As everybody knows, overall healthcare costs have been climbing annually. But tell that to older Americans. Fidelity’s annual survey of estimated healthcare costs in retirement, astoundingly, was unchanged from last year.
That means that a retiree leaving the workforce this year will likely shell out the same amount of money on healthcare throughout retirement as someone who retired in 2022. The after-tax cost for medical expenses throughout retirement for a single, 65-year-old retiree held steady at $157,500 ($315,000 for the average retired couple at the same age), according to the new 2023 Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate, which tracks retiree healthcare expenses annually.
“This is the first time in nearly 10 years that we’ve seen the estimate stay flat,” Hope Manion, senior vice president and chief actuary at Fidelity, told Yahoo Finance. The reason: “the impact of recent policy changes to Medicare coverage on our estimate,” she said.
While the survey is certainly good news, few retirees have budgeted for that kind of outlay and finding ways to grapple with it is non-negotiable. Younger Americans, too, would be wise to hone in and plan now for what’s likely to be one of their biggest living costs when they step out of the workforce. Bottom line? There are things that can be done now to address future costs later in life.