Skip to main content

Sound Advice: January 22, 2025

 Can you get Medicaid if you have substantial assets?

Here are some things to keep in mind:

To qualify for Medicaid while having assets, you can employ several strategies:

  1. Understand asset limits: Most states allow individuals to have up to $2,000 in countable assets ($4,000 for married couples)

Your home, up to a value of $500,000 or $750,000 depending on the state, is generally exempt

  1. Spend down assets: Reduce countable assets by spending them on noncountable items such as home modifications, prepaying funeral expenses or paying off debt
  1. Create a Medicaid Trust: Transfer assets to a properly designed trust to remove them from your estate while potentially still receiving income from those assets
  1. Utilize Community Spouse Resource Allowance (CSRA): If only one spouse is applying, the nonapplicant spouse may keep up to $157,920 in assets in most states
  1. Consider Medically Needy Medicaid: In 32 states and Washington D.C., you may qualify if your medical expenses consume most of your income
  1. Use Miller Trusts or Qualified Income Trusts (QITs): These can help manage excess income in some states
  1. Seek professional help: Consult a Medicaid Planning Professional to explore strategies for becoming Medicaid-eligible while protecting your assets

Remember that Medicaid has a 5-year look-back period, so asset transfers must be done carefully and well in advance of applying

N. Russell Wayne

Weston, CT  06883

 

203-895-8877

www.soundasset.blogspot.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sound Advice: March 10, 2021

The ABCs of Stock Picking After decades of analyzing stocks (and funds) and investing for clients, I'm happy to share in plain English what's involved, what works, and what doesn't.  Keep in mind the reality that successful stock picking is an effort to maintain a good batting average. In baseball, a batting average of .300 or better is considered quite good.  With stock picking, you need to do better than .600, which means you have many more winners than losers. No one gets it right all of the time.  It's not even close.  Wall Street shops all have their recommended lists and the financial media regularly hawk 10 stocks to buy now. Following that road usually is a direct route to disaster.  Don't be tempted. Let's begin with the big picture: The stock market goes up and down over time, but the long-term trend is up.  When there's a rally under way, everyone feels like a genius.  When the market hits an air pocket, though, with few exception...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sound Advice: January 3, 2025

2025 Market Forecasts: Stupidity Taken To An Extreme   If you know anything about stock market performance, you can only gag at the nonsense “esteemed forecasters” are now putting forth about the prospective path of stocks in the year ahead.   Our cousins in the UK would call this rubbish.   I would not be as kind. Leading the Ship of Fools is the forecast from the Chief Investment Strategist at Oppenheimer who is looking for a year-end 2025 level for the Standard & Poor’s Index of 7,100, a whopping 21% increase from the most recent standing.   Indeed, most of these folks are looking for double-digit gains.   Only two expect stocks to weaken. In the last 30 years, the market has risen by more than 20% only 15 times.   The exceptional span during that time was 1996-1999, which accounted for four of those jumps.   What followed in 2000 through 2002 was the polar opposite: 2000:      -9.1% 2001:     -11.9% ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sound Advice: June 17, 2020

Rock and a Hard Place Regardless of your age, impressions from childhood linger.  As the first days of summer approach, we all remember the feeling that accompanied the end of a school year.  Yet as much as many of us would like to believe we again have the summertime freedom to do as we wish, the reality is quite the opposite. Although months of confinement and limitations on social interaction have increased our personal discomfort and severely impacted the business community, our current situation is not analogous to the end of any school year.  It’s quite the opposite. There is every reason to continue wearing face masks, social distancing, and avoiding close contact with others.  Nothing suggests that we can modify our behavior significantly or resume patterns of daily living we enjoyed only a few months ago. There are no meaningful advances in medical treatments.  At best, there are attempts to combine different approaches...
Post a Comment
Read more