A definitive guide to retirement health-care costs

Paying for health care after leaving the workforce can be costly. Here's what you need to know.

Money.

If you've made it through the five stages of pre-retirement grief (denial > anger > bargaining > strategizing a lottery win > frantically stuffing funds into IRAs to make up for lost time), congratulations! But don't go riding off to Florida or Arizona in search of your tiny dream home just yet.

While we may be conditioned to start saving for the golden years early and often, and even offered incentives like employer-sponsored matches, and retirement-specific savings plans with tax-deferred benefits, less clear is that health care beyond the age of 65 also requires extraordinary planning. Targeted savings figures for post-employment years will vary by person, although an estimate of the number needed to pay for health care in retirement is one-size-fits-many, and it's not small.

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Meredith C. Carroll

Meredith C. Carroll is an Aspen, Colorado-based writer and award-winning op-ed columnist. She contributes regularly to Disney's Babble.com, Mom.me, and The Aspen Times. Her work has also appeared in publications including The Denver Post, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Town & Country, and Condé Nast Traveler. In 2015, Meredith established a line of irreverent greeting cards, Special Oddcasions.