Retirement: Ultimate Investment Account Ranking: Building Wealth, Tax Advantages, Growth Potential & Inheritance

  • 25th Feb 2025
  • 3 min read

There's a lot of information in this video. It's like a fire-hose. I suspect that people still working might be overwhelmed. For retirees, much more of it will be familiar. You may have to watch this video several times, pausing a rewinding, to get it all into your head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abpFkbIet40

While I was working, I always had the low-deductible health-care insurance plan. So I never really thought about an HSA.

I'm not sure the "final total" is radically different between a traditional 401k and Roth. It probably "depends" on a few things. I got into a Roth IRA relatively late. When Corning temporarily paused the match in 2020, I opted to pause my 401k contributions and started a Roth IRA. When Corning resumed the match, I resumed my 401k contributions, but only to the percent required to get the maximum match. The rest of my previous 401k contributions went into the Roth IRA. My wife has worked part-time for a long time. We established a Roth IRA for her as well, and filled it for the few years we could. My "gut feeling" these days is to lean towards the Roth options because they will simplify things later. Taxes become much more important in retirement, and a Roth reduces the tax burden.

A dental insurance update (again).

I think my MetLife Takealong Dental Insurance experiment is over. Both my wife and I have had dentist appointments this year. Now I can see all the numbers. I made a bad assumption when I started this. I saw that our dentist was not on the MetLife Takealong "in-network" list, but we've had this dentist a long time and my "while employed" MetLife dental insurance paid pretty good. I assumed they would continue to pay "pretty good", but the actual numbers show they're paying about 50% of the costs for regular dental care. What this means is that we're going to pay about $550 more a year than if we just paid the dentist out-of-pocket without any insurance. There are also a few things to consider:

  1. We're paying for the "middle" plan, which has a maximum yearly payout of $1,500 each. This year MetLife will pay $226 each for regular care.

  2. As we get older I think we can expect some expensive dental work at some point.

  3. We could put that $550 per year into some account that we could use for future dental expenses if we drop the insurance.

  4. My wife likes the current dentist, so changing isn't an option for us.

If anyone has a successful retiree dental insurance story, I'd be happy to share it with the group if you send it to me.

If anyone is wondering about vision insurance, I've decided we'll pay out-of-pocket for it. I may give Walmart a try. I hear Costco is a good option if you're a member.