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August 2024 – 7 Lessons Learned from Traveling the United States

by Erik Soderborg |
August 15, 2024
Last we spoke (wrote), my family and I were about to head out on a 48-state road trip.

Well… we made it out alive, with an adventure of a lifetime.
I’ll get to that later.

The Agenda

  1. Part D Fiasco – Fear Mongering Gone Wrong
  2. Medicare by State
  3. Book Recommendation – Absolutely Magical
  4. Words of Wisdom – What do we need?
Part D Fiasco – The Fear Mongering Needs to Stop

2025 is bringing with it some major changes to how Part D coverage will work.
The biggest shakeup?
Drug coverage will have a Maximum Out of Pocket (MOOP) cost for the first time.
That MOOP is $2,000 and includes any deductibles, copays, and coinsurance you pay towards prescription medications covered by your plan.

It does not include your monthly premiums to have the plan.

Well… when changes are made to Medicare… the downstream effects trickle into non-Medicare situations as well.
Allow me to demonstrate.

Your Company Drug Plan is No Longer Creditable and You Could Face Lifelong Penalties
That headline is pretty scary, right?

There is a Medicare personality out there that probably has the biggest social following in this space.
Enormous channels on YouTube and TikTok.
This person had a video get over a million views talking about this, and what was shared in the video… was completely false.
They haven’t taken the video down, because it’s nice to point to a bunch of views, but they have since released a video trying to correct it.

Creditable Drug Coverage
Millions of people decide to delay signing up for Medicare past 65 because they are covered by a company insurance plan through work.
They are allowed to delay Medicare and they won’t face penalties for Part B with employer coverage.

As long as their employer’s insurance plan has “creditable drug coverage,” the individual can delay Medicare Part D as well and won’t face penalties.

Creditable coverage is defined as equal or better than what you would experience on a Part D drug plan.

Well… with the $2,000 Max Out of Pocket on drug coverage coming to Medicare in 2025, that is NOT how most employer plan drug coverage works.
So the big panic that was spread for no reason is that everyone’s employer plan won’t have creditable drug coverage, therefore…

… anyone who delays getting Part D would be penalized for life, therefore…
… everyone should run and get a Part D plan to avoid the penalty, therefore…
… if you aren’t on Part A, you need to get that in order to get a Part D plan, therefore…
… HSA contributions need to stop…
… and on, and on, and on.

Luckily for you, for me, for every person and company involved in any way with Medicare… this is not the case.

The Truth About Creditable Coverage
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that by improving Part D benefits on Medicare, the intention was not to force employer plans into a non-creditable status.

For 2025, employer group plans will use the same “Creditability Test” that was used for 2024.
This means that there will not be a mass exodus off employer plan coverage.

This means that your HR team isn’t in crisis trying to push everyone onto Medicare.
This means that if your company plan still has creditable drug coverage, you won’t see lifelong penalties for delaying your Medicare enrollment.

If your company plan did have creditable drug coverage in 2024, it likely will in 2025 as well, but make sure you get the notice of creditable coverage letter that your company is legally required to get you before October 15th.

Okay… that’s the end of my Be-Careful-What-You-Watch-And-Listen-To… rant.
Scary things get more views, more shares, and get people to take action.

Medicare By State

The videos of how Medicare works in each state are being released on YouTube.
As of the writing of this newsletter, I have published:

  1. Montana
  2. Idaho
  3. Washington
  4. Oregon
  5. California
  6. Nevada
  7. Utah
  8. Arizona
  9. New Mexico
  10. Oklahoma
  11. Texas (releasing today, so you get the first look)

This is the order of the first 11 states we were able to visit.
The entire release order will be in order of the states we saw rather than alphabetical or size or some other categorization.

If I were to make my living decisions based solely on Medicare rules (which you should not do), I would choose Oregon.
In my opinion, Oregon has the most sensible Medicare rules in the country.

There are other great states (and not so great), but Oregon makes the most sense to me.
­

Book Recommendation
The Complete Harry Potter Series… hear me out…
My wife’s parents came with us on the first 2 weeks of our cross-country road trip.
They had never read the Harry Potter books. They saw the movies, but the books were looked at as being for children.

Well… we forced them into listening to the books on our hours and hours of driving.
And I say “we forced them,” but in reality, after the first few chapters of the first book, it was them forcing us to continue listening.

“Kids! Turn off the iPads! We’re turning on Harry Potter!”

If, in your mind, you’re thinking, “That sounds like something Erik would say to his kids.”
You would be right, however, in this context, that was my father in law saying it to his kid (my wife) and his grandkids.

We would listen to the books, and when we finished one, we’d all watch the movie that corresponded to the book.
By we, I mean all of us.
My kids.
Their parents (Caitlin and yours truly)
Their grandparents (Caitlin’s parents)

It was such a cool way to enjoy the Harry Potter series.
We only got through the 4th book with the in-laws, and the rest of my family finished off the series after we went out on our own, but I love Harry Potter.

When Harry Potter was first coming out, I was about the age of the character Harry as each of the books was released, so it kind of felt like I was growing up with him.
The point is, it is one of the most iconic franchises in the world, and if you haven’t read them, you need to. If you have read them, do it again. It is wonderful.

Caitlin, the kids, my in-laws, and I all got to go to Harry Potter world at Universal Studios in California. Seeing grandparents having the time of their life while their grandkids pick out wands and experience the magic in real life was so fun. And my in-laws understood all the little signs and references all throughout Harry Potter world!

And this hard-back collector case set is pretty cool (I think).
Get it here
­

Words of Wisdom

We got home from our 6-week, 48-state, 13,006 mile road trip two nights ago.
It feels surreal to be back home.
Those 6 weeks went by like a flash, but it also feels like Day 1 was a lifetime ago.

We have an Instagram account that has a bunch of pictures if you’re interested:
Sodas On The Road Instagram

I didn’t have time to keep the travel YouTube channel up to date, but I’m starting to work on the videos of the trip that will be released here:
Sodas On The Road YouTube

Here are the 7 Biggest Lessons I Learned on this trip:

  1. Kids are idiots
    I love my kids. They truly are amazing people who I admire and respect for they are as sisters, brother, friends, and overall humans.
    I feel like I need to get that out of the way, because… while all that is true… it is also true that they are idiots.

    I’m curious if any of you reading have any insight on this.
    My kids are 11, 9, and just turned 6.

    There are moments where they play so well with each other.
    They are helpful.
    They are sweet.
    They console one another and protect each other.

    And then… the other, what I would guess 93% of the time, it’s as if they each believe their sole mission in life is to make the lives of their siblings a living hell.
    Well… as much as that is possible for sub-12-year-olds.

    “Get your toes off me!”
    “Why? Your armrest is my footrest.”
    “Get off!!!”

    “Jared! Your head is blocking my view of the car behind us!”
    “I’m just sitting here!”
    “Get a smaller head then!”

    “DAD! Claire won’t give me her stuffed animal.”
    “Uh… it’s Claire’s though.”
    “Yeah, but I want it!”
    “Why don’t you just use your own, exactly-the-same stuffed animal?”
    “Because I want hers.”
    “Yeah… that’s not going to happen.”
    Commence meltdown

    All of these are real conversations I had to have… in the first day of our trip.

    When do they grow out of this?

  2. Hangry is a real thing
    I’ve always know about the condition of “Hangry.”
    When we are hungry, we all get a little moody.

    But my 11-year-old…
    Oh. My.

    This is the first time we experienced her complete transformation into the entity who hijacks our sweetheart and turns her into a werewolf.

    As you know, we were going through the Harry Potter series and, because of my 11-year-olds hanger issues, we assigned Harry Potter villain names to our family member alter-egos.

    Noel – the 11-year-old – earned the name – Noeldemort.
    Jared – the 9-year-old – was given Dra Dra – after Draco Malfoy.
    Claire – the 6-year-old – is Clairatrix LeStrange
    Mom is MomGonagall
    I got the great name of Daddledore

    The major difference between all of our hangry characters is the 11-year-old.
    Everyone besides her gets a bit quiet. A bit grumpy. A bit lethargic.

    The 11-year-old seems to want to watch the world burn.
    She wants to make everyone else’s day absolutely miserable, with no care for human life.

    We can tell it’s coming on based on her eyebrow level.
    Her eyebrows dip to where they almost hang over her eyeballs in this scowl.
    If she wasn’t such a pain in the neck, it’d be funny.

    Luckily, we found the magical cure of food.
    My wife and I secretly tracked how long the transition from “the world is ending” Noel to “best kid ever” Noel via the food delivery system.

    It took 3 bites.
    Just 3 bites before she was back to her happy, smiling, normal eye-brow-level self.

  3. iPads are the greatest invention ever
    You had it WAY harder than I did when it comes to entertaining your kids on a trip.
    I remember playing the licensed plate game, rainbow cars, and naps.

    My kids have an entire entertainment system with wireless headphones, their favorite episodes of Bluey, and educational games.

    I know I just complained about little devil kids, but for most of the trip, they were absolutely amazing.
    I say the iPads saved us, and in a way they did, but the average daily iPad use was 30 minutes. That’s with an AVERAGE of 5.5 hours per day in the car.

    Our kids were amazing. The iPads were always the treat for good behavior, not the default.

  4. We have too much
    We totally over-packed for this first leg of the trip.
    After 2 weeks, and a chance to drop off the in-laws, we dumped probably half of our clothes and belongings for the rest of the trip because we just didn’t need all that… stuff.

    I’m not wealthy by any stretch, but we live a comfortable life in a house that has more than we could ever need. Spending 6 weeks in hotel rooms made me appreciate how little we really need to have fun as a family.

    Our minivan, 7 days of clothes, simple toiletries, iPads of course  , and the world in front of us to explore was freeing in a way.

  5. Peace of Mind is worth something
    I had 3 major fears during the trip.

    Health issues due to sickness or accident.
    Severe weather issues.
    Car troubles.

    I had some things to help mitigate those happening and, if they did happen, things like AAA, travel insurance, and a great travel agent helped ease my mind so I could enjoy the trip more.

    There are things outside my control, and we would figure them out as they came up, but the peace of mind that came from knowing I’d done everything I could control, and that I had someone (my travel agent) there to handle lodging and itinerary things allowed us all to be more present and less stress.

    A BIG thank you to our travel agent and agency who work much like agents who help with Medicare. Never costs anything and they took care of all of the logistics and online reservations for us.

    ET Family Travel is an unbelievable travel resource if you’re planning a trip either here in the states or international travel.

  6. We are all so different
    I don’t publicly talk about where I live too much. It’s not hard to find out, but it’s not something I tell the world, either.
    I live in Utah, and that’s about as far as I’ll go to define where 

    Utah has a unique culture. One that is, I would argue, different than almost anywhere in the world.
    I absolutely LOVED seeing the different cultures all across the country. And boy… are there different cultures.

    New Orleans is probably as far away from my home culture as anywhere we visited, and even so, it was so cool to be in New Orleans and experience some of the differences.

    We are all so different.
    Where we live impacts who we meet, what education we get, the jobs we take, the weather we fear, the food we eat, the accents and language we use.

    It was just a reminder of how I need to remind myself not to attribute my thoughts and beliefs as being “right” when my perspective is not your perspective.

    So many people want to force topics into Right and Wrong… and there are places to take a stand… but I feel that most of life is an interesting compilation of events where your right – meaning correct – way of doing things and my own correct way of doing similar things, while different, can both be right and neither wrong.

    I don’t know if that makes any sense, but one of my favorite parts of the trip was seeing how other different people tackle similar problems in different ways.

  7. We are all the same
    I acknowledge that the previous point talked about how different we are, but humans are also remarkably similar.

    I think we’ve all had days where we’ve found ourselves in a job we didn’t care for. Or we got good news that made us smile. Or we found someone in our life that made us feel excited for tomorrow.

    It didn’t matter where we went, what nationality, income level, the weather outside, Olympic results, political news, or culture… every person we interacted with had hopes, dreams, fears, and people they cared about. People were trying to find a more pleasant situation for themselves and the people they loved.

    Even though we are all different, take some time to look at the person you don’t like, or don’t care for, or maybe even hate… and try to find something positive that connects the two of you. Something where you can see that person in a different light, realizing, “Hey, in this regard, he or she is just like me.”

I appreciate you making it this far.
You know that in many of my videos I leave secret words at the end of them to see if people made it this far.
Figured I’d try that in the newsletter, too 🙂

The secret key word is Daddledore… or anything related Harry Potter.

Until next month…

Erik

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