Retire With Confidence2026 Edition

A 295-page reference on the decisions that come at you between 62 and 75 — Medicare, Social Security, income, taxes and long-term care — written by the licensed agent who runs this site. It is 295 pages, it is free, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.

Why we are giving it away

The rest of this site does one thing well: it shows what Medigap carriers have filed with state regulators, so you can see what happened to the block your policy sits in. That answers a narrow question. The book answers the wider one — the decisions that arrive between 62 and 75, most of which have deadlines, and several of which are expensive to get wrong in ways nobody tells you about until later.

What is in it

• Medicare: your foundation. The four parts, the seven-month enrollment window, what Medicare covers and the gaps it leaves, Original Medicare against Medicare Advantage, Medigap, and Part D.
• IRMAA and the income traps. The surcharge nobody warns you about, the late-enrollment penalties that never end, and how selling a house or converting an IRA can raise your Medicare premium two years later.
• Social Security. How the benefit is calculated, claiming at 62 against 67 against 70, spousal and survivor benefits, the earnings test, and how much of it is taxed.
• Retirement income planning. Building the income stack, the tax difference between a 401(k), an IRA and a Roth, life insurance in retirement, and where you live changing what you keep.
• Protecting what you have built. Long-term care and the hybrid policies that return your money, where you will live, caring for aging parents, and final expense planning.
• Future-proofing, and the reference material. The annual Medicare review, the decision timeline from 59½ to 75+, a glossary of 60+ terms, a 2026 quick-reference card, and what changed for 2026.

Forty-seven chapters, plus a glossary, a 2026 quick-reference card and a what-changed summary. Each chapter stands alone, so you can go straight to the one that is worrying you.

Who wrote it

Darin Weidauer — Gerontologist, 22-year U.S. Air Force veteran, independent insurance agent and Registered Social Security Analyst. He is the licensed agent behind this site, and he is independent, which means he is appointed with a number of carriers rather than employed by one. That is worth knowing before you read anything he has written about insurance, so it is on the about page as well.

What happens when you ask for it

We email it. Nothing downloads from this page — check your inbox, and your spam folder if it has not arrived within a few minutes.

The second checkbox on the form is optional and unticked by default. Leave it that way and you get the book and nothing else — no call, no follow-up sequence. Tick it only if you actually want to talk to somebody.