Well, it’s July 2022.    I figured it was about time to dust this blog off and write a new post. One might blame our new child for the lack of productivity around here, but I can’t blame little Max for this. The Max Out of Pocket crew has been unusually busy for a few months. Things like planning, interviewing, accepting a new job, and moving to a new state have taken priority over my writing hobby. Max Out of Pocket crew on the move again – so long New Hampshire Additionally, my work counting healthcare beans required a higher level of effort than normal for a while there. It’s been ..read more

About a month ago, Max got motivated and calculated his Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME) for 2021. I found the calculation simple, and basic arithmetic got us a value. In short, we averaged 35 years of my earnings history and adjusted it to the current years’ dollars. At the end of 2021, my AIME will come in at $2,940. That comes to $35,280 annually. If $35,280 seems low, that’s because it is. I make much more than that per year right now. The problem is about 15 of my 35 years have $0.00 in earnings. This averages down my number. That’s not to mention several other years of marginal fa ..read more

Max recently blew past another financial milestone. By the end of 2021, the Social Security Administration will have taxed me on just over a million dollars in earnings. If we adjust all those years of wages for inflation, we are looking at about $1.2 million in taxed earnings. Over my entire working years, the total tax out of my pocket will come out to about $66,017 by the end of 2021. A $66,000 contribution to Social Security. Not bad. Max’s Social Security Card That is much less than I would have guessed. I contributed about that much to my traditional 403(b) retirement account in the last ..read more

Mixing a pay raise with downsizing can do wonders for a financial situation. It’s pretty incredible. Throw in a favorable tax code, and we can start talking about some real money. I am told you are officially ‘old’ when taxes become a regular point of conversation. I like to think I have wisdom beyond my years. But I do find it an interesting subject, and I continue to be surprised just how different the tax structure can be from state to state. I have lived thrived under four different state income tax jurisdictions: Michigan, Tennessee, North Carlina, and New Hampshire. This last move brough ..read more

Dividends. A taxable event? Maybe. But I still love them. If you have been paying attention to my “passive income” page, you might have noticed the Max Out of Pocket crew cleared $3,298 in dividends from my medical office building (MOB) REIT experiment in 2020. I sometimes refer to this as my ‘rental’ income. Not bad for a little side hobby.  But how much of that is taxable in 2020? I initially spread the portfolio out over our taxable brokerage and tax-advantaged retirement accounts. This made things a little convoluted. But for tax purposes, in 2020, all that matters are the ..read more

I have found myself walking through hospital hallways for many years now. Healthcare finance has led me to interact with department managers across all service lines. From cardiopulmonary rehab to the neonatal intensive care unit, I have probably crunched the numbers and dollars at some point. But those are just numbers. Until now, the growing Max Out of Pocket crew has not actually needed to use the healthcare system all that much. That’s a good thing. It is usually scary things like illness and injury that launch people into the “system.” But that all changed when our baby boy arrived a few ..read more

How can you tell if someone is in poverty? It’s not an easy question. But we do have some guidelines. The Max Out of Pocket crew would meet the federal poverty guideline if we had an annual income of less than $17,420. That’s according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). They will bump that figure to $21,960 in a few weeks when little Max or Maxine arrives and we turn into a family of three. Now, it would be easy for someone like me to scoff at the number. But would I be scoffing at how low it is or how high it is? “If it is not possible to state unequivocally ..read more

It’s pretty simple. Max trades his time, energy, and skills to an organization. In exchange, I expect that organization to pay me money. We sometimes refer to this as earned wages. But before it hits my pocket, my Uncle Sam takes his share. He calls it wages, salaries, and tips. These wages hit Line 1 of the 1040 tax form, and the government taxes us from there. Whatever money is left lands in my pocket. That’s Max’s back pocket For a lot of us, it ends there. We live our life trading time for money. But the money left over is called capital. It’s ours. We are free to spend it, save it, or inv ..read more

Well, things have slowed down a bit here at Max Out of Pocket. We are about a month out from meeting little Max or Maxine and we have reallocated our time accordingly. After closing out a large project at work in early March, we took one last weeklong trip to New York and Michigan to see family. Now, we will sit tight for the next thirty days. The lead-up to this has been surprisingly calm. We painted the nursery, set up the crib, installed the car seats, and toured the birthing center. We even packed the hospital bag. Mrs. Max OOP has been working a light teaching schedule and keeping herself ..read more

Have you ever considered having sound waves bounced off your baby to create an image that we can use to measure a small pocket of liquid near the neck that might signal chromosome abnormalities? Yeah, the thought never crossed my mind either. I probably don’t even know how to change a diaper. Fortunately, we get to benefit from all those before us who studied this kind of thing. In many ways, their work has made it the standard of care we enjoy today. It’s easy to lose sight of this and let service delays and out-of-pocket costs overshadow how advanced our healthcare system is. That might even ..read more