The Wise Senior's Guide

The calculators on this site answer one question at a time. A book can do something a calculator cannot: put the decisions in order, explain what each one costs, and stay on the table beside the letters and the forms until it is over. That is what this series is meant to be.

Nothing on this shelf is published yet.

There is nothing to buy here and no waiting list that costs you anything. When the first volume is genuinely available, this page will say where to get it. Until then, the free worksheets and current-year figures the book is built around are already on the site.

Volume one

In preparation — not yet published

The Wise Senior's Guide to Medicare Costs & Social Security Timing

The two decisions that set the floor under the rest of your retirement: what Medicare will actually cost you, surcharges included, and when to start Social Security. Written to be read at the kitchen table with a pen, in the order the decisions come at you.

What it covers

What each part of Medicare costs, and which costs are the ones that surprise people
The income surcharge — where it starts, why it is decided by a tax return from two years ago, and what to do when your income has since dropped
Claiming Social Security at 62, at full retirement age, and at 70 — what each choice does to the check, and to a surviving spouse
How the two decisions collide: the year a withdrawal, a Roth conversion, or a home sale quietly raises next year’s Medicare bill
The enrollment windows, in a calendar you can copy onto the wall

Coming next

These three are intentions, not announcements. They are on this page because readers ask what else is coming, and because writing them down in public is how we hold ourselves to the order.

Volume 2 · Planned — not written yet

The Wise Senior's Guide to AI

What these new tools are, what they are useful for, and — first, before anything else — how the same technology is being used against people your age. Voice cloning, fake grandchild calls, and the messages that are now good enough to fool careful people. Large print throughout.

Volume 3 · Planned — not written yet

The Wise Senior's Guide for Caregivers

For the person managing someone else’s care and paperwork, often while holding down a job: what you can and cannot do on their behalf, the documents to get in place early, and how to keep a record that holds up when a decision is challenged.

Volume 4 · Planned — not written yet

The Wise Senior's Guide to Paying for Care

What home care, assisted living, and nursing home care actually cost, what Medicare does and does not pay for, where Medicaid begins, and how families put the money together when the gap is real.

Two promises about how these books are made

Large print, always. Every volume is set at 16 point or larger, in a typeface chosen for reading rather than for a cover, with generous line spacing and margins wide enough to hold a thumb and a pencil note. Not a large-print edition sold separately at a higher price — the only edition. A book about your eyesight-taxing paperwork should not need a magnifying glass.

A new edition every year. Nearly every figure in a book like this expires. Premiums, income thresholds, and benefit amounts are announced in the fall, so each edition is refreshed the week those announcements land and dated on the cover, and the tables inside come from the same verified rule packs that feed the calculators on this site. When you are holding a copy from two years ago, the free figures on the kit page will tell you what has changed since it was printed. How those figures are checked is described in our methodology.

The companion materials are free, and they are ready now

The worksheets, the current-year figure cards, and the checklists that go with volume one do not wait for the book. They are on the free kit page, in print-ready large type, and every book we publish will point back to that page for the year you are actually in.

If you would like to hear when volume one is finished, you can leave an email address on that same page. It is the only thing we will ever ask for, we will not ask for a phone number, and you can stop the emails with one click.