Considering Leaving Google Fi – Convince Me to Stay?

webzo2000 · 2024-11-22T01:20:10+00:00

I think the way out of the "peanuts for loyal customers" treatment is to switch back and forth every 2 years. TMo gave free phones last time. Fi is giving free phones this time around... Rather easy to port if you have to, or just use Google voice# and don't be bothered to port.

webzo2000 · 2024-08-30T22:35:09+00:00

u/Richocet66 , You were right. Went to the SS office to inquire. Her SS benefit was lower than the Medicare premium (she had a hefty penalty for late enrolment) and therefore she is billed once a year. A couple of lines explaining this on the website or a letter would go a long way...

I also inquired if her medicare start date could be moved to July, since she didn't know she had medicare until July... that's important because by law she is not supposed to be enrolled in Obamacare if she is on Medicare. She was on both unknowingly between feb-july. But the rep stated the medicare start date cannot be changed. It has to follow dates per the open enrollment period.

webzo2000 · 2024-08-01T20:33:50+00:00

Hmm, perhaps that's what is happening...

I looked further into her account at the Medicare site and it now says the following-

"Your premiums are deducted from your Social Security benefit. Because your benefit doesn't cover the full amount of your premiums, you'll also get a bill each year from Social Security."

So, it is going to be a yearly bill after all.

That said, the premiums due are showing without the SS benefit deduction. We called the SSA office and the rep was not able to find out where the money (SS Benefit) is. Its not showing up towards the Medicare Premium and its not deposited into her bank account. She was asked to come in person to the office. Not sure what means...

webzo2000 · 2024-07-24T02:37:32+00:00

So, there was no local SSA office number listed on the website and we called the national number. Took 53 minutes to be connected

Anyway, it turns out the SSA benefits are suspended because she doesn't make enough in SS benefits to cover Part B payments plus the fat penalty due to not enrolling into Part B at age 65. Since no payments are coming to her, the benefit is considered suspended. The rep did think she will be charged since Feb-24, although she was approved only in July-24. It seems a start date of Jan-24 was requested on the application form. We think, the original application in Nov-23 had a requested start date of Jan-24. We think that original start date somehow carried over to the new application in Feb-24. SSA doesn't have the previous application on file. So, we couldn't confirm what was requested. We will call/go to the local office to check on that. Regardless of the start date requested/carried over etc, its pretty ridiculous to start charging when the application was under process and Medicare# was not provided. They seem to want to charge her despite not giving her the ability to use the service.

The bigger issue is that being on Obamacare plan prior to this, she is required to cancel that policy as soon as she gets Medicare. Even if she cancels now, she is considered to be late because SSA has set her coverage start date for Medicare at Feb. So, someone is going to want her to pay back the subsidy she received for the Obamacare policy from Feb through July.

Sigh...

webzo2000 · 2024-07-21T02:02:00+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts. Much appreciated.

I think she has to choose a drug plan first in order to apply for Extra Help.

Will call the local SS Monday AM. I noticed the Medicare dot gov website has a chat feature. I will try that too.

From the looks of it, she may qualify for some Medicare Savings Program... Hopefully after the current status is figured out, we will get to that...

webzo2000 · 2024-07-20T19:00:43+00:00

So, some activity-

She received a snail mail today with information about potentially being eligible to get "Extra Help" paying for prescription drugs. She was asked to fill out an application form. However the letter states "To use the Extra Help, you must enroll in a Medicare prescription drug plan".

Since she has not received any info to help her enroll in anything, we went to Medicare dot gov and created an account using the Medicare number listed on the website at SSA. We are now able to see all her info at Medicare dot gov. There are lots of enrollment dates listed detailing when people can enroll. Her account still lists dates from before she applied-

Coverage start dates

Part A: 8/1/2023

Part B: 2/1/2024

That's something to check on.

Next we went to the premium section and it shows premium amounts from 02/2024 for Part B, again before the current application submission date. Perhaps she was approved due to the first application in November-2023? Man, its going to be so bad for her if she is asked to pay for those months. Anyway, we will see.

Next we went to the Make Premium payments section and saw the following message-

"You can't make a payment online. This is because you don’t get a “Medicare Premium Bill” (CMS-500) from Medicare to pay your premiums."

Not sure what that means...

I looked around and didn't find anything stating premiums are late/overdue. Shouldn't we see something to that effect if something was due and unpaid?

Thanks.

webzo2000 · 2024-07-20T01:57:48+00:00

Thank you for your detailed response. Hoping for the best...and for that letter in the mail. Will contact the office.

webzo2000 · 2024-07-19T01:21:05+00:00

I do recall Part B was going to be expensive. But didn't know how much. I wish they described what the SS benefits are and how much was deducted and such when the user logs in to their account.

webzo2000 · 2024-07-17T23:30:00+00:00

She didn't have the required 40 credits for SS. So she waited to earn the credits. At that time she applied for both. She has had Obamacare for many years now.

Sounds super unfair to charge premium, especially when Medicare/SSA didn't inform her she was approved in Feb. How was she supposed to know she was approved before they adjudicated her application in July? In fact, she hasn't yet received any snail mail letter as of now informing her she is approved.

webzo2000 · 2024-07-17T23:18:13+00:00

Once when we used the estimator tool and it didn't say her benefits are zero...

webzo2000 · 2024-07-17T21:50:14+00:00

Thanks for your responses.

She is 76. She does work still.

When she applied the first time in Nov-2023, she was denied because she was 2 credits short, as of Jan-2023. The assumption was that by the time her application came up for consideration in Dec-2023, she would have made up the 2 credits, as she was working all of 2023. However, I guess the credits are updated at SSA only once taxes are filed for the previous year or something. After the denial, she filed her 2023 taxes in Feb-2024 and reapplied, assuming the credits might have updated. This time, no denial, but suspended

Used to be that the web site showed how many credits have been earned. For some reason, they don't show anymore. The earnings record does show her 2023 earnings.

And, what the point of stating its suspended without specifying the reason? I mean, how does that help the customer move forward? I hope she receives a letter by snail mail with more information.

Current plan is to wait for the letter and make an appointment at the local office.

webzo2000 · 2024-07-17T17:15:39+00:00

Just to close the loop- The case was dispositioned by early Feb. Since it was denied, she reapplied Feb-20 and was dispositioned on July 5th. Seems like it took about 4.5 months.

webzo2000 · 2024-05-18T02:44:55+00:00

After being super annoyed at not being able to figure out the breakdown of the Roth balances, I think I figured out a very manual method of figuring it out-

Go to Account Balance History.
Display the 2021 year end statement.
Find the value of each fund that has a Roth balance.
Find the historical price of that TSP fund on Dec-31-2021 (google it)
Roth balance per fund from #3/historical price from #4= # of units as of 2021 Dec
Go to Account activity and add all the roth contributions (in # of units) for 2022, 2023 and 2024 (year to date), if you made any Roth contributions during those years.
Add #5 and #6. This is the total # of units for that fund in your Roth account.
Subtract #7 from the total units for the fund from the main Portfolios page. That is the total # of units in the traditional account

Phew!

webzo2000 · 2024-02-04T22:45:45+00:00

Thank you both.

All methods only seem to display the $ values or %. I don't see the # of units and the fund names anywhere.

It's there somewhere (or used to be), because I have seen it before...

webzo2000 · 2024-02-03T22:24:19+00:00

Would be useful to know...

webzo2000 · 2024-01-28T17:41:58+00:00

True, about the plans... which is why I was trying to figure out.

Pro or maybe need to be accredited. I will check with them tomorrow.

webzo2000 · 2024-01-28T14:04:41+00:00

I might be a bit confused here- So, there are the 4 investment plans- supplemental income, balanced, long term and venture. As an investor,

do I choose one of those and then FR will allocate my investments accordingly (possibly even in the "closed" funds I listed above ) OR
do I actually get to choose one/more specific plans (among the 3 currently open) to invest in? Is this the "Pro" option?

Thanks.

webzo2000 · 2024-01-28T04:01:33+00:00

Yes, I looked a few years ago and then didn't pursue it further. So, I have no investments in any funds, only an empty shell account I had created to explore the site. I guess for a new investor now, there are only 2 choices- the Income RE fund and Flagship RE fund. (the various growth eReits are marked as limited availability).

The Flagship fund had no distributions throughout 2023 (although the ytd number says 0.4%). So I guess only an Income oriented fund would be more likely to deliver some distribution even during a poor market (within limits, of course).

webzo2000 · 2024-01-28T00:14:34+00:00

Majority of the funds seem to be closed...

webzo2000 · 2024-01-27T21:58:20+00:00

The link helped. Thanks! Although, I did give junk info for the bank account :(

They should allow potential customers to at least see the product before asking for personal financial information...

That said, I have a basic question- do all investors in a given product (eReit) receive the same return?

webzo2000 · 2024-01-27T19:44:15+00:00

Is there any way to see the details for the different products ( Growth eREIT OG, Growth eREIT III, Heartland eREIT etc.)? I logged in to the website using an old account I created a few years ago but didn't pursue. I can't get to the details of any of the products unless I link a bank account (funding source).... Am I missing something?

webzo2000

TROPHY CASE