Healthcare.gov 2020 Tips to save on health insurance

In this video I'm gonna talk about six tips to help you save money on healthcare gov for 2020 now it doesn't matter if you're a w-2 employee or an independent contractor who's a small business owner it doesn't matter I'm gonna show you a bunch of ways that you can save a ton of money on your health insurance but before we do if this is your first time at our channel or you haven't subscribed click on the subscribe button at the bottom my name is Travis Sickle CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER helping you reach your financial goals. So I'm gonna go over these six tips now I don't see these tips being talked about enough at the value of you saving money on the healthcare.gov website but these are really simple ways that you should be looking at the healthcare.gov website to make sure that you're paying the least amount and getting the right amount of coverage now the first thing that you may or may not have heard of is the premium tax credit it's talked about quite a bit as a way to reduce your premiums by getting a subsidy but there's also another component that is the cost-sharing reduction so there's really two parts to saving money with the healthcare.gov website the premium tax credit and the

cost-sharing reduction so I'm gonna talk about that cost-sharing reduction for a moment if your income is below a certain threshold you might actually get an additional assistance by paying for things like copay or emergency care so I'm going to pull them up on the screen and show you two of the exact same plans one applied to the subsidy the cost reduction subsidy and the other not applying the cost-sharing subsidy so I'm going to show you right now what it looks like if you have the cost-sharing subsidy and what that plan looks like versus one without it and they're actually the same plan it just one's a little bit cheaper than the other and I'm gonna show you how to navigate it as we move forward so just follow along with us I'm gonna pull it up on the screen so the first plan that we're looking here is one that's in my area so this is a plan that I can actually personally qualify for myself and my family now if you're looking at that premium you're saying wow that's a really high premium remember I have a family of 5 right now and soon to be a family of 6 so when we're taking a look at this that number is only for a

family of five so don't fall out of your seat if you're looking at this thinking wow all these premiums are really high I'm just comparing these two plans so this plan what I want to bring your attention to is the middle of middle of this page where we're looking at the emergency care and we're looking at generic drugs generic drugs $22 so it's a copay of $22 for primary care visits that's ten dollars and for a specialist it's $40 now this is with the cost-sharing reduction applied and that's based on your income now if we quickly flip over to one that's the same exact plan look at that it's still the blue select silver 1443 but all the costs are completely different the emergency's a little bit higher at $650 the generic drugs jumps to $35 the primary goes up 13 times to a $130 and then the specialist is almost triple at $110 so a little I guess I'm a little bit more than double now that

is applying the cost-sharing reduction and you might be thinking well it doesn't matter like if I either a qualify for it or I don't right well not exactly so here's the first way that you can figure it out with the income levels in savings calculator so just go ahead and enter in how many people in your household and then go ahead and put what state you're in so we're in the state of Florida but obviously put your state and then put your income range now these income ranges are really important so for a family of five that's what this is based on and all these income thresholds will change based on your household size and where you live so poverty line is that first level right there so it's below $30,170 now a lot of this math is based on between 100 - 400% of that number now that doesn't mean anything to you at this point I'm just explaining what that is so if we choose this and we say okay we're gonna make below $120,680 but over $75,425 we click Submit and it's going to say you qualify because if it's not above that that top threshold of $120,680 then you're going to qualify for a family of

5 living in the state of Florida now if you put it as a single individual that number is going to or that range is going to be completely different as you can see it's $12,490 or below is the poverty line of 100% and it goes up to 400% up $49,960 now here's what's really important to understand about this math it's not how much you're earning day one so if you say I have a job that pays me $50,000 what's really important to understand that your your earnings your revenue your gross amount might be $50,000 but if you're saving into things like your 401k it's lower than that as far as this calculator is concerned and as far as qualifying for these dollars is concerned so if you can get yourself below these threshold by saving additional dollars or other strategies I'm gonna talk about in a minute and you can reduce your your taxable income first and second you can qualify for some of these subsidies or the cost-sharing reduction plan so here's

look really interesting about the cost-sharing reduction and these estimates it's based on an estimate it's not based on what happened last year it's based on what you think is going to happen moving forward so yes the w-2 income that set in stone for the most part so that estimate is going to be entered in but your 1099 or your contractor which is contract or work that is all subjective we don't know if you're gonna earn that amount of money so if you're a YouTube creator you drive for uber or lyft or you have a short-term rental that all fluctuates quite a bit and if you're close to one of these thresholds you should look a little closer so you make sure that you're getting your estimate correct now what does that really mean that means if you're above the estimate because you estimated that you were going to earn too much and then all of a sudden you fall below that threshold they're not going to go back and give you the difference between the higher plan and the lower plan on all those cost-sharing deductibles so you're not going to have any of that that is not something that they're going to go back and give you the money back and on the flip side if you estimated too low and then you went

and corrected it later on you're not gonna have to pay additional dollars into it so you want to make sure that you're as accurate as possible yes but according to the healthcare.gov website and this is what it says it says just do your best to make a realistic estimate and be prepared to update it when it changes it tells you right there it's telling you just to do your best so as you earn more money or as it might actually starts to come through then you know you've made it go ahead and make that adjustment so if at that point you're projected to make over that threshold or whatever that threshold was for your particular plan or your particular area and your household size all that information that goes into it then you can make that adjustment so what that means is tip number three is understand the difference between what I talked about before your revenue your a gross the amount that you earn and the amount that's actually going to be taxable when it comes to in this case your modified adjusted gross income but that is the amount of money that you're actually earning and not putting into retirement

plans or expenses for a small business so you want to understand the difference in those two so if you're looking at some of these numbers and immediately saying well hey I make over I'm a family of five and I make $130,000 let's say well if that's the case by you saving an additional $10,000 you might qualify for more of the subsidies in the premium tax credits so you want to take a little bit closer look to see what flexibility you have there understand the difference between revenue and income now tip number four we've already said a few times it's saving additional dollars into your 401k but I want to point this out because it's talked about on so many other videos the Roth IRA versus the 401k or 403b TSP any of the pre-tax accounts that you have everyone always talks about put it into the Roth IRA it's gonna grow tax-free it's the best of savings account possible for your future it has all this flexibility in it and that's great but guess what it doesn't reduce your overall tax liability and this is a great example of

why you would want to use the 401k in this instance to reduce your taxable income because this is more like a use or lose it either you get the premium tax credit or you don't or you get the cost-sharing subsidy or you don't so you really want to look proactively at what you can put into your retirement accounts to reduce your overall tax liability to qualify for some of these benefits because they're available to you tip number five it's a little more technical and that is section 179 you might be thinking whoa section 179 that's tax code I don't know what that is and you're running away but it's huge if you understand how it works for the 2017 tax cuts and Jobs Act this is what happened section 179 was opened up so we can actually expense things like a camera so if you're a youtuber and you're going or thinking about going out and buying a camera maybe this is a great time to look at where your income is going to fall or are you going to make that purchase now or next year now if you make it now then you can section 179 it meaning you can take it as an

expense and you don't have to spread out that cost over many years what that does is it's going to reduce your overall income because it's a business expense so you're helping reduce your taxable income so if you're going through this and you're thinking well hey I'm pretty close so I'm gonna anticipate buying some camera gear or buying some other assets that I can depreciate immediately section 179 could be a huge opportunity for you and this goes with all different industries it's just a matter of what the item is and whether or not you can actually apply it to section 179 in tip number six is easiest one of them all get a plan that works for you the high deductible plans have high deductibles so something that were actually happen to you you might be stuck with a huge hospital bill so you really want to make sure that you're not just getting the cheapest plan you want to get a plan that's appropriate for your lifestyle and everything that you're doing and you have to ask yourself the question what would happen if you ended up in the emergency room would you be able to

cover those costs do you need to boost your cash reserve do you need to do something different in your financial life to make sure that you're protected because it could be a huge liability now lure of having an HSA type of account where you can save additional money pre-tax and you have this low premium might sound really great but if something were to happen to you it could be way more expensive than going with a little bit better coverage plan that has a little bit higher premium to it so you really want to consider that and that is how you can save a bunch of money on the healthcare.gov website for 2020 hope you get the right plan at a reasonable price and if you've enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe you leave your comments down at the bottom