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Based on current life expectancies, the vast majority of retirees will live long enough to come out far ahead if they wait to claim their benefits later—a subject I cover in great detail in my Masterclass as well as in my book. Many will come out hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead! Given that it makes financial sense to wait to claim our benefits later...
I’ve spent more than a decade helping people get the most out of their Social Security. Here’s roughly what most people tell me they “know” about Social Security: “I think I pretty-much understand it. I can start at 62 or up to 70, though I get a bigger check later. I hear it’s running short of money soon, so maybe I should take it early, get what I can while I can...
If you've got an ex-husband or ex-wife, there are some important rules you need to know about Social Security. Rules that affect your benefits and how you claim them. It doesn't matter if you're on good terms with your ex-partner, can't be in the same room without a fight, or simply haven't seen each other in years. Or even if you're simply considering...
There's a little-known mistake that costs new Social Security applicants a cumulative $50 million in lost benefits each year. On average, this mistake costs each person only a few hundred dollars. Still, this is money people are needlessly handing over to the Social Security Administration. Moreover, avoiding this penalty is actually very simple…
The inflation monster has risen with a vengeance these past two years! After some decades of minimal or no increase in year-over-year prices, we are suddenly experiencing inflation the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1980s. So, this an excellent opportunity to examine how changing prices impact our Social Security.
Over a year ago, my wife, Terry, and I left behind the family-raising decades of our life in Silicon Valley and launched the next phase, heading off to Guanajuato, Mexico. On the way we stopped to visit a friend in the nearby city of Santiago de Querétaro (generally referred to as simply Querétaro)...and never left.
If you are looking to maximize your cumulative potential lifetime benefits it almost always works best to claim your benefits at age 70. However, life is not just about maximizing potential income.
The Social Security program is misunderstood by most people...and this can lead to claiming mistakes that commonly cost single people tens of thousands of dollars in cumulative lifetime benefits.
Millions of baby boomers qualify for valuable Social Security claiming options that can provide tens of thousands of dollars in additional benefits. Yet most will never receive these benefits, even though they qualify for them. How can this be so? It’s because there are so many rules, they are complicated, and people don’t understand how they work.
Most people think that Social Security is “set-it-and-forget-it”: Once you start up your benefits it’s a “done deal” from there on. Unfortunately, most of us “set-it-and-forget-it” without first understanding how the program works. The result is usually a costly loss in cumulative lifetime benefits. Yet our initial claim doesn’t have to always result in a “done deal”: This is a mistaken impression that leads to all manner of errors...and loss in benefits.