We Are Here to Help.
The sooner you get started preparing for your years of relaxation, the more comfortable those years are likely to be.
We can help you plan and accumulate, with minimum impact on your current lifestyle.
Whatever you have arrived here with will have to last. Almost always, life has gotten in the way of what you had originally planned! We can help you assess your new realities, and give you confidence for the years ahead.
A fixed income changes the way we have to make decisions. More attention must be given to reducing risks than when you had the option of increasing your income to compensate. We can show you how to get secure.
Your most pressing concern on turning 65
is what to do
about
Medicare.
Cancer patients should have the ability to get the best new treatments possible. They are saving so many lives. I’m living with one success story. If we hadn’t had the additional plan, though, just the 20% Medicare won’t pay would have bankrupted us.
Dixie F.
Medicare provides a great basis for our healthcare beyond 65, but as of 2018, it only covers an estimated 50% of the average senior's health costs. This leaves us vulnerable to potentially explosive costs in the case of a major illness, which can make proper treatment unaffordable and thus unavailable. Some form of supplemental insurance is a necessity.
Whether you have a lot or a little, your assets and your savings are likely to decrease from retirement forward. You can control the rate of decline by budgeting and more careful spending. And you must put more emphasis on risk avoidance than ever before, because you can't make it back up by working longer or harder. Potential losses due to health are the #1 issue to protect against.
With its alphabet soup of parts, plans, acronyms and agencies,
a retiree's first exploration of Medicare can be daunting.
It is a maze, and finding a trustworthy map is very difficult.
So much so that it inspired our founder to come out of retirement and
launch Next Mountain Advisors.
And to write a book --
a map for the maze.
Click the image
to see it on Amazon...
With enhanced content updated for 2019 Medicare changes, and a simpler message on the cover,
"The Traps Within Medicare"
shot up to #1 Bestseller
on Amazon, for the Medicaid and Medicare category!
Click the image to read!
Finding competent advice for any kind of financial or insurance product is difficult. But Medicare is especially so, due to structural issues in the marketplace. Private Medicare add-ons exist in two very different models, and rather than integrating the two to find the best solution for each consumer, many so-called experts treat the two as entirely separate universes, never to be spoken of together.
This is an artifact of a bizarre licensing and regulatory system which allows many companies and insurance agents to profit from only one model or the other. So if you’re trying to get your education from a source (whether broker, agent, book or website) which stands to profit from your decisions, you must first be certain that the source has knowledge of both models, and if an agent, an ability to profit from either. Otherwise, impartial advice will certainly not be what you will find.
The two models are called Medicare Advantage (also known as Medicare Part C), and Medicare Supplements (also known as Medigap insurance).
There is a clear separation, since it is legally not possible to have both forms of coverage at the same time. However, as we age, our medical needs change, and our financial resources tend to change as well. What makes the most sense for a healthy, well-off 65 year old will absolutely not be the best choice for the same person after the loss of much health and the spend down of much money!
Finding an advisor to help you navigate the process, in our view, is essential. It is simply too complex to try to learn it all and go it alone. And your costs for all of the products will be the same, whether you use an agent or sign up directly with the insurer or through the Medicare.gov website.
You must be certain that the person you choose is educated about both universes of products, and more focused on helping you than on how much commission can be generated. There are huge differences, often up to 500%, in costs to you and in commissions to the agent.
Even worse, about three-quarters of all licensed Medicare brokers and agents are only licensed for one universe of products. Particularly for the Medicare Advantage class of products, licensing and regulatory hassles are very difficult. There are annual certification and testing requirements for each carrier a broker represents, for each state in which he or she works. And to do a proper job for all clients, a broker needs to have at least 3 or 4 MA carriers, and twice that number of Medigap carriers!
How can the average Medicare client know this? How can he or she find a competent broker?
Next Mountain Advisors sees an America where every senior has both the healthcare and the financial resources to enjoy their highest quality of life for all of their remaining years.
We are driven daily by the pursuit of 4 core values:
1) Think like the Client would,
if knowing everything we know.
2) Build relationships to last.
3) Share our knowledge freely.
4) Do the Right Thing, Every Time.
Every Advisor associated with Next Mountain Advisors is a fully licensed Medicare specialist. That means they are by definition among the top 25%, competent and knowledgeable of both universes of Medicare add-on products -- the Medicare Advantage (Part C) side, and the Medigap/Medicare Supplement side. And they are appointed with several carriers on each side, so they know the intricacies of the individual products, too.
Most of them were retired too, or at least are old enough to be.
Most of them have been inspired by their own encounters with the system to return to the work force, to help fellow seniors get unbiased advice and counseling about their most important decisions late in life. They get it. At the personal level.
In addition to prior careers in finance or insurance, they have put in the many months and years of effort required to learn the Medicare landscape, and to stay on top of its annual changes.
They are all independent Brokers, meaning that the choice of a product is driven by the needs of the client, not by the desire to please one particular carrier. Their loyalty is to the client only.
We find that this structure is much appreciated by our clients.
It is exhausting work, but someone has got to do it.
Call us now for a free phone consult with a qualified Advisor.
No obligation of any kind.
North Carolina
(828) 782-3777
National, toll free
(866) 468-9086