. And there might be either a procedure or certain drugs or certain other things that are not covered by insurance. And if the child qualifies, and there’s money in the trust or the parents have the money, that’s going to work out a lot better for the physician in their choice of care.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. I know in my emergency department, they have somebody whose job it is to sign people up for Medicaid. Maybe in your practice you ought to have somebody whose job is signing people up for SSDI. I don’t know what kind of a practice that would be that you had enough people to justify that sort of help, but it would certainly be a huge value add for a certain patient family.
James Lange:
Well, interestingly enough, one of the co-authors, that is one of her services. And that’s mainly Debbie’s service, which is SSI and SSDI and the appeals. But I know that Julie does get involved. And by the way, she actually has social workers on staff. In fact, even though we have a law firm, I used her for our legal work because it is a specialty area.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Let’s talk about this. We’ve talked about these three areas and you’ve got three of you writing this book. The first section kind of getting your SSI, SSDI, that’s Debbie McFadden’s expertise. The second part, the estate planning. Even you, your firm does estate planning, but you went to Julie Steinbacher’s firm to get your estate planning done in this respect. Tell us more about her.
James Lange:
Well, she has been working in this area and she actually has a group of attorneys that, let’s say, follow her lead. She’s written books about it. I think they’re really bright people, but they don’t have the specialty areas in some of the really good questions that Julie asked us.
And the other thing is, it was wonderful having somebody that had access to a social worker, somebody who had experience with the Massachusetts Health plan to have Erica help qualify and to keep her qualified.
Just like in medicine, we’re becoming more and more an area of specialties, and this is a specialty area. And the difference between getting this right and getting this wrong, at least in my case, it amounts to $1.9 million for our daughter, that if we got it wrong, then if we get it right, and that’s in today’s dollars.
And the other thing that I’ll mention is why it’s so important to get this right and to get the trust right and to qualify and to do these Roths. And don’t take this the wrong way, Jim, but let’s say you screw up your estate plan and your kids end up with a couple hundred thousand dollars or maybe a million dollars less than they would have otherwise, but that they’re perfectly capable of work and you know you have instilled or at least attempted to instill a good work ethic with them. It would be a terrible thing, but it wouldn’t be a tragedy.
If somebody with a child with a disability either screws up or even just isn’t proactive. And by the way, you don’t have to be rich. Even somebody with a $500,000 IRA getting these steps right that we’ve been talking about, the difference to the child can be $239,000 in today’s dollars. So you really want to get this right.
I trusted Julie and her extensive experience in estate planning. For example, she alerted me, “Oh no, the documents have to be changed to allow contributions to the ABLE act.” And I didn’t know that. It was terrific having somebody who really knew what they were doing in this specialty area.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Okay, we’ve been over a lot today, but let me reiterate the offer here. If you’ll give Jim your email address and your mailing address, here’s what he’s going to send to you. He’s going to send you a digital copy of Retire Secure for Professors and TIA Participants. He’s going to send you a hard copy of that when it comes out later this summer. He’s going to send you digital and hard copies of the short report for parents with a child with a disability, again, the hard copy later this summer, and a hard copy of that book for parents with a disability when it comes out this fall.
The link there, www.paytaxeslater.com/wci is where you’re going to get all that stuff. Yes, he’s going to send you some emails. You can always unsubscribe. Yes, he’ll probably send you something in the mail. You can ask him to stop doing that.
This truly is free though. You don’t have to pay anything. He’s going to send you all this stuff obviously, if you are in one of these categories.
If you are a parent of a child with disability, this is a great offer and you should take them up on it. And even if you’re just interested in this area, you’re a planner, you’re an accountant, you’re an attorney, you’re just a hobbyist, whatever. You can get all this stuff too and check it out. Maybe you have a niece or a nephew with a disability. Maybe you just want to check it out for your patients. But that’s where you can go and get all of this stuff.
All right, Jim, what have we not talked about that people should know about taking care of a child with a disability?
James Lange:
This is something that you don’t want to put off. So let’s say in my case, our daughter, and by the way, if you could have a conversation with her, you could talk with her for a half hour. You’d think that she’s a very sweet, intelligent young woman. You might not even realize she has a disability. And she could walk across the room just like anybody else. But she just could never get it together to apply for these things on her own.
And I don’t think anybody but her mother, not even the best attorney or the best advocate, could have done all the work that was required to qualify for SSI or SSDI. You want to do this soon, you don’t want to put this off. You want to do it while everybody’s healthy, while the doctors who are still working with her are working with her. And you can oversee this entire process.
I would say this to anybody, but particularly for a child with a disability, you don’t want to put off your estate planning. You want to make sure that that is right. And you also, of course, want to get into the tax-free world of Roth IRAs and Roth IRA conversions.
And I have in the past been relatively passionate about my beliefs and what I think people should do. But now, because the stakes are so much higher, this has become my “Raison d’être”, if you would, my reason for being and something that I really want to dedicate myself to educating parents with a child with a disability and hopefully making that child be in a much more secure space. And then obviously, help alleviate the worry.
Because that worrying is crippling. I can tell you that from personal experience, and my wife and I are doing relatively well financially, but the worry about what’s going to happen to our daughter after we die was crippling. So, don’t put this off. Get this taken care of, whether you’re do-it-yourselfer, whether you’re going to use some help or maybe a little bit of both, I would try to take action on this.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, Jim Lang. First, he evangelized for Roth IRAs, then he evangelized for Roth conversions. Now he’s evangelizing for parents with kids with a disability. Thank you for your life’s work and thank you so much for being a guest on the White Coat Investor podcast.
James Lange:
Well, thank you so much for having me, Jim.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. It’s nice to have James back. He loves to get into the weeds, and I hope that was entertaining and useful for you as particularly those of you who have a family member or a friend with a child with a disability. It’s such important information to have to maximize their financial outcome because it is important. If not doing it, nobody else probably is. And all of us have interacted with people with disabilities, whether they’re physical, whether they’re more mental, who really are having a very difficult time in their financial life. And so, providing for them is really a great service.
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Transcription – MtoM – 120
INTRODUCTION
This is the White Coat Investor podcast Milestones to Millionaire – Celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
This is Milestones to Millionaire podcast number 120 – Military physician hits retirement.
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All right, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are enjoying these newfangled Milestone to Millionaire podcasts. They’ve got some additional information on them. We’re also starting to include that in the show notes. Your feedback is always helpful. Our podcasts are always driven by you and what you want to hear about and learn. So, if this isn’t working for you, we want to know what we can make better.
We have implemented a lot of the changes that have come from you over the years, and that has made your experience today much better than those who had to suffer through the first few episodes. And so, we thank you for helping us to continue to improve.
If you want to come on the podcast, the URL to do that is whitecoatinvestor.com/milestones. You can apply there. We’ll celebrate any milestone you can come up with and use it to inspire others to do the same.
We’ve got a great guest on today, as I mentioned in the title, with some military doc who’s recently retired. But afterward we’re going to talk a little bit about umbrella insurance. So, stick around and get the bonus material at the end.
GUEST INTERVIEW
Our guest today on the Milestone to Millionaire podcast is Scott. Scott, welcome to the podcast.
Scott:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. First thing I should say is thank you for your service. You retired not that long ago as an Air Force general surgeon, which involves a fair amount of sacrifice over the course of a career.
Scott:
Yeah, we went to a lot of places all around the world. I’m not sure my wife thought one of our last tours in Italy was too big of a sacrifice, but there were a lot of great tours and a few that were a little challenging for sure.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah.
Scott:
The two years in Afghanistan were pretty long.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
I bet. Was Aviano your favorite posting? Is that where you were in Italy?
Scott:
Yeah, we were at Aviano. Boy, they’re so different from each other. Japan was cool, Germany was cool, Aviano was cool. They’re all good and from a professional standpoint, Afghanistan was cool in that regard. They’re all good. I won’t say which ones weren’t maybe our favorites, but…
Dr. Jim Dahle:
I have an idea.
Scott:
I’m sure you could guess a few.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Because I’ve been in the Air Force and it turns out all those cool places you just listed are not available in your first tour.
Scott:
No, no kidding. .
Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right, well, very cool. When did you retire?
Scott:
Fall of 2020.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Fall of 2020. So you got to experience a few months of the pandemic with the rest of us and got to be on the sidelines for the rest of it.
Scott:
Yes.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
How did that plan come about? Was this your 20 year mark or what made you decide “I think I’m done?”
Scott:
I was financially independent at about 50 and I was loving what I was doing for the Air Force. The last half of my career I was mostly a physician leader doing less and less surgery unfortunately. But I was enjoying the leadership aspects of it and having bigger and bigger impacts. So I was really enjoying it.
And then I got to 28 years and the Air Force started talking about my next job would be in the Pentagon and I didn’t think I’d enjoy that. And so, I talked to the boss and we decided that it was fine to hit the retire button. The boss of course, being my wife. And so I retired after two years at my last job.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
What’d you finish as? 05, 06, 07?
Scott:
Yeah, I was in 06. I was in 06 a long time. Over 10 years.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. Well, thank you so much for serving.
Scott:
Thank you.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. 28 years, you’ve got a decent pension from the Air Force, I assume.
Scott:
That is for sure.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Tell us about that a little bit.
Scott:
The Air Force pays me $112,000 in 2023 a year before taxes of course. And as you know it’s a linear progression, although the rule is changed a couple years ago. But it used to be 50% at 20 years and 75% at 30 years, and it just was a straight line. And then it’s based on your last three years of your base pay. You and I got a lot of bonus pay, but that doesn’t count. But still $112,000, nothing to sneeze at.
And then a little bit of a windfall that we got, which I wish we didn’t get to be honest, is the VA. I ended up being 100% disabled. And so, that’s nearly $50,000 a year tax free. So, we are pretty comfortable before we even look at the nest egg.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. And plus, TRICARE. I assume you’ve got some sort of TRICARE benefit.
Scott:
Yeah, TRICARE is unbelievably low. When we were talking to our financial advisor before retiring, he asked how much TRICARE was and at the time it was like $500. And he put that in his spreadsheet for each month and I’m like, “No, no, $500 for the year.” And he couldn’t believe it. And it’s still well under a thousand dollars for the year for the two of us to have insurance.
Of course there’s copays once you retire but the VA also gives me free healthcare for everything. So, I actually don’t use TRICARE hardly ever. I just go to the VA for everything. And I have found the VA system to be bureaucratic surely but to be fine. And so, I use the VA almost exclusively. Of course, my wife goes TRICARE. She’s super healthy and actually hasn’t used it much.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. And you have experience working your way through a bureaucratic healthcare system.
Scott:
That’s for sure.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Well, that’s pretty cool. Pretty cool. You mentioned also a nest egg. You’re a saver. I look back through my email box, I’ve been getting emails from you for years. You’ve been a White Coat Investor for a long time.
Scott:
Yeah, almost the beginning.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
So you saved and invested along the way. How big is your nest egg now?
Scott:
Just a tad under $3.5 million. About half taxable and half a tax advantage in some way. Yeah, we’ve saved enough that we could live off of that if we had to which is important because half of my pension and half of my VA money goes away when I die. And so, my wife’s got to have something to live off of. But to be honest, I’m sure we’ll get there eventually. It’s been tough ramping up the spending.
We were spending around $120,000 a year, when I was on active duty, which allowed for a nearly 50% pre-tax saving rate at the end of my career. And there’s nothing for us to spend money on because we don’t need more things. And so, we’ve started to say, “Well, what should we spend it on?” And first class travel has been wonderful and we’ll continue to do that because it’s so much less stressful and much more comfortable. But we also have a grandchild now, first one. And so, that’s been amazing and we’re spending money on her, but we’re looking for things to spend money on. It’s crazy.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. Let me pause this podcast for a point that I think we ought to make here.
Scott:
Okay.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
I talk a lot about Roth versus tax deferred decisions. And one of the exceptions I throw out there all the time is for people on active duty ought to be making Roth contributions because it is not infrequent that they end up in a situation like this.
Where they’re making typical military money, often less than $200,000 a year throughout their career, and then they finish and they have this big pension plus a nest egg and are actually in a higher bracket later in retirement than they are during their peak earnings years. So, this is why that’s an exception for those who have never met somebody in this sort of a situation. Very cool.
So, tell us about retirement. You’re now two and a half years in. What’s retirement been like? What are you doing?
Scott:
Well, my last couple of jobs were extremely stressful working for four stars. They only expect miracles every other day. And so, it was a ton of stress. To be honest, I vegetated for close to six months. I got up late, went to bed early, watched TV, vegetated. Probably recovering from some mental health issues and whatnot.
But eventually I started approaching a time where I had long time wanted to go hike the Appalachian Trail, and the time to leave was three months away. And I realized, “Okay, time to stop vegetating and get ready for this thing.”
I told my wife, “Hey, in three months I’m leaving for the Appalachian Trail. I’m going to hike Georgia de Maine.” And she’s like, “I want to go”, which was the shock of my life because she hates camping, but she loves hiking. She’s a huge day hiker. And so, off we went April 2nd. We started in Georgia and headed north and almost 2,200 miles later we were all done with the trail in October.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah. And you did it in a little bit of a unique way. Tell people about how you did it there toward the end.
Scott:
Yeah. There’s north bounders who just go straight north to south and south bounders go Maine to Georgia. But a lot of people flip flop. And so, as we were heading north, we realized we weren’t going to make it to Maine in time because it gets pretty bad weather in October up there. So we headed to Maine and headed back south and then we finished the trail in New Hampshire where we flip flopped. So yeah, it was a little bit unusual. And it’s a little anticlimactic. You climbed this amazing peak in Maine and then you head south. But it’s all good.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Very cool. Well, congratulations on accomplishing that. That’s no small accomplishment either. How many days of hiking?
Scott:
We took 10 days off in almost seven months. We hiked most every day. In fact, two of those days were for a hurricane that came through. So, that’s a lot of hiking. 202 total days I think it was or something like that. A lot of hiking. I was slow, slowed down a little bit by my feet, they were really bugging me. But it’s really largely a mental challenge. The physical stuff you get over and of course you get in the shape of your life. I lost 70 pounds on the hike and unfortunately gained a lot of it back. But yeah, it’s largely just a mental challenge to get out there and walk for 10 to 14 hours a day.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Wow. In your application to come onto the show, you mentioned that military physicians can live a comfortable retirement and that you essentially make from your pension in the VA what you spent when you’re on active duty. Do you feel like that message is not out there? That people feel like serving in the military sentences you to a life of relative impoverishment? What do you think the general sense is out there?
Scott:
Yeah. I think there’s two populations that you’re really talking about. Those that are in the military and owe the four years, like in my case eight years, who they don’t really understand or think it through. They’re a captain making no real bonus money other than the $15,000 they give to interns or whatever.
And so, they just don’t think that part of it out. I made a lot more because I stayed in so many years than a friend of mine who got out at 20. But still, he gets a sizable chunk of money every month.
A) it’s real money and people need to consider that when they leave. And then B) like you mentioned, the healthcare, TRICARE is an incredible benefit for a bunch of reasons. Super cheap. The copays are pretty low and the benefit is actually spectacular compared to a lot of healthcare insurance out there. So that’s a huge benefit as well. And then the VA might get kicked in there as well. All those things are real.
And I will tell you too, that literally this week I was asked, “Yeah, but when you do the math, wouldn’t have worked out to be better a general surgeon and just saved all that money?” And you never do the math because it’s so many years and you just got to do them. And when I could get out, it was 13 years in because I did five years of training. And I did the math, it was pretty close to breakeven and I was enjoying it and so I said, “You know what? I’m not leaving. Why mess with what’s working?” But man, I see an awful lot of people get out.
And the other thing that surprises me too is a lot of people when they get out, talk about how much they miss it. There’s lots of crap that you don’t miss, but the military is unique as you well know. And there are things to miss. It depends on your specialty.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, certainly it can work out pretty well getting out at four years, but once you’ve done 8, 10, 12, every time I run the numbers it makes sense to stay at least 20.
Scott:
Yeah, I agree.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
I’m not surprised about your decision one bit. But here’s the deal. A lot of people don’t realize how valuable this pension is. Not only is it a pension, it’s guaranteed. But it’s indexed to inflation. You can’t buy that. You can’t go to an insurance company and buy an inflation indexed single premium immediate annuity these days. You just can’t do it.
Scott:
Yeah. It’s indexed just like social security. And your wife gets a survivor’s benefit or your partner gets a survivor benefit.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
And so, a lot of people don’t realize the value of that pension with TRICARE is probably higher than your nest egg.
Scott:
Yeah, I would agree.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
If you actually had to purchase it from some company on the open market, it’s probably more valuable than your nest egg to be getting $120,000 and another $50,000 from the VA and the TRICARE. If you talk to early retirees about what they’re paying in health insurance, it’s often between $20,000 and $30,000 a year. And so, I think that’s a real important point to make about your pension is that it’s just really valuable and people need to understand that.
All right. Well, it’s time for you to give some advice. There’s some people out there that want to reach your goal. They want to finish a great career and be retired and be able to go do things that you could never do during a medical career like hike the Appalachian Trail. What advice do you have for those people?
Scott:
The biggest thing is just have a plan and stick to it. We did what some people call reverse budgeting. We automated all the important things, which included all of our retirement investing and what was left over was for us to spend. And every time I got a raise, half of it went to that plan and half of it went to spending.
Never felt like we wanted anything. We spent $30,000 on an anniversary Galapagos cruise. I drove Mercedes and BMWs, although we hung onto them for like 10 years. But I had everything we wanted. Our whole family did. And so, we never wanted, but we just stuck with the plan. And it didn’t always go perfect and there weren’t always perfect investments, but it just kept going. I also keep it simple. Indexing is just so simple and stress free compared to when I was trying to stock pick when I was younger and not very good at it.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
Yeah, there’s a reason. That’s what’s in the TSP. Don’t doubt about it.
Scott:
Yeah.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. Well, Scott, thank you for your service. Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your success with us. Congratulations to you. Thanks for coming on and inspiring others to do the same.
Scott:
Thanks so much for what you do, Jim. It’s been fantastic.
Dr. Jim Dahle:
All right. I hope you found that interview helpful. I think it’s actually the first retirement milestone we’ve had on Milestone to Millionaire. So, I thought that was fun. The milestone was not completing the Appalachian Trail, although that was a pretty cool one and takes obviously a lot of work and a lot of willpower to complete. It was actually getting to retirement.
And there is an end to this. Almost none of us practice until we’re a hundred. Although I saw an interview the other day of a neurologist who is literally practicing at a hundred years old. Most of us are not in that camp. We don’t even want to be in that camp.
There are some benefits to working longer aside from the financial benefits, I think it helps keep your mind active. We’ve all met somebody who retired and their health went south pretty quickly thereafter. So, you have to guard against that in retirement. But I think most of us aren’t planning to work to a hundred, let’s be honest. So, retirement is coming up for all of us. Have a plan, work your plan, get there and it will work.
FINANCE 101: UMBRELLA INSURANCE
All right, I promised you I’d talk about umbrella insurance. What is umbrella insurance? Umbrella insurance is personal liability insurance. Just like you have professional liability insurance, i.e. malpractice insurance, umbrella insurance is personal liability insurance.
Now, you probably already have some personal liability insurance, even if you didn’t know it. If you have a renter’s policy or a homeowner’s policy, you have some liability insurance. That is a component of your auto policy as well. And in fact, auto claims are the most significant part of liability insurance. About 80% of umbrella claims are related to an auto issue.
Basically you get your auto policy, you get your homeowner’s policy, and then the umbrella sits over the top of those two and gives you additional protection. For example, you might only have $50,000 or $100,000 in auto liability, which is desperately inadequate. There are lots of cars out there on the road that cost $50,000 or $100,000 and that’s not including the damage you do to the occupants when you hit it. So you need higher insurance than that to start with. So raise that up to $300,000-ish or so.
And then you stack an umbrella policy on top of that, and you can often get it from the same company that you buy your auto or your homeowners from. And these policies tend to be $1 million, $2 million, $5 million tight policies, and they’re dramatically cheaper than your malpractice policy for just a few hundred dollars a year. Or if you’re particularly big on policy and you’re a particularly dangerous person, it might be as much as $1,000 or even $2,000 a year. But you get all this excess liability coverage.
And as you become wealthy and have something to protect, this becomes a lot more important because declaring bankruptcy and walking away with whatever you got to keep in bankruptcy becomes a less and less and less attractive option in the event that you have some huge claim against you.
And that is possible. It’s rare. The reason your policy is so cheap is because it’s so rare, but it does happen and you want to be covered in the event that it does. So, get an umbrella policy in place.
People ask, “Well, how big should it be?” And they’re like, “Maybe it should be 1X your net worth or 1X your unprotected net worth, or 2X your net worth.” There’s no rule of thumb there. It’s like malpractice insurance. You want to know what the claim is before you decide how much insurance to buy, but you can’t do it that way.
And so, you want to have enough insurance that the person who has a claim against you, that is now your creditor, gets enough money without your personal assets, they feel like they got a big payout. And in my view, that’s a seven figure amount. You give most people a million dollars and they’re pretty happy to say I got paid something. I don’t think $200,000 or $300,000 payment has that same effect on people. But if you’re concerned that you could have a higher claim against you, that’s when you get the $2 million, $5 million sort of policy.
We carried a million dollars for a long time, bumped it up to $2 million at one point, and now carry $5 million. I remember hearing from Dave Ramsey once on his show. He’s much wealthier than I am or ever will be, and he carries a $5 million policy as well.
I don’t know that there’s a point to carrying much more than that but if you’re wealth to do looking at retirement, you may want to look at increasing it to $5 million. But for most people, by the time they’re coming out of residency, a million dollar policy really ought to be in place.
So, get out there, get your disability insurance, get your life insurance, but also get an umbrella policy to protect you from this other financial catastrophe that you could face in your life.
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All right. Another great episode has come and gone. Although this one isn’t dropping until mid-June, we’re actually recording in mid-April. I did five episodes today. So most of the ones you’ve listened to for the last month, we recorded in the last three or four hours. It has been a long day for us. It’s probably been a long day for you if you’re listening to this on your way home or something. And I thank you for what you do. Your work does matter. It is important.
We’ll see you next time on the podcast. Keep your head up and shoulders back. You’ve got this.
DISCLAIMER
The hosts of the White Coat Investor podcast are not licensed accountants, attorneys, or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your s
Did you know that roughly 70 to 80% of physicians have disability insurance? Most doctors who buy a policy never expect to use it, but the likelihood of filing a long-term disability claim is 30% higher for workers in their thirties. Don’t question whether or not you should leave this up to chance. Schedule a free consultation today at patternlife.com.