Medical care is the other big one. Even if prices don't go up, you getting older can cause your costs to go up (obviously ACA makes this extra complicated).
Minor quibble. The ACA actually makes medical care dramatically less complicated. However, the partisan drama around the ACA makes it somewhat risky to rely on the continued existence of some of its provisions.
No ACA make the situation more complicated in predicting what will happen to your costs.. In the old days your rates would go up. It was a given. With ACA they might stay the same if the government subsidy takes care of the increase in premium. And yes trying to figure out what the healthcare situation will be in 5 years (much less 30 years) is taking a huge leap of faith. Early retirees are sort of exploiting a loophole (nobody really thinks that people with a million dollars in assets who chooses not to work should be getting subsidized health care) but it will be one that is hard to close as adding asset based testing (see FASFA) is pretty complex.
Gotta disagree here. I said that if the ACA stays as is, you have no complication. I don't think that can be disputed. As is, the tax credits explicitly limit your premium cost to a percent of your income. And out-of-pocket max is also limited to inflation. This makes healthcare very non-complicated to plan for under current law.
Without the ACA you could never save enough to be certain that you had medical expenses covered (recision, pre-existing conditions, lack of guaranteed issue, etc)--which makes your savings calculation incredibly calculated.
The political uncertainty is the problem.
We are saying the same thing. Without an ACA subsidy, your health care costs change with medical inflation and your aging. With ACA your health care costs change with inflation (NOT medical inflation) and aging (in most states). But if you are out of the subsidy range, you are back to your costs increasing with medical inflation. ACA is better but less predictable. Without it, you always pay medical inflation. With it, you can pay either medical or normal inflation depending on what your income does.
