Building a Social Security Bridge
Funding life between “I quit” and age 70—without gutting your portfolio Retiring before your first Social Security check arrives can feel like stepping off a pier and waiting for the tide to rise. Each year you wait to claim your benefits can boost your payments by roughly eight percent, plus cost-of-living adjustments, until you reach […]
Tax Considerations When Delaying Social Security
Delaying Social Security can potentially contribute to an overall tax strategy for retirement. Every case is different, but generally speaking, when you add taxes to the mix, the case for delaying Social Security becomes even stronger than usual.
Claiming Social Security at 62 or 70
When it comes to claiming Social Security, timing is everything. Should you claim as soon as you’re eligible at age 62, or should you wait until age 70 to maximize your monthly benefit? The decision depends on a variety of factors, including your financial situation, life expectancy, and retirement goals. Understanding Social Security Benefits Social […]
When Are People Claiming Social Security?
One of the hottest topics in retirement income planning over the past several years has been how to help individuals strategize on their Social Security claiming decisions.
Social Security as an “Investment”
The alternative to treating Social Security as insurance is to view it as an investment, or as a gamble on how long one lives. This can be problematic.
Social Security: The Best Annuity Money Can Buy
A final frame for viewing the Social Security claiming decision is as an annuity purchase.
How Time Horizon and Discount Rate Affect Your Social Security Decision
One way to view the decision to delay Social Security as an “investment” is by using a present value calculation to identify which strategy can provide the most lifetime Social Security benefits and which strategy creates the lowest funding needs for your investment portfolio. This calculation requires deciding on a time horizon and a discount rate.
How Much Income Do I Need in Retirement?
Most people are focused on saving for retirement so they’ll have the money they need to fund their income in retirement. However, ask most people how much they’re going to spend in retirement and they have no idea. To plan for retirement effectively, you need to have some sense of what your spending needs are actually going to be.
What Happens to Your Pension If Your Former Employer Goes Bankrupt?
Pensions, along with Social Security, are the core of most people’s reliable income in retirement – they’re what many people plan to live off of, or at least use to cover their most essential expenses. If you’re receiving a pension, or have one coming, you’ve probably contributed to your pension fund for years, maybe decades, […]
Three Questions To Evaluate Longevity Risk For Retirees
Longevity risk—the risk of running out of assets before running out of time—is fundamental to retirement. We know about the distribution of longevity for the overall population, but an individual cannot know in advance precisely where he or she will fall in the distribution.
