Social Security
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.
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What Happens to Your Pension If Your Former Employer Goes Under?
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. They’ve contributed to their pension fund for years, often decades, and they’ve built up a sizable chunk…
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Retirees Should Look Beyond Their Investments For Income Planning
How exactly should retirees adjust their spending in response to changes in the value of their retirement portfolios? Countless variations on spending rules are discussed everywhere from research papers to internet discussion boards.
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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.
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Understanding the Tools in Your Retirement Income Toolbox
You should be familiar with all of the tools in your retirement income toolbox. Retirement plans can be built to manage varying risks by strategically combining the following retirement income tools in different ways.
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Should I Stay or Should I Go? Housing Decisions in Retirement
A plan to meet housing needs is an important part of a retirement income strategy.
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Potential Directions for Social Security
A common argument for claiming Social Security early is that the program is about to be dramatically overhauled, but it seems rather unlikely that any impending reforms would leave near retirees with significant reductions to benefits.
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Arguments for Claiming Social Security Early
Believe it or not, legitimate arguments exist for claiming Social Security early.
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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.
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Social Security: The Best Annuity Money Can Buy
A final frame for viewing the Social Security claiming decision is as an annuity purchase.
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How Time Horizon and Discount Rate Affect Social Security
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.
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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.
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