Tami Baker Senior Insurance Specialist

08/18/2026

We all hate all these spam texts. Hopefully this helps?

📱 Apple moved the setting and renamed it. It is now Settings, then Apps, then Messages, then Screen Unknown Senders. On older iPhones it was Settings, then Messages, then Filter Unknown Senders, which is why some people could not find it.

The core point has not changed. Forward the spam text to 7726, which spells SPAM on a keypad, and it goes straight to your carrier's security team for investigation and network-wide blocking. It is free and takes seconds.

Here is the part the first version got too simple. STOP is not always the wrong move. Federal law requires legitimate companies to honor opt-out requests, and reputable senders process them immediately.

The distinction is whether you ever signed up. A store you gave your number to has to stop when you say stop. A scammer has no opt-out system at all, so your reply does nothing except confirm that a human reads that number.

If you would rather not screen every unknown sender, there is a middle option. Tap Report Junk at the bottom of an individual thread and deal with them one at a time.

All three major carriers offer free blocking apps: ActiveArmor from AT&T, Scam Shield from T-Mobile, and Call Filter from Verizon.

Wrong number texts are not accidents. They are a documented lead-in to investment fraud, where someone builds rapport over days or weeks before the pitch arrives.

And if a text claims to be from your bank or a government agency, look up the number independently rather than using anything printed inside the message.

Which type is hitting your phone hardest right now, the fake package alerts or the wrong number openers?

P.S. Once a week, I email the best money article I read, with my take on this week's top Facebook posts and what's new on the Ways to Wealth blog. It's free, and you can sign up on the Ways to Wealth home page.

R.J. Weiss, CFP®



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/09/2026

📱 Your television takes a snapshot of the screen every half second, identifies what is on it, and reports that back to its advertising partners.

The feature is called automatic content recognition, and every major brand ships it turned on.

Samsung calls it Viewing Information Services, LG calls it Live Plus, and Vizio calls it Viewing Data, which is a good example of how these switches stay hidden in plain sight.

Your car is the one most people have never considered. The FTC finalized an order this January against GM and OnStar for collecting location and driving-behavior data and selling it to two data brokers that supply insurers.

California settled a separate case with GM in May for $12.75 million, and the state's own filing put GM's nationwide revenue from those sales at roughly $20 million between 2020 and 2024.

On your phone, the switch is Tracking on an iPhone and the advertising ID on Android, and deleting that ID takes about fifteen seconds.

The credit bureaus have run a federally mandated opt-out since 2005, which removes you from the prescreened offer lists for five years, or permanently by mail.

The newest one is California's DROP, a free state-run platform where a single verified request now reaches more than 500 registered data brokers, and their deletion obligations started on August 1.

Here is the honest limit on all of it: most of these switches stop the selling, not the collecting.

Your TV still knows what you watched, and the streaming apps running on it keep their own records regardless of what the television's setting says.

Which of these ten did you already know about, and which one is news?



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/08/2026

🔒 Federal law caps what you can lose to credit card fraud at $50, and many issuers waive even that.

Your debit card works on a clock instead of a flat cap.

Report a lost or stolen debit card inside two business days and your liability stops at $50.

After that it can rise to $500, and transfers that happen more than 60 days after the statement was sent can add still more on top.

A credit freeze is free at all three bureaus, and an online or phone request has to be placed within one business day and lifted within one hour.

A fraud alert is also free, now lasts a full year instead of 90 days, and telling one bureau notifies the other two.

All three bureaus currently give a free report every seven days, though the law itself guarantees one a year from each.

You can also pull your name off the prescreened lists the bureaus sell, for five years online or by phone, or permanently with a signed form.

What a freeze will not do is stop fraudulent charges on the cards already in your wallet, which is why the two card rules matter more day to day.

Which of these six have you actually used?

P.S. Once a week, I email the best money article I read, with my take on this week's top Facebook posts and what's new on the Ways to Wealth blog. It's free, and you can sign up on the Ways to Wealth home page.

R.J. Weiss, CFP®



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/07/2026

📋 When a spouse dies, grief and paperwork arrive together, and this is the list nobody can think of in the moment, so it exists to be saved now.

Before any calls: get 10 to 12 certified death certificates from the funeral home, because nearly every call below will ask for one.

The funeral home typically reports the death to Social Security for you, so confirm they did, then call Social Security yourself about the survivor benefit and the $255 lump-sum death payment.

Life insurers come next, including old employer group policies, then pension and 401(k) custodians for survivor elections and spousal rollover options, the employer for final pay and benefits, and the banks to retitle joint accounts.

Call the three credit bureaus for a deceased alert, which blocks identity theft of the dead, then Medicare and health insurers to end coverage and premiums, and home and auto insurers so coverage stays valid while titles change.

If they served, call the VA about burial benefits and survivor payments, then the estate attorney or county probate office with the will in hand, and finally the DMV and voter registration.

One warning that prevents a scare: Social Security is not payable for the month of death, so a payment received for that month must be returned, and banks often pull it back automatically.

And one non-call: beyond this list, make no big money moves for a year, because the first 30 days are for the calls and the big decisions deserve a clearer year.

Who helped you most with this list when you needed it, or what would you add?

P.S. Once a week, I email the best money article I read, with my take on this week's top Facebook posts and what's new on the Ways to Wealth blog. It's free, and you can sign up on the Ways to Wealth home page.

R.J. Weiss, CFP®



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/07/2026

Good advice

🧱 Federal law bars nursing homes from requiring a family member's personal guarantee of payment as a condition of admission.

Signing as the "responsible party" or "guarantor" without limiting language can be read as agreeing to pay the facility from your own pocket, and facilities have sued adult children on exactly that signature.

The protection is the Nursing Home Reform Act, which lets a facility ask someone with legal access to the resident's money to sign in that role, but never to make a personal guarantee the price of the bed.

The fix takes ten seconds: sign only in your representative capacity, as in "Jane Smith, as agent for Robert Smith."

That commits you to paying bills from your parent's funds you control, never from your own savings.

You are also allowed to take the packet home to read, and to cross out guarantee language before signing, no matter how the admission office frames the timeline.

An elder law attorney reviewing the packet before admission day is one of the cheaper hours a family can buy.

Has anyone in your family been handed one of these packets?

P.S. Once a week, I email the best money article I read, with my take on this week's top Facebook posts and what's new on the Ways to Wealth blog. It's free, and you can sign up on the Ways to Wealth home page.

R.J. Weiss, CFP®



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/02/2026

You should know these at any age.

📊 The standard Part B premium in 2026 is $202.90 per month. That covers doctor visits, outpatient procedures, lab work, and preventive services. Part A covers hospital stays and is premium-free for anyone with 40 quarters of work history.

Part C (Medicare Advantage) bundles A, B, and usually D into one private plan. The tradeoff is a provider network. Original Medicare has no network restrictions but also no annual out-of-pocket cap without a Medigap supplement.

IRMAA adds a surcharge to Parts B and D if your modified adjusted gross income exceeds $109,000 (single) or $218,000 (joint). The surcharge is based on your tax return from two years prior. In 2026, that means your 2024 income determines the surcharge.

The Initial Enrollment Period is 7 months centered on your 65th birthday. If you have employer coverage that qualifies as creditable, you can delay without penalty. If it does not qualify, you may owe a permanent late enrollment penalty of 10% per year of delay on Part B.

Medigap plans are only available during the 6-month open enrollment window that starts when you turn 65 and enroll in Part B. After that window closes, insurers can deny coverage or charge more based on health history in most states.

One common confusion from the comments on the original: Part D plans vary by zip code and formulary. A plan that covers one medication may not cover another. Checking the plan formulary before enrolling matters more than the monthly premium.

08/01/2026

This is something that confuses a lot of people. When one spouse passes, the living spouse gets only the larger of the 2 Social Security checks.

📊 Social Security pays a surviving spouse the higher of the two benefits, not both combined.

In the example above, a household collecting $4,200 a month drops to $2,800 when the higher earner dies, a 33% cut while most fixed costs stay the same.

If the survivor was already drawing their own smaller benefit, that check does not stack on top, since Social Security adds only the amount that brings them up to the higher figure.

The survivor usually has to contact Social Security to start it, because it is not always switched over automatically.

Survivor benefits can begin as early as 60, though claiming before survivor full retirement age reduces them by up to 28.5%.

If the deceased had claimed early, the survivor amount is usually lower too, though the widow's limit sets a floor of 82.5% of the deceased's full benefit.

Remarrying after age 60 does not cost you a survivor benefit, and a surviving divorced spouse can qualify if the marriage lasted at least 10 years.

The drop is predictable, which is why the higher earner's claiming age and a couple's savings both matter so much for whoever outlives the other.

Where would your household land if one check went away?



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/01/2026

A lot of the Medicare Advantage policies in FL do have at least some coverage for Out of the Country as well as some of the Medicare Supplements.

⚖️ You pay $217 a day for skilled nursing care on days 21 through 100, and Medicare covers up to 100 days per benefit period, not per year.

After day 100, you pay everything.

Custodial care, the everyday help most families actually end up needing, is not covered at all: bathing, dressing, meals, supervision.

That gap is the largest uninsured risk in most retirement plans, and it is one of eight things Original Medicare leaves out.

The other seven are routine dental, hearing aids, routine vision, care outside the United States, routine foot care, cosmetic surgery, and round-the-clock care at home.

Several carry narrow exceptions worth knowing: a diagnostic hearing test ordered by a doctor is covered, one pair of glasses after cataract surgery is covered, foot care becomes covered when a medical condition makes it necessary, and cosmetic surgery is covered for reconstruction after an injury or a mastectomy.

Medigap is the piece people misread most often, because it mainly covers Original Medicare's deductibles and coinsurance rather than adding most of these benefits, though some Medigap plans do cover limited foreign travel emergencies.

Some Medicare Advantage plans add dental, vision, and hearing benefits, with limits that vary from plan to plan.

The rest is a separate purchase: a dental policy, a travel medical policy, long-term care insurance, or eventually Medicaid once assets are spent down.

Which of these eight surprised you the most, or caught you off guard when a bill showed up?



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

08/01/2026

The COLA & Part B increase are only projections at this time but, the Pat D information in accurate.

⏳ A projected 3.8% cost of living adjustment would add about $79 a month to the average Social Security check in 2027.

That would take the average retired worker benefit from $2,082.76 to roughly $2,161.90, and it is a full point above the 2.8% adjustment that took effect this year.

Medicare usually claws part of that raise back, because Part B premiums come straight out of the check. Next year it takes less than usual.

The 2026 Medicare Trustees Report projects the standard Part B premium at $209.50, up 3.3% from $202.90. That is slower than the raise itself, which is not how the last few years have gone.

The bigger increase is the Part D drug deductible, and that one is already final at $700 for 2027, up $85 from $615. The Part D out of pocket cap is final too, moving from $2,100 to $2,400.

One caution worth naming: only those two Part D figures are settled. The COLA forecast comes from The Senior Citizens League and reflects inflation through June, while the official number depends on July, August, and September CPI-W and gets announced October 14. CMS confirms the Part A and Part B figures in November.

Anyone already paying an IRMAA surcharge should expect their own number to move too, since the surcharge tiers are set as fixed multiples of the standard premium.

And if you are still working, none of this touches you yet. The COLA applies to benefits already being paid.

Are your Medicare costs climbing faster than your COLA, or has it evened out for you lately?



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*

07/31/2026

⏳ Every retirement estimate on your Social Security Statement, at 62, at 67, and at 70, assumes you keep earning the amount shown on the Statement until the age you claim.

That assumption is printed on the page, and almost nobody reads it.

It applies to the retirement numbers only, since the disability figure is what you would receive if disability began now, and the survivor figures are what your family would receive if you died this year.

The assumption matters most for anyone who plans to stop working before they claim.

Retire at 60 and claim at 67, and those seven years are treated as zero-earning years in the benefit calculation.

Benefits are based on your highest 35 years of indexed earnings, so what that costs you depends on the record you already have.

With 35 high-earning years already recorded, stopping early may have little effect, while with fewer than 35 years each missing year adds a zero to the calculation.

Even at 35 years, another high year can still help, because it replaces a lower one in the average.

While you are in there, audit the earnings record for missing years, since the ordinary correction deadline is 3 years, 3 months and 15 days after the year the wages were paid, although exceptions apply.

The section almost nobody scrolls to is the survivor block, where a spouse at survivor full retirement age can receive up to 100 percent and an eligible child 75 percent, though the family maximum can reduce what each person actually gets.

When did you last open your Statement and read past the first number?



*The content shared here is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not personalized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation.*