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Retirement more difficult than many imagine
Katie Brockman of The Motley Fool cites two alarming statistics. One is a study in the Journal of Population Ageing that found those who were retired were about twice as likely to report feeling symptoms of depression than those who were still working. …
Boost Your Social Security Benefits for Life
Articles abound on how to get the most of and how to maximize Social Security. Mauire Backman says extend your career, meaning it’s important to have a full 35 years of earnings history, as that is how one’s benefit is…
Using a Life Expectancy Calculator with a Retirement Plan
Kailey Fralick’s piece here notes one of the most difficult parts of planning for retirement is estimating how long you’re going to live. She explains the dangers of underestimating your life expectancy and how to adjust your retirement plan accordingly. …
Losing Social Security benefits to the tax man is likely inevitable
The age when one starts to claim Social Security benefits along with one’s lifetime earnings are main determinants of monthly Social Security income, and this can be planned for by creating an on-line account with the Social Security Administration. However, income…
Working While Receiving Social Security
Those that have not reached full retirement age and are collecting Social Security benefits are subject to an earnings limit of $1,470 per month or $17,640 per year in 2019. Once you have reached your full retirement age, there is no limit on how…
Social Security and paid parental leave explained
Social Security’s long term financial health is in peril without congressional reform. Some might find it curious then that lawmakers, including GOP Senators Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and Joni Ernst are lobbying for a paid-leave plan, which would allow working parents…
3 “Must Dos” Before You Claim Social Security
Social Security is a critical source of income during retirement. Before signing up for benefits, Maurie Backman of The Motley Fool suggests folks first commit their full retirement age to memory. Only 26% of Americans could correctly identify that age according to a recent…
How a government pension might reduce your Social Security benefits
They are not always well known, and they are even less well understood. They are the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). Enacted by Congress in 1977 and 1983 respectively, both were meant to bring a…
Take these four steps before leaving the workforce for good
Christy Bieber suggests checking off each of these four tasks from your list before leaving the workforce for retirement. First is to pay off debt. Second is figure out what your income will be. This might include Social Security, employer-provided pensions, and…
Widowed? Don’t Waste This Key Social Security Benefit
Social Security provides monthly survivor benefits following the death of a spouse. But the way that these survivor benefits supplement other Social Security benefits isn’t always easy to understand. As Dan Caplinger points out in this piece, there have been many documented…