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.
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.
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.
Arguments for Claiming Social Security Early
Believe it or not, legitimate arguments exist for claiming Social Security early.
Justifying a Delayed Claiming Age for Social Security
With an understanding about how benefits are calculated, the important question to consider becomes how to develop a Social Security claiming strategy. When should you apply for benefits?
Philosophy of Social Security Claiming Strategies
Social Security claiming strategies can be extremely complicated. Treaties on this topic, some of which are listed in the table below, provide page after page of details, nuances, and exceptions.
Calculating Social Security Retirement Benefits
I will discuss the philosophy of claiming strategies later, but first, it is meaningful to first consider how retirement benefits are calculated.
The Social Security Administration has now followed the same approach for calculating benefits since 1979.
Introducing the Social Security Claiming Decision
For the vast majority of Americans, Social Security benefits serve as the core of a retirement income strategy. As a government-backed, inflation-adjusted monthly income for life, Social Security benefits help to manage longevity risk, inflation risk, and market risk.
A Brief History of Social Security
Recipients of Social Security benefits today are not just retirees – they’re disabled workers, spouses and young children of deceased or disabled workers, and the spouses and survivors of retirees. This was not always the case.
What Does Retirement Mean?
Retirement has changed. It’s no longer about getting your gold watch and playing golf all the time. Retirement is now a frame of mind – you’re retired when you can do what you want. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to with whether you are drawing a paycheck or not. Retirement is the freedom to decide what you want to do. At the same time, retirement has also gotten longer. You could very well be looking at a retirement that lasts 30 years or more, making retirement even harder to plan for than it was before.
