I don't know what the deal is...why is it so hard to retire early? It's not THAT early for me. And I don't plan to be entirely retired. All I need is medical insurance!
Right now, I'm working until the company won't pay for my medical insurance anymore. They can't fire me but they can take away the one thing I'm sticking around for. I estimate I'll run out of vacation time that I'm using at the rate of 5-10 hours/week. Another 6 weeks? There's a Kidney Fund that gives grants to help with medical insurance premiums but there are qualifications. Geez, to qualify you'd practically have to be a minimum wage worker without an emergency fund! Okay, they need that more than I do.
I've brought up Medicare. I don't understand why I'm discouraged by the medical team from Medicare. I did learn that I won't qualify for the Advantage plans that worked well for Mom, it's for over-65. That means $170/mo for premiums plus 20% co-pays. It sounds like a PPO plan. It would be nice to have double coverage for a while so that nothing's out of pocket. I heard that might be possible.
I looked into Obamacare. I'm sure it's cheaper than COBRA. Looks like $700/mo for me even if I continue to have the income I have now. That's going to drop for sure in 2023, so would be cheaper as long as I don't do too much semi-retirement freelancing. Co-pays for the plan I targeted would be less than half of what I pay now in co-pays. But I was told it could be cheaper than Medicare. Not for my situation.
What would I do in retirement? OMG, so much to do. As it is, I hired Merry Maids to come this week for some help getting my house cleaner for the dialysis treatments. I admit, there are some things I never learned to clean. Mom was a home economics major but she admitted to paying her classmates to do her dirty work. The only times I ever wiped walls was to prepare it for a new coat of paint, so I didn't have to work around furniture.
I have to tie up Mom's probate. I have a house full of stuff and a storage unit to empty. I'm not going to bother selling stuff. I don't have that kind of hustle personality. But I do have to arrange getting it out of my house to reclaim usable space. Then there's my retirement plan: getting back to art and tai chi. I think my travelling is done until I get a kidney transplant. There's just too much logistics of bringing dialysis equipment, supplies, and arranging the amount of dialysate that I need. I was invited to my cousin's house for the weekend. I don't want to bring the machine with me and all the extra stuff I need with it. So I just didn't go.
