Wednesday

OK. Back to a blogging entry while on a plane. This is the segment from Moline to Denver on our way to The Valley of the Sun. United. We only have about 50 minutes between flights in Denver. Will the clubs make it?

So I am humbled to admit that I have filled out the paperwork and have submitted my claim for Social Security. It was a worse mental adjustment last year when I was more-or-less forced onto Medicare by our group insurance plan at the office when I turned 65. They made it very expensive to stay on private insurance, and it was enroll in Medicare or pay more than twice that rate to the office plan.

With Social Security, you have a choice to take the plan at Full Benefit Age (66 for me), or defer application for up to 4 years, and earn an additional 8% of the basic benefit for each year so deferred. Earning an additional 32% sounds good, particularly when you don't need the money currently, but it's like a 12-year payback when you defer the full benefit for a year. You get into things like life expectancy, solvency of the program, the possibility of political volleyball, and your own health 12 years into the future. Taxes matter too. You pay tax on benefits, and your net after-tax benefit now is probably less than when you're age 80 and fully retired.

(Interestingly, Iowa has passed a provision exempting Social Security benefits from state income taxes beginning in 2015. That's a bonus! I'm guessing that that change is in recognition that Illinois taxes NO retirement income. Iowa likes to tweak Illinois if they can. And Iowa has managed a budget surplus in recent years. We know Illinois is broke. They probably SHOULD tax retirement benefits. Ultimately, they'll either tax everything, or go broke.)

After a bit of soul-searching, I made the choice that I have generally been advising my clients to make in recent years...TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN!!!

I didn't watch much of the National Championship game on Monday night. NBC. Bob Costas. PAC 12. Ohio State. Meh. It's hard for me to root for Ohio State, even if they are in the Big Ten. Urban Meyer can coach. And he can recruit. How many stories will there be going forward about the re-newed rivalry of Ohio State and Michigan? Yada. Yada. Yada. I'm already over it.

(Glad to see that the citizenry of Columbus kept up the holy tradition of bringing out the riot squads to make their championship celebration fully croizened(sp?).)

I have been stymied a bit recently in a move to consolidate my mobile technology. I decided last Fall that I wanted to give up the cellular service on my laptop. I had reached the point, just usage-wise, where paying a separate monthly fee for the laptop just didn't make any sense. Then when I was visiting the fam in NYC at Christmas time, I liked the look of 3.1's MacBook Air. So I called up our Verizon rep and asked her to give me a price on the swap-out of my iPad and laptop monthly services for a MacBook Air with built-in cellular service.

Alas, the MacBook doesn't come with the optional cellular cservice. Nor does a Surface. I was/am a little surprised at that reality. It may be the iPad as my primary mobile blogging device going forward.

2 and I have come up with a hashtag for the European trip proposed for September. She initially had it at #BarcelonaBordeaux. I shortened it up at first to #BarBor. But after a second thought, I'm going with #BarBor15.

And my thought on timing is for our departure to Barcelona on September 17th. That puts our transfer over to Bordeaux on either the 22nd or 23rd. The plan now is to rent our car as we depart Barcelona (rather than take a train) and spend a night somewhere in France on our way over to Bordeaux. That gives me the possibility of a bike ride on one of the TdF hills in the course of that transfer. Departure for home would then likely be on the 29th or 30th.

Loved the FaceTime with 1.01 (and 1.02) yesterday on 1.01's birthday. Those 5 years have gone quickly...but it seems like a long time ago that we had our March Madness FFF in West Des Moines that year. Lots of water under the bridge since then. For all of us, eh? Think about all the places we have each been (and been together). It's a long and impressive list. We have been blest as a family.

Landing shortly in Denver. Will Twitter the results of our connection. More from the road tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

BCOT


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad