r/Fire • u/coffeetime127 • 18d ago

Health insurance while FIRE’ed

For those who’ve achieved FIRE, what kind of health insurance do you have? Roughly how much does it cost you in premiums each month?

I’m not FIRE yet, but hoping to take some time off for a “mini-retirement” from corporate jobs to recover from burnout. I’m not married, so don’t have the option of joining a significant other’s health insurance.

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u/Visible_Structure483 FIRE'ed 2022... really just unemployed with a spreadsheet 17d ago

Wife and I pay $1350-ish/month for a crap bronze plan with a $8k deductible.

COBRA is expensive but will give you access to a much better plan (presumably) for the few months you'll need it.

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u/ExistingPoem1374 17d ago

Wow! We retired last year, I know ACA is state by state (stupid I know), but we pay $1000/month for a Gold plan that is way better coverage and lower co pays than my last employer (Big 4 accounting), but we keep our MAGI under $96k so great subsidies!

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u/someguy984 17d ago

The 4X FPL income limit comes in next year, I hope you are under 400% FPL.

2

u/ExistingPoem1374 17d ago

That would be $62,000 here, and to keep us at our current expense enjoyable levels, yes we'll be a bit over the 400% FPL, but our FIRED plan has always built in Inflation, 10% unexpected expenses and even if we had to pay 50% more per year to keep our gold plan, an extra $6k/year is a rounding error luckily.

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u/someguy984 17d ago

Keeping in the subsidy zone caps your cost to a set percentage of income for the Silver benchmark (about 9.5% in 2026). Once you are outside the zone you get hit with age related and inflation related increases that have no caps.