Evening everyone. Uh looks like we still have a couple of minutes and we’re having folks still log on. So we’ll give it a couple of minutes and then we will start pretty close to 6:00. Maybe maybe to give it a minute or so after that. I am not sure what part of the country you are joining us from. It was a uh we had quite the storm event. I was worried there. It knocked out the power and internet to our building here. So, I was worried that it might might have impacted this webinar, but fortunately, we have power and everything’s back on and I just heard back from the boss and everything is good at home. We were out for a couple of hours there. Ah, Florida. I heard Florida got hit right now. I was talking to uh one of our clients out there and they said that it I mean Florida is a big state so I guess it depends where you’re at.
North Carolina. Nice. Miami. Uh she was not in Miami. So
hopefully the weather is nice there. It is it is stormy here and it is warm and it is about 10,000% humidity right now. I think the only ones that are happy are the mosquitoes and maybe the alligators out here. So,
but I can tell you for a fact my dog is certainly not too happy about this. All right, what time do we have? So, I have six o’clock straight up. It looks like maybe we’ll give it one more minute as people are still logging on here.
We’ll still have some time for Q&A at the end.
Okay, I think in the interest of time, we are going to go ahead and start. Hopefully everyone can see the screen with my smiling face on there for the slide. Uh, thanks a lot for joining me for tonight’s webinar, Social Security, Choice of a Lifetime. Uh, if you’re joining for the first time, a special welcome. I’m Michael Marx, certified financial planner and a financial consultant with Alliant Retirement and Investment Services, or AIS for short. I live here in Houston, Texas, and I’ve been doing this for over 30 years now. Um, most of my family has worked I’ve told the story before, but for those of you who have not heard it, most of my family has worked for either United Airlines or Continental since the 1960s. So, I’ve been tied to Alliant longer than I’ve been alive. And for any of those who may not know, uh, Alliant was the original credit union for United Airlines. And, uh, last year they celebrated their 90th anniversary. So, I know some of you may have come through different channels. So whether it’s United or Continental or Google or Tesla or CVS or Susie Orman or many any of the other many segs that we have happy you’re here. So just a quick just before we dive in just a quick housekeeping item. So this evening session and all of our sessions are for educational purposes and includes proprietary material. So to protect both the content and everyone’s privacy that we ask attendees please not record or capture the presentation whether it’s by video, audio, screenshots or AI tools without prior consent. That’s from our lawyers so I’m reading that. Uh we appreciate your understanding and we are glad you’re here. So uh and I am not sure what path brought you to our webinar this evening. Uh so if you join this webinar via an email that you received directly from us um or the marketing department or signed up right on the credit union’s website, I’d like to just take a couple of minutes and talk about AIS. Uh in addition to the weekly webinars that we host, we offer uh full service wealth management and investment planning. Uh we’re fiduciaries. I’m a CFP. Uh we offer a broad variety of investment options ranging from fixed rate guaranteed to as aggressive as you want to be in the market and everywhere in between and maybe even a little bit of life coaching when it comes to your retirement years. Uh we’re actually a very good resource to utilize. Um as I said we offer multiple webinars throughout the week with different presenters. Each of us usually hosts twice a month. Um I’ll do one in the evening and one in the afternoon. So, our goal is really focusing on helping you understand the ins and outs of investing and saving for retirement, becoming much more informed and making more informed decisions. So, I encourage you to take a look at the resources available to you uh at our website. Uh that’s eris.alliancreditun.com.
Um or you can just uh find us right on the upper right hand tab under the investments tab right on the credit union website. So we have our weekly webinars that list there um our podcast invests savvy uh our blog and some other financial resources. So speaking of webinars my next webinar will be called anatomy of a recession. I’ve done these in the past. So, we’ll talk about recessions from a historical perspective and how they might apply to our current situation. Um, and I’ll sprinkle in some of the current events such as like Fed rate cuts or potential hikes. Uh, some tariff impact on some of the shutdowns, maybe some of the government decisions going on out there, the war, etc. that will be in the afternoon um on Wednesday, June 17th, 2:00 p.m. Central and 3:00 Eastern time. I think this is especially relevant and kind of an ongoing topic, right? Because things seem to be changing every day for us here. Uh I usually try to do these a few times a year past just to kind of catch everybody up on what’s kind of going on out there and the pulse. Uh so and then I’m back in the evening talking about Roth conversions. And that’ll be Tuesday, June 30th, uh 6:00 Central, 7:00 Eastern. Um we’ll be talking about Roth conversions and how they might be a part of your long-term retirement tax strategy for your withdrawals. All right. So today’s presentation, it’s focused on how to maximize uh what is for many the single most important monthly paycheck they’ll receive in retirement, their social security benefits, right? Um so there there’s a lot to it. So I want you to come away knowing that social security benefits provide a protected level of income um and they can’t be outlived, right? So a basic understanding of how that works. Um, so before we get into some of the details, uh, it can be complicated as far as social security goes. So you’re not alone if you feel that way. This is a great opportunity to work with your adviser or retirement specialist or someone at Aerys. They can really help you lay out a solid foundation for a solution that works for you under your personal situation. So again, material is it’s not a recommendation to buy or sell any financial product or adopt a particular investment strategy. Uh I would always say that everybody’s situation is unique. So you really want to discuss your specific situation with with your adviser or trusted professional. Um now kind of generally speaking right when you claim it can make a huge difference. So the assumption here is that this person is making about 54,000 a year and their full retirement age is 67. Uh and which most of you who are on this call are probably full retirement age of 67, but we’ll we’ll show you a chart where where yours would be if you are born earlier than 1960. and not already retired. U but as you can see that difference between the earliest you can take social security and the latest you could take it is a 77% difference. Um so obviously maximizing is really hey maybe I should just wait until longer but there’s really a lot of moving parts and things you should consider but that is really kind of the basis of our of our webinar tonight. So, social security our agenda is choice of a lifetime some of the social security basics and guidance built for you. So the uh first one we’ll talk a little bit about. So most people, not most, that’s not true. Many people file at the earliest possible time, right? So these are like these are the percentage of new social security claimants in a calendar year. So as you can see, if full retirement age is sometimes 66 or 67, almost half of claimants file early. Now, that’s kind of significant um because they’ve done studies on this and they found especially in that 63 to 65 category, that second that second bar, a lot of those people didn’t plan on retiring that early, but they were forced out. So, it was either due to health reasons, either their own or having to care for a loved one or something happened with their job where it was eliminated and they were laid off. Um, but they originally wanted to wait until their full retirement age. So, this is really more of kind of a cautionary tale when it comes to retirement planning as part of your whatif scenario. That’s one of the things that we run, right? What happens if you’re forced to retire early versus your goal? um are we still okay to have that little bit of peace in mind? So, so with that, just be mindful of that. If you haven’t built that in your planning, we could certainly help you with that. Uh if you have, you’re ahead of the curve. So, let’s take a look at an example. So, the benefit at So, the benefit at FRA, which is full retirement age,
So the scenario here is the age where Pat and Kelly, right? Pat’s 66 um and Kelly 61 and those are their social security benefits at full retirement age. So when they’re looking at their cumulative benefit, right, and the and the assumption is so so this is always the assumption, right? If you know one of the f one of the biggest factors is knowing when you’re going to die, which clearly no one knows. So they use averages. So for men in this scenario they used 85 for men 88 for women and a cost of living uh adjustment or cola from social security at 2.4%. So what they said is they said, “Hey, look, if we if we file as soon as possible, our total lifetimes, we’ve taken in just over 1.1 1.5 million in social security benefits. Where if they tried to optimize these benefits, it would be closer to 1.8. So over $200,000 more in in total benefit from Social Security.” Now I will tell you and I’ve talked to many people about this who have done these things are trying to find the perfect timing on when this is done. So we use software and we say hey this is when we think if you’re kind of optimizing when this should be and you estimate when you’re going to when you’re going to pass away what your benefit will be when you’re planning on taking it and then we kind of make some assumptions some assumptions there. Now there are different calculators out there that might give you a different target. though it’s based on some of the assumptions that are built in. But I would say this and and I would say that this is really really important um that since we don’t know when we’re going to die, I I’ve seen people really struggle with trying to find the exact answer on when’s the best time to take social security. And it’s really not just about the age to maximize. And we’ll talk a little bit about that because the computation of retirement based on survivor benefit is really complicated. So I actually want to read you a quote from directly from the social security website. It’ll take about a minute or so and basically it describes on describes how they calculate it. So this is what it says. I should have made a slide on this, but what it says is the formula used to com compute the family maximum is similar to that used to compute the primary insurance amount. The formula sums four separate percentages of portions of the worker’s PIA, which is your primary insurance amount for 2026. These portions are the first 1,643 between 100 1,643 to 2371 and then the next one is 2371 to 3093 and then the amount over 3093. And what they’re going to do is they have bend points. And this goes on to say, hey, you get 150% of the first bend point, 272 of the second, plus 134 of the next and 175 of the next. and then it’s rounded to the lower 10 cents. So really there’s no way to actually fully estimate it, right? You just have to say, “Hey, look, roughly we’re going to go at this age.” But but that’s why, you know, god forbid when someone’s spouse does pass away. The best exact dollar amount is really cuz you have the date of death, you knew when it was drawn is to actually run it directly through uh social security. But with that said, not to steal our thunder, we can at least help you give you an idea on that. So,
while this is important, nobody really knows exactly when they’re going to die. So, again, while important, I think there are other factors you’ll want to consider when looking at the timing of your social security. Well, we can give you some ideas on the age when you maximize it, right? based on when you think you might pass away or average mortality, but frankly things like your retirement plan as a whole, right? What does that look like? What do you want to do? What are those goals? Your cash flow, your assets, and how your assets are allocated, your health, health of the spouse, your age when you’re looking to take this, and what your taxation, you know, a few others. So, but that’s one of the many benefits of working with an adviser. So we’ll look at a little different scenario, right? So someone who’s not married. So and this is just an example of the range of the total benefit that received from social security based on when you take this. So Mary is age 60 and her full retirement age is 67. As you can see, her social security benefit would be $1,236.
So, if she files as early as she can, her cumulative benefit would be just over $350,000. Now, if she waits until full retirement age, it’s $432,000. And if she waits until the maximum, it’s $478,000. Um and again life expectancy for women since it’s Mary uh it would be 88 years old. Now I can tell you kind of as a general general general general rule if you expect to live past 81 or 82 for total dollars from social security you would be better served waiting until age 70 which is your maximum social security benefit. do not wait a day longer because there is no advantage to that benefit. Now, I will say both these slides use the word lost, right? Cumulative benefit loss by filing early, but and that’s just regarding your total dollars received, right? But what you do gain is the use of those dollars earlier, right? So that gives you the option to either reinvest it in something potentially more lucrative or you can spend it making retirement memories with your loved ones, you know, while your health permits. So everybody is different. This is a very much individual thing. Uh and that’s one of the things that we talk about when we’re doing planning for the members here as far as hey, what does that retirement look like? What does your cash flow look like? Do we need this earlier? Do you have the life expectancy for that? Because is there an age difference, right? Because it also matters on the death benefit side. So, and I don’t want to minimize the importance of having a social security withdrawal plan. You know, as you can see, for most people, social security makes up the lion share of their retirement income. So, that’s why it’s important to have a withdrawal plan before you retire. Uh actually, it’s probably a good idea to have a withdrawal plan a few years before you actually retire.
So the basics. So let’s talk about some of the basics with a little history lesson on there. So what does social security offer? Right? It offers a lifetime income, right? So it’s a lifetime based income. So you won’t run out of income. It is indexed for inflation. You’ll see it called COLA when they talk about it on the news, which is a cost of living adjustment. Now, just know historically it doesn’t quite keep up with inflation over time. So, that’s why you usually have a retirement plan with multiple income sources. It provides some survivor benefits for those who are married or even if you’re divorced, but you were married for more than 10 years. uh you know so if your spouse passes away uh and there’s some pref preferential tax treatment so some or none of your social security could be taxed depending on your total income I can tell you as a general rule most everybody on this call some of it or up to 85% of it will be taxed because you have to have $25,000 or less in income for it to be not non taxed taxable. Um, and for married couples, it’s 32,000. Oh, but social security wasn’t always around. So, it’s actually less than 100 years old. If you remember learning about the crash of 29 and the Great Depression that followed, right? That event created the law that created social security. Now, it created 11 years later, January 31st, 1940 to be exact. um and Ida Fuller was the first recipient um to receive a check for social security. Now, you can’t see that check amount, but um if we were actually in person, I would have some people guess, but so that check amount. So, you can go ahead and guess in your head that check amount was $22.54. So, I don’t know how close you were on your guess, but I’m not sure $22 was still a big amount even in 1940. So, um, what determines someone’s primary insurance amount, which is PIA, right? So, you’ll hear that. And basically what it is is it is your highest 35 years of wages up to the maximum each year. And if you look at your payub, right, not that we really get past payubs anymore right now that everything is electronic, but you’ll notice something called FICA as one of the line items as far as your tax, your taxes on there. Um, and what that is is that is a tax that includes social security as well as your Medicare. So that total amount is 15.3%. You pay 7.65, your employer pays 7.65. And of that 7.65, 6.2% goes to social security up to the maximum. So the maximum income this year is 184,500. So if you make more than that, you are only paying that 6.2% up to that max. And it changes every year. It increases every year. So they’ll look at your last 35 years and that is what qualifies you for how much of your benefit. You do not have to work 35 years. You only have to work 10 years to be eligible for it. But they will take the last 35 years. Many of us work for much longer than 35 years.
If you haven’t, I encourage you to sign up with Social Security so you can see your specific benefits as reported on your income over your working life. It’s secure. It’s free to do and it’s really easy. So, you’ll want to go to the Social Security website, create that account, and what you can do is you can also see and make sure that the that two things, no one’s making claims on yours, and also uh they’re reporting the right income.
So, your social security statement. So, they used to send these out at regular intervals, but in the world of saving money and in the electronic world, you’ll have to look online now if you are 60 or under. Um, for those of you over 60, you receive them annually around your birthday. And what that does, uh, it’ll tell you, hey, what your estimated benefits are. So, the assumption is, by the way, on this is that you will continue working up until retirement. So, if you do retire early, uh it might adjust that a little bit. So, we’ll talk um here is that chart that I had talked about as far as when you’re eligible for full retirement. And this is the amount that you receive without a penalty or a bonus, right? So, if you wait until later after your full retirement, you’ll get 8% more per year. Uh and that what that allows you to do is allows you to work without any reductions in your benefit. So, like I said, most of you on this call, your full retirement age is probably 67.
So, here is a great example of taking social security early versus waiting until you’re older, right? So, the full retirement in this scenario is 67. And as I said, for every year you wait, you’ll get an 8% increase on that benefit, including the COLA, too. So that is something to consider when you are when on the timing as far as your social security goes. Now if you take it early there’s a couple of things right as you can see there’s some deductions on that you’ll get 93 or 86 or 80 but also you have an earnings limit too. So if you earn over a certain amount those benefits will be reduced even further but it’s not a total loss. when you hit full retirement age, they will recalculate it. So, so filing rules are different for situations. Uh, so some of the surviving spouses, spouses, divorces, dependent children, government employees, etc. So, let’s take a look. So, spousal filing rules, these are pretty straightforward, right? As I said, you are eligible at 62. uh you have to be married at least one year. Uh and one spouse can file for the other to claim their benefits, right? So you can claim your spouse’s benefits or your spouse can claim yours. You’ll get the higher of those two. This includes samesex couples. They changed that law a while back. Now, your benefit, if you’re trying to claim your spouses, your benefit is 50% of that. So, for example, if my social security were 4,000 a month, my spouse would be eligible for the higher of hers or 50% of mine. So, that would be $2,000.
Now, surviving spouses, right? So, you have to be married for at least 9 months. Now, it says at least for 9 months, unless the death was an accident, and you can take your benefits as early as age 60 on this. So now there are some things where it says currently widowed. Uh now if you remarry you are not eligible for that social security unless your spouse’s social security unless you marry after age 60 then you are still eligible for your former spouse’s uh social security. Now some of the benefits right you’re it’s up to that PIA which is that primary insurance including the delayed retirement credits that they earned right so if they delayed that um and survivor benefits they can they could be received independently of the individual benefits. So this kind of matters, right? So one of the things that we look at is that if you’re trying to delay and and there might be a a life expectancy issue, right? Sometimes delaying for the higher earner, it’ll be helpful to the surviving spouse later on because you’ll actually get that delayed credit. So divorce spouses, these are always fun. So
um you had to be married at least 10 years and you cannot have remarried. So now the expouse doesn’t have to file beyond those two years after the divorce, right? So, um, you know, so in theory, if I were married at 20 to the love of my life, and then I’m divorced at 30 and I’m married to the new love of my life, and then I’m divorced at 40, and I marry the new love of my life, and so on at 50, and so on at 60, uh, and so on at 70, and then I’m my new love of my life. So, all five, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70. So all six of those spouses are actually eligible as long as they didn’t remarry, right? Or wait until they are after 60. They are all eligible to claim my social security or at least part of my social security. And and they’re all independent, right? So it won’t impact my benefits and it wouldn’t impact any of my ex’s benefits.
So that was a big one for Johnny Carson or Elizabeth Taylor if anyone are old enough since I don’t know how old people are on this thing or if I just completely dated myself there. Um so how working impact your social security right so this so this matters right so I talked about if you retire early one of the things is that there’s a reduction in that benefit so if you’re under your full retirement age so for most let’s say it’s 67 you’re like you know what I am done I’m going to retire at 65 well you can only earn as you can see $24,48 80 for the year. Now, for every every dollar you go over that, right, you get $1 withheld. Now, now it says on that annual limit. So, for the year of your full retirement age, so like my birthday’s in November, so from January till November, even if I’m early, then every $2 it’ll be reduced by a dollar. So, um I’m sorry, it’s reduced for every $2 over it’s reduced by a dollar. Once I hit the year of my full retirement age, then for every $3 over um and then that limit is higher. So once you hit full retirement age, you can earn as much as you want. And yes, Johnny and Liz, bravo. Thank you for at least acknowledging that one. Um at full retirement age and beyond, you can earn as much. There’s no earnings limit. So, frankly, what we tell folks, hey, look, if you still have that life expectancy, you know, um it’s probably not a bad idea to wait until full retirement age, assuming you don’t need it. Like I said, every person’s situation is very unique. So, that’s why we work with that and we talk about potential situations and scenarios that you would look at. So, let’s talk a little bit about some guidance built for you. We’re doing fine on time here. So, let’s just look at some of the filing strategies, right? So, what this does, we’re going to show you a couple scenarios where it just says, hey, you know, these cumulative benefits that are optimized strategy versus filing early and some alternative filing strategies. So, you can compare those and how to maximize your social security. So, what you’re basically looking for is your break even, right? And Social Security used to do this on your on on the statements that they sent it out. And I don’t even think they do this on the website anymore. It’s it’s been a few weeks since I looked at mine. Um, but what they used to say is they said, “Well, if you’re expected to live beyond this age, you will get more. If you think you’re going to die before that age, then it’s probably better that you take it earlier.” Um, so what this chart shows is the earliest and suggested and right where those lines meet down at the very bottom there. Um, Pat and Kelly’s on the vertical and that horizontal is right where that break even. So that’s somewhere for Pat on the bottom part somewhere around 87. And for Kelly, it’s probably looks like around 86. It’s not an exact right there, but um but basically for Pat, if he expects to live to 90, you would delay. If he’s like, “Look, I don’t I don’t really have that life expectancy in my family,” then you would probably take that maybe sooner.
So, optimal strategies and I always, and again, this is just for total for total dollars received from social security. So in this scenario, right, the expected lifetime family, we’re going to go back to Pat and Kelly for that entire strategy is a little over a million dollars, right? So in this scenario, they would say, well, Pat should wait until 70 and that way his benefit would be about 36.96 where Kelly, she should file it around 66 and her benefit would be 1744. And basically what that looks like is she would get hers early, right? And then they would get theirs and then he would pass away and then she would get the death benefit. So that’s essentially what that chart looks like for you. But that’s kind of what this looks like. This is a little better idea of looking at it than the chart, but you know, you’re looking at an income gap, right? When a spouse passes away. So, I mean, obviously, we don’t know when we’re going to die, but you can use your own health or your life expectancy of your family to kind of create just a general strategy on that
and we’ll give you some ideas based on that, right? We have software that’ll say, hey, you know, roughly this is when you should take this. This is, you know, just based on those numbers and this is when your spouse should take that. So, um, look, when and how you do this is really an important decision, but I would probably argue that it’s not the most important decision, or at least it’s maybe a 1 A, 1 B, 1 C, because there’s a lot of other things that you should factor in, right, as far as how how much you need the money and what your retirement looks like, right? Um, we’ve talked to people um where they did delay, you know, we talked to members of all ages here where they said, you know, I mean, yes, I got more money now and that’s really good, but frankly, in hindsight, would I have liked that extra money a little earlier even though it was less because we might have been able to do some of those things that we wanted to do, right? travel at 70 may not be as easy as travel at 65 or 66 or something um or 67. So, it really is an individual thing, right? So, learning how claiming those benefits impacts not only you but as well as your family members, right? Your spouse um and how we can put those filing rules to work to maximize what works for you. And maximizing, frankly, might not be the biggest dollar amount, right? There’s there’s a lot of moving parts to retirement planning. So consider your filing decision within the big picture of your overall plan and we can certainly help you with that. So um with that how we can help. We’re coming to the end here. U there’s a lot of things that we can do and it takes all hands right both yours trusted advisor and maybe any other family members that are involved. So we covered a lot today. So what I would tell you is how we can help as far as life planning. Um, and it’s basically questions to help you imagine your retirement, right? So, even if you haven’t given it much thought or you have and you’re kind of stuck, we have the benefit of talking to hundreds if not thousands of members over the course of my career. So, it’s much easier to say, hey, you know, this is kind of how a lot of others have done that. And I don’t know if that applies to you, um, but at least we’ll give you a good baseline. The other thing we can do is budgeting, right? And that is one of the things that we do here. We usually work with folks and say, “Hey, you know, this just get an understanding of your cash flow now and how you think that’ll look different in retirement.” And we’ll talk a little bit about what normally happens uh in retirement for like spending habits because it does not always go up. It usually goes up and then it comes down and then it goes back up again. We can help you with the account management, your asset allocation. We have access to investments here that you probably do not have access to out there in the regular retail world whether that is through you know like the Fidelities or the Vanguards etc or even the JP Morgan Chasees etc. So I think you’d be remiss to not look at what we can do here and obviously our portfolio management it’s really the broad range and we are cognizant of tax considerations when we’re helping you make those decisions. So I want to thank everybody for attending. Um we have some time for questions. If you have any questions go ahead and type those in the webinar chat or the Q&A box. Uh what I will do is I’ll put up a quick one question survey. If you would like us to give you a call and schedule some time for us to look at your particular situation, let me know. Or you can just take a picture of that QR code on the screen and that will give you a um it’ll give you access to my calendar. And oh, if you’re doing that electronically, by the way, it only lets you do that during regular business hours. So, if you do need to talk to me outside of business hours, just shoot me an email or something and um or give me a call or just put yes in there and I can give you a call and I’ll be happy to accommodate you as I can. It looks like we have one raised hand out there. So, we actually don’t do the audio on this. Forgive me on that. So, if you would mind just uh going ahead and typing that question in, I’ll be happy to answer that. So social security. So the question first question is we have a few them out there. Social security is taxed at 10% up to a certain amount. So what social security is social security is part of your regular income. So if you have other sources like retirement like IRA um or part-time work or pulling money from your 401k that goes to it. So it starts at 10%. And then it can go up to there. But in theory, if you make enough money, you could be taxed at the highest tax bracket of 37%. Plus the 3 uh what is that excess tax? 3.8%. So I mean, you could pay up to 40 almost 41% on that. Um, next question. Any suggestions on saving tax if you cash in a whole life policy early, not annuities, please? Okay. Um, so generally speaking, if you cash that in, right, your cash value, depending on how long you’ve had it, and I can take a look at that if you just say, “Go ahead and give you a call. We’ll take a look at it.” But generally speaking, oh, hang on. Let me give you let me give you a a disclaimer. Please consult your CPA or or tax attorney or other tax professional since we just give general advice. But generally speaking, when you’re looking at that, um, it’s over your cost basis. So, for example, if you have $50,000 in there, but you have paid $40,000 in premiums over the course of your life, you actually don’t owe the tax on the 50,000. You only owe the amount over your cost basis. Uh so, let’s see on that. Hopefully, that answered the question. For the first year of retirement, how are you taxed when there’s part of the year working income and part of the year social security? Say half and half. So, still it’s cumulative income, right? So, easy math. You make $100,000 a year and you work half the year, you’re going to get you’re going to have to show taxable income of 50,000. And if you draw on social security for half of the year, you’ll get that for half of the year. Uh, if I keep my adjusted gross income at 25,000 or less, I won’t have to pay taxes then. Uh, well, yeah. So, so as far as social security, it’ll be it’ll be zero at that at that point. But again, without looking at anything else. Yes. Uh, all right. Let’s we have a few more. Bear with me for a moment. So, 65, was married for 20 years. Your ex-husband was 5 years older than you are. Can you start taking a social security and then at 67 start taking mine? You are
20 years. Your ex-husband for 20 years. my ex-husband was 5 years older than me. You should be able to apply for his because you were married for for that, but it depends. You’re still supposed to be full retirement age on that, but you are eligible 65, but I can double check. Um, Lisa, if you want to just go ahead and change that to yes, I’ll do the research on that and double check for you there. Um,
yes. Yes. So your social security it’s actually half of your social security uh is part of your income for that part B on that question. Any comments on social security solveny? Yes. It is supposed to run dry uh in 20 not 2024. It’s actually late. Oh yeah 34. Yes. I was like no it’s later than that. Um so a couple things on this. Yes. I have a lot of comments on that. So but I’ll I’ll be brief in the interest of time. So I do not I am not worried about the solveny of social security at this point. And for the simple reason is that the assumption is if absolutely is nothing is done. Um and there are many things now it is great great they’re great talking point for ringing up your base if you are a politician. However, this is what I would say cuz I’m a big fan of behavioral economics, right? And I’m going to jokingly say this. So, if anybody’s a politician here, my apologies or has a family member, but what is the first job of an elected politician? To make sure you get to make sure you get reelected, right? Um, and make sure your party stays in power. So, nobody nobody wants to be the one responsible for social security failing. Now, with that said, there’s some very very very easy changes that can be made because I know one of the things are floating, right, is a 25% cut um in benefit. And that’s that’s really unlikely, right? That would be a really huge strain on a lot of retirees. So, what they most likely will do is they will simply start bumping that age up, right? So right now it’s full retirement age is at 67 but there’s nothing that could be said at a certain age or certain generation to say hey it’s going to be 67 12 or 68 or the other thing they can do two things that would make a huge difference and shore up a lot of this is increase the social security tax right you remember that 6.2 even if they went to 6.25% to five% collectively in a country, it would make a huge difference. And since it’s pre-tax, most people, not all, but most people wouldn’t notice a significant decrease in your actual take-home pay. Um, the other thing that they could do is simply not cap it, right? If you make a million dollars a year, you’re still going to pay that 6.2 all the way up. So, they can raise the caps. and raising the caps would probably be the most would be the most uh logical one at that point, right? If they raise the cap because even if they go because then then some of the lower income wouldn’t be impacted by that because the way social security works is the lower your income, the larger percentage of the benefit which is who they’re really trying to shore up, right? Because the assumption is those folks who are more fluent. I’m not saying you’re rich and the millionaires and the billionaires etc etc but this is really just kind of where social security as far as in the spirit of where it came about is they were really trying to make sure that people weren’t in poverty. Uh and it’s just really a part of your social retirement picture. Hopefully that I know that was a very long-winded answer and my apologies for that. Um are they raising the cap every year? Yes, they do raise the cap every year. Uh, I’m retired, have Roths and pension will be 79. It’s important to continue to save for in retirement accounts. Well, I have to start making deductions at 70 making distributions. I assume you mean at 73, you probably if you don’t have any regular IAS, you wouldn’t be forced if you only have Roths, you’re not forced to take distributions out because that’ll just go to your beneficiaries. Um, if I missed that or if it was something more specific on that, just go ahead and I can give you a call. For the courses offered earlier during the day, am I currently working? Are they recorded? Oh, I am so sorry. They are not. These are live. Um, it’s a compliance issue. We had asked about actually just posting these out there. But I would say this, um, what we can do is if you’d like, just go ahead, if you’re not one of the yeses on there, go ahead and change that to yes, and we’ll actually look at your situation. We can do something after hours. No problem. I understand life gets in the way, so I will do my best to accommodate. Um, someone just said yes and someone said I will be 69. So, oh, 79 versus 69. So, yes. So, you’re talking about your RMD. The rocks do not have an RMD. It’s only IRA and 401ks, assuming you’re not working anymore. If you’re still working, then then you don’t have an RMD on your 401k. So, let’s see. What am I missing? Make sure I did not miss any. Those were great questions, by the way, everyone. Thank you so much. It makes this much, much better when it’s interactive. Frankly, I love the inerson stuff, but it is the digital world that we live in now. Um, so with that said, it looks like all the questions are answered. I will hang around on here for a little bit if there’s any Oops, hang on. Party can suspend their social script and take their spouse and apply for them later. Uh, to a degree, you can do a suspend, but they actually did a change on that. So, they just changed that law a couple years ago where u if you do take it, it still counts toward when when it was taken. So, it’s not it’s not as robust and advantageous as it used to be. Um, all right. I think that is everything. Thank you so much for attending. Um, if you have any questions, feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email. I will be happy to help you in any way we can. I hope to see everyone on future webinars. Thank you so much. Be safe and enjoy the evening. Take care. Bye now.