I am wondering if anybody (self or a family member such as spouse or child) with chronic health condition(physical or mental) that still plan to or already FIERed? Of courese if you are covered by disability or vested in a health plan through work that's great. But if you don't, how do you plan to cover the ongoing and sometimes high medical cost? A much bigger stash? one spouse works longer? Wait till condition greatly improved and stabilized? Move to a country with lower health care cost and just do annual check up back in US and have meds mailed oversea? If ACA unravels and some provisions go away it could be really bad news..
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Thanks for replying everybody. It looks like FIER is more of a previlige of the healthy crwod, at least in the US. So I changed the title to refelct the questions more directly
Do you actually prepare for it in the stash even if you are healthy today? If someone is lucky enough to retire in late 30 or early 40s, chances are that it's on the early side for anything scary to show up; if retire in early 50ish and still in very good health, they may do OK and have enough to last until Medicare kicks in.
To me the tricky age is 40-50. This is when, for most people, kids are young and still depend on us, and anything scary could just begin lurking around. AND it is too far away (read: expensive) to Medicare.
We have been pretty healthy and plan on ER in a few years, until recently. We are now going through a rough patch and I am hoping it's not super chronic (maybe a few years), which lead me to wonder how people would handle this in early retirement. What if something bad, but not bad enough for medicade, hit you a few years into reitrement? For me the answer is that I will have to add more to the stash, and work few more years until the condition goes away or greatly dimished. Even then I would think twice before both of us call it quits. I have also researched options to living in other countries that offer lower cost high quality healthcare to expat, but that measn moving the kids to a different continent for school, etc, not sure I am ready for that.
This also leads me to take a serious look at my family history. I am not coming from a sickly faimly, but neither do I have the super genes that live healthly till 90s. It's more like things start to break down, or need replacement/surgery, in the 55-65 range, which I guess is pretty normal overall. The dilemma has now become: retire earlier with a decent stash, but run the risk of getting sick 5-10 years out without inexpensive coverage options, or retire later, have a bigger stash, but have to suffer more years at work and leave less years to enjoy before the body needs some major repair work.
So what's your plan?