You sign up for an Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace exchange health policy sometime before you turn 65 - and then you mistakenly stay there past age 65, when by law you need to switch to Medicare. That results in costly lifetime late-enrollment penalties on your Medicare premiums.

It happens like clockwork each year. The trustees of Social Security and Medicare issue their annual reports on the programs’ health, and doomsayers start talking about insolvency and bankruptcy.

Fewer Americans are asking Social Security to "show me the money" as soon as possible.

In September, the federal government will mail a handbook on Medicare enrollment to 43 million households. "Medicare & You" is an important, authoritative source on a wide array of plan options for the annual enrollment period that runs from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7, and it has been mailed out to beneficiaries each year since 1999.

(The writer is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Hey, Ben Carson - how about a field trip to Vermont?

Americans are all living longer, so it only makes sense to push back the eligibility age for Social Security - right?

The long-running fight to protect retirement savers from conflicted investing advice shifted to a new battleground this week, and the first salvo was not promising.

The question could become important if the financial services industry wins its high-stakes legal and political battles to dismantle the federal fiduciary rule governing advice to retirement investors.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters)