The Cost of Doing Nothing

Why a good financial plan still needs periodic inspection

One of the more dangerous phrases in financial planning is, “We already took care of that.”

Sometimes that means the work really is finished. More often, it means we made a good decision three, five, or ten years ago and quietly assumed the answer would remain good forever. Unfortunately, insurance companies, tax laws, Medicare plans, investment markets, family circumstances and our own spending habits have not agreed to remain frozen in place for our convenience.

Medicare Part D is giving us a particularly good example of this right now.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently announced that the average monthly premium for a stand-alone Medicare Part D prescription drug plan is projected to increase by less than $1 in 2027, from $35.09 to about $36.00.1 Read that headline by itself and there does not appear to be much to see here. Premiums are basically stable. Carry on.

But averages can hide a remarkable amount of trouble.

KFF took a closer look at the individual plans underneath that average and found a much more uneven picture. The average Medicare beneficiary will have nine stand-alone prescription drug plans available in 2027, down from 11 in 2026 and marking the fourth consecutive year that the average number of available plans has declined.²

Many people will see relatively small premium changes if they keep their current coverage. Others will not.

One of the more striking examples involves the AARP Medicare Rx Preferred plan. According to KFF’s analysis of CMS data, people remaining in that plan will face monthly premium increases of at least $50 in every state and Washington, D.C. In 37 states, the increase exceeds $75 per month, and in four states it exceeds $100.² Meanwhile, approximately four million people without the low-income subsidy who paid no premium for their stand-alone Part D coverage in 2026 will have to pay a premium in 2027 because no zero-premium stand-alone plans will be available to that group.²

This does not mean those plans are necessarily “bad,” nor does it mean everyone should automatically switch. Premium is only one piece of the puzzle.

Prescription coverage can change. A medication can move to another tier. Deductibles and copays can move. The maximum Part D deductible itself rises from $615 in 2026 to $700 in 2027.³ Sometimes paying a higher premium can still produce a lower total annual cost because the prescriptions you actually take are covered more favorably.

That is really the point.

Last year’s good decision does not automatically remain this year’s good decision.

And yet, human beings are remarkably good at leaving things alone once we have checked them off the list. KFF analyzed the 2022 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey and found that 69% of Medicare beneficiaries did not compare their coverage with other available Medicare options during the 2021 open-enrollment period. Among people with stand-alone Part D plans, 69% did not compare their drug coverage with competing drug plans.⁴

I understand why. Comparison shopping is tedious. Nobody wakes up on a Saturday morning excited to make coffee and compare prescription formularies.

If something worked last year, leaving it alone feels perfectly rational.

But sometimes there is a price attached to inertia.

That Medicare example is useful because the same thing happens throughout a financial plan. A lot of financial planning is not about discovering some brilliant new strategy. It is simply about periodically opening the hood and making sure something that used to make sense still does.

Homeowners and auto insurance are good examples. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recommends reviewing insurance coverage annually and when circumstances change.⁵ Your home may be worth more. More importantly, it may cost considerably more to rebuild. Cars change, liability exposure changes and insurers change their pricing. I am not interested in chasing the cheapest insurance policy every twelve months, but I am interested in making sure the household periodically reviews whether it is paying a reasonable price for the right coverage, with an appropriately licensed insurance professional when plan or policy advice is needed.

Investment risk deserves the same treatment. Someone’s willingness and ability to tolerate risk at 55 may look very different at 65. The portfolio that made perfect sense while accumulating money can deserve another look once withdrawals begin, a business is sold, a major purchase approaches or the portfolio itself has grown significantly. I do not want someone’s investment strategy permanently anchored to a questionnaire they filled out years ago and barely remember taking.

Then there are taxes, where standing still can be especially expensive. Tax brackets, deductions, contribution limits and other thresholds change over time, and federal tax legislation can alter planning opportunities altogether. The IRS adjusts dozens of tax provisions for inflation each year, while recent legislation has also changed a number of individual deductions and other provisions.⁶ That can change the math around Roth conversions, charitable giving, capital gains, retirement contributions and where we take income from in retirement.

Spending should be revisited too. Most retirement plans begin with an estimate of what life costs, but eventually we get something better than an estimate: actual life. Maybe travel spending is higher than expected. Maybe the mortgage disappeared and expenses fell. Maybe you’re helping children or grandchildren more than anticipated. Maybe healthcare has become a bigger piece of the budget. A financial plan should adapt to the household you are actually living in, not the one we projected five years ago.

Owner’s death. Under current law, many non-spouse beneficiaries are subject to a 10-year distribution rule, while spouses and certain other eligible beneficiaries may receive different treatment depending on the beneficiary and the account owner’s circumstances.⁷

None of this means we should spend our lives constantly tinkering with a financial plan. Quite the opposite.

Good planning should create enough confidence that most days you can ignore your finances and go live your life.

But ignoring something and periodically inspecting it are very different things.

What I want to continue doing for clients is creating a rhythm around those financial-planning inspections. We should not change something simply because another year has passed. We should, however, periodically force ourselves to ask whether the assumptions underneath the plan are still true.

Do our Medicare costs and assumptions still reflect the coverage we actually have, and is it time to compare available options with an appropriately licensed Medicare professional? Are we paying the right amount for insurance? Does the portfolio still fit the job we need it to do? Has tax law created an opportunity we are missing? Does our projected spending resemble reality? Would our assets still go where we want them to go if something happened tomorrow?

None of those questions is particularly exciting. There is no cocktail-party story about the heroic afternoon when you reviewed your homeowners policy.