Maximizing Your Social Security Benefits Under the Latest Rules #SocialSecurity

now please welcome your presenter allison alley cfp alison how are you today hi andy i'm great how are you doing very well good to see you thank you so much for this i can't wait to hear all about how we can make the most of our social security benefits when the time comes yes absolutely lots to get into today but why don't we go ahead and start it off with a poll andy's gonna throw up a poll to asking how far away are you from retirement all right so that poll is on screen right now there's a little bit of a delay between when we say things and when you see it happen on screen so it might take a couple of seconds here but your options are are you already retired less than five years from retirement five to ten years ten plus years or uncertain which would be understandable given how uncertain things are right now so i'm gonna leave this poll up for five four three two as i mentioned there's a little bit of a delay so when you see the poll go away might not be at the same time as i say it so if the poll goes away before you have a chance to enter your answer you can just go ahead and type into the chat i'm going to end that poll now so 44 of our audience is already retired 36 percent are less than five years from retirement 12 are five to ten years and we've got four percent of the audience that are 10 plus years and two percent say that they are uncertain okay well only two percent uncertain that's pretty good um all right well that's helpful information as we dive into this so we're going to get into social security strategies the history the background and different ideas and things you can take advantage of to try to get the most out of social security possible if you have questions as we go as andy mentioned feel free to put those into the chat and we'll get to those when we can in addition we have a social security handbook there will be a link to that in the chat as well so if you want more in-depth information feel free to request that and we'll get that out to you all right let's get into it excellent so let's start with the history of social security so social security was written into law back in 1935 but it wasn't until a couple years later that payroll taxes started to be deducted to start funding social security originally you had a choice of taking a lump sum or a monthly income stream in the beginning everybody chose the lump sum the first person to get a lump sum was good old ernest ackerman and he received a lump sum in 1937 he had paid in five cents and received a 17 cent lump sum distribution a couple years later changed and they started having it be income stream only there were no more lump sum options the first person to start getting a monthly income stream was ida mae fuller and she had paid into social security for three years 1937 1938 and 1939 a total of 24.75 cents when she started receiving her lump sum or excuse me her monthly income stream that first check was for 22 dollars and 54 cents so by the time she got her second check she'd already gotten everything back that she had put into the system and over her lifetime she ended up collecting almost 23 000 which is a 92 000 return so some things have changed since then obviously no one's getting 92 000 return on their social security contributions so let's kind of get into what how social security is determined and how it can play into your situation right many people are gonna have three different parts of their retirement they'll have their social security income they might have a pension those are becoming less and less common right less fewer and fewer companies have a pension these days so more of the retirement savings is on you as the employee as the individual and that's where the personal savings comes into play so you might have a 401k an ira non-retirement investment stocks bonds mutual funds etc and so really taking a look and seeing what you're going to have in retirement and how these three or only two or potent maybe even only one thing is going to help you build and map out that retirement what goes into determining what you're entitled to in retirement so the benefit factors right your age your current and future and past earnings your spouse's earnings whether or not you have been widowed if your spouse has passed away whether you've ever been married whether you have a disability or if you have a pension because your pension income can also impact your social security benefits so understanding how all these things play together is what's going to determine that future benefit that you're entitled to a couple statistics here nine out of ten people age 65 and older are currently receiving their social security benefits and for 21 of married couples and 45 of those that are unmarried social security actually makes up 90 or more of their income in retirement so it's really important to understand how that benefits going to be calculated what you're going to be entitled to and what you can do to make sure you're maximizing getting the most out of social security possible so let's get into the rules for your social security benefits there's a few different acronyms or phrases you might have heard of before full retirement age often referred to as your fra that's the age at which somebody is entitled to their full unreduced retirement benefit your primary insurance amount or your pia that's the amount that you're entitled to at your full retirement age um if you take it early or later the amount you're entitled to would change but the pia that primary insurance amount is the full amount at your full retirement age and then the ssa the social security administration that's the entity that runs social security you might have also heard fica tax referred to fica tax is the social security and medicare taxes that are withheld from your wages while you're earning and that goes into all these calculations okay collecting your benefits and calculating what you're going to be entitled to so your full retirement age again when you're entitled to a hundred percent that unreduced amount that age is determined by your year of birth so it's anywhere currently from age 66 to age 67 but it might be 66 in two months four months so on and so forth depending on your year of birth if you take social security early and you could start as early as age 62 you will get a reduced amount and this is showing you the percentage that you'd be entitled to at that time so if your full retirement age is 66 but you decide to start at 62 you're gonna get 75 of that full retirement age amount if your full retirement age is 67 you take it at 62 you're going to get 70.83 right even a lesser percentage because your full retirement age is a full year later so making this decision deciding when you're going to take your benefits whether it's worth it to wait whether it makes sense to start early for a reduced amount really depends on what all else is going on in your life and here is what the social security statement looks like you can go to ssa.gov that's the social security website create an account and pull your social security your most recent your current social security statement what you'll find on here is several different things at the top it's going to show you those retirement benefits it's going to show you what you'd be entitled to it'll show you number one your full retirement age but in addition to that it'll show you what you're entitled to at full retirement at 70 and at 62. because while we just talked about the fact that your benefit gets reduced if you start it early it can also increase if you decide to wait and take it later in addition this shows you what your benefits based on so over there on the left hand side that's where you'll see your earnings record and this shows you every single year that you've had earnings that were subject to social security tax and your social security benefit is calculated by taking your highest 35 years of earnings history and that's what's put into the social security calculation to determine that pia at your full retirement age okay here we've got another poll so andy if you would go ahead and throw that up we have a poll that's going to ask you when you're anticipating taking your social security benefits all right so i am publishing that poll right now when do you plan to take social security early full retirement age age 70 already collecting benefits or again you might be uncertain and again there is a little bit of a delay so when that poll appears and goes away maybe a different time than when i actually say it but i'm going to close that poll up in five four three two i'm going to give it a couple extra little seconds and if you don't see the poll or don't have a chance to put it in before it goes away just go ahead and enter your answer into the chat i'm gonna close the poll up now nine percent of the audience says that they're going to take social security early 27 say they're taking it at full retirement age 29 at age 70 22 are already collecting benefits and 11 are uncertain okay well that's interesting because that actually goes along quite a bit with this result so this was a poll done by the employee benefit research institute asking that same question right when people are anticipating taking their social security benefits and as you can see over 72 percent of people were anticipating waiting till at least 65 or later with 32 percent thinking they were going to go all the way to 70. but something to factor in is that they also polled and saw went to see well when do people actually take their social security benefits and it tends to be a lot earlier than people originally thought they were going to 70 of people actually start before age 65. so a lot of factors could play into that and obviously as we talked about taking it early has that impact here's what it looks like so in this example we're assuming that somebody's full retirement age is age 66 so you get that reduced amount if you take it early so if somebody's full retirement age is 66 they take it at 65 they're gonna lose seven percent of what they're entitled to all the way down to 62 they're losing 25 of that full retirement age but on the other side of things and i think why people originally think they're going to wait until 70 is because you do get a pretty large benefit for waiting you actually get an 8 increase in your benefit for every year that you wait up until age 70. so if you waited all the way from 66 to 70 your benefit's going to be 32 higher than it would have otherwise been so that can make a huge difference in that income stream over time but obviously there's a lot of factors right so when you're trying to figure out whether or not you should take it early or wait till full retirement age or take it longer or excuse me wait longer to take it you want to factor in are you still working how's that going to impact things the longevity right your current health status longevity in the family because if you wait to take it you know you do have to live a certain amount of time longer to make up for the years that you weren't taking the social security benefits and if you do yeah you can get a lot more out of the system but you want to factor these decisions in in addition are you married what's the age difference between you and your spouse which one of you can collect spousal benefits all of those things are going to factor in to when and how you decide to take your benefits in addition if you are going to continue working while you're taking your social security benefits you want to factor in some earnings limitations so if you decide to take social security early and you're still working there is an income limitation if you earn more than that you're going to have an additional portion of your social security benefits withheld so number one you're already getting a reduced amount if you started it early and number two it's going to be further reduced in 2021 the income limit is 18 960 so if you're going to just have a little part-time job making a couple dollars fine you're not going to have your benefits impacted but if you earn more than roughly 19 000 every dollar of benefits for two dollars of earnings above that 19 000 is going to be withheld from your pay the year you actually turn your full retirement age it of course is a different number so let's say your birthday's in june your full retirement age is 66 you turn 66 in june for the first part of the year if you're still working you could actually earn up to 50 000 until that kind of penalty kicks in right then you have a dollar of benefits withheld for every three dollars of earnings above that 50 000 limit for the months prior to your actual birthday and hitting that full retirement age once you hit your full retirement age there's no penalty at that point and there's no limit to what you can earn so you can be full retirement age you can start your social security benefits and you can keep working full-time and you wouldn't have your social security benefits reduced or penalized also we do have a quick question that actually uh dovetails into where you are right now cecil would like to know what type of income can reduce those monthly social security benefits that's a great question it's earned wages earnings so your like interest income isn't going to impact it things like that but if you have a job wages that's what's going to impact though this limitation great question excellent and as a reminder if you do have questions you can just enter them into the chat and we will get to them as we are able and it is back to you allison perfect in addition i know that we have a social security handbook that andy is going to have a link to in the chat so if you want more information you can click on that and that's going to go into a lot deeper than obviously what we can get through today all right let's jump into some specific scenarios with these these real life people okay so we've got david and carol david and carol are married he was the higher wage earner she was the lower wage earner they're the same age and both of their full retirement age is 66. so in this scenario david's full retirement age benefit is 2200 carol's is 600 because david's benefit is more than hers you want to look at spousal benefits and what you might be entitled to everyone is entitled to their own benefit based on their own earnings record or 50 of their spouses if it's higher so in this case like i said david's benefits 2200 carol's is 600. so half of david's is 1100 that's obviously more than carol's so she would be entitled to that 1100 spousal benefit at their respective ages 50 66 excuse me so in this scenario we're looking and they both are going to claim at 66 he's going to get 2200 she's going to get 1100 pretty straightforward but let's look at the maximum social security benefits so as we were just talking about you can benefit and get a larger amount if you wait until 70 or anywhere in between 66 and 70. that's not the case with the spousal benefit so regardless of when carol files for that benefit 66 or later she's not gonna get more than that eleven hundred dollars so there's no benefit to waiting to file for the spousal benefit one thing though you this the higher earning spouse does have to file and be receiving their benefits for the spouse to claim on their record that wasn't always the case but they changed that a few years ago so the higher earning spouse has to actually be taking their social security benefits for the lower earning spouse to take the spousal benefit but past 66 it's not going to increase taking the spousal benefit early will decrease it however let's dive a little bit deeper into how it's actually calculated so again with carol's spousal benefit being six hundred dollars at full retirement age here's that calculation she gets the 600 of her own plus the amount of the spousal benefit to bring her up to that 1100 maximum spousal combined benefit if she were to take it early her own benefit is reduced as well as the spousal benefit so she goes from at 66 taking 1100 to at 62 she'd only get 800. on the other end though right so her own benefit would grow if she waited until 70 but again because that maximum level is still eleven hundred dollars for her the spousal chunk gets reduced down so that the combined amount is still just eleven hundred so that's what i meant when i said it doesn't matter if she waits she's still only getting eleven hundred but here's kind of the breakdown of how that calculation works in addition you want to pay attention to potential survivor benefits later right so in this case we're assuming that carol outlives david if he had taken his benefit early and got was entitled to 1800 because he took it at 63 in six months and he passes away she's going to then not no longer get that spousal benefit 1100 but she's gonna get what he was getting flip side he waits until 70. he passes before her she's still gonna continue his benefit which is significantly higher so these are just um obviously you know there's no crystal ball we don't no one knows exactly how long they're going to live and what this is going to look like but you want to make sure you understand how all these things play together so you can make the best decision um with the information you have at the time okay so let's jump into the mechanics of collecting so we're going to look at a couple of scenarios a couple different ages of when carol and david are going to take their benefits so let's say they decide to both start taking at age 62. so if david starts early his is going to be reduced down from 2200 to 16.50 in this case we're also assuming that david's going to live to 75 carol is going to live to 82. so he's gonna get his benefit of 1650 starting at 62. he lives to 75. at that same time carol decides to claim her own benefit it's reduced down but then she gets the spousal benefit on top of that so there are combined amounts and over their combined lifetime this scenario of them both starting at 62 gets them a total of 550 000 with him living to 75 and carol living to 82. okay what if instead they wait until full retirement age so full retirement age same other information he starts at 66 he gets 2 200 she starts her benefit at 66 she gets her 600 plus the spousal benefit so she's getting her 1100 and then this scenario they end up getting more combined over their lifetime it takes them from the 55 550 000 to 580 000. what if they wait until seventy he waits until seventy he gets that twenty nine hundred she gets her increased amount but remember that spousal benefit is less because this combined can still only be eleven 1100 and they still live to 75 and 82 and in this scenario this actually gets them less over their combined lifetimes than either of the two prior scenarios and that's because that's that spousal benefit didn't increase there was no benefit for carol taking it at 70. so let's look at what might be even better what if instead of waiting carol just starts her own benefit early at age 62. she gets the reduced amount the 450 but it starts at age 62. that's all that's coming in david on the other hand waits until 66. he starts taking his full benefit of 2200 at that time carol can then claim that full spousal benefit right he gets to 75 she still gets to 82 and this actually gets them the most of these three right 584 thousand so just a little strategy right you want to map out what's going to get us the most out of the system and in this case carol starting early and then stacking on those spousal benefits once david actually starts collecting his this is further impacted depending on how long they live right so all that same information but now instead of 75 and 82 we're assuming he lives to 85 and she lives to 92. so 10 years longer for both of them she still starts at 62 he starts at 66 spousal benefit tacks on and now this gets them 962 000 but you can see what it does with the other scenarios as well because if he lives an additional 10 years and he waited until 70 to start he gets that higher amount for longer so that actually gets them just over a million dollars so that's why i was saying it's hard to know ahead of time what you're actually going to end up with but really factoring in your longevity your health the other needs that you have is going to help you really narrow this down alison we have a whole bunch of questions so what do we need why don't we go through a few of those right now um i can i can tell you right now there is no way we are going to get through all of these today because we only have about an hour to complete this webinar if your question does not get answered you can email it to info purefinancial.com and i put that in the chat if if we don't get to your questions but we're going to do our best so i'm going to start at the top chuck says how long must a person be married to get spousal benefits that's a great question and there is a slide on that but you do have to be married 10 years so if you've been married more than 10 years then that is what is going to entitle you to be eligible for spousal benefits again based on your own earnings record or your spouse's depending on who's higher then that's going to map that out for you okay next one danielle says how are spousal benefits impacted if your higher earning spouse has deceived is deceased yep so then you would be entitled to those widowed benefits and we'll get on those as well but it doesn't matter like as long as you're married at least 10 years if your spouse passes away you're still going to be entitled to the higher of the two your own benefit or theirs because that's accounted for in the social security system terry's question is if you get a reduced benefit initially how do you get back to full payment when you don't get any additional money uh you don't so if you start taking your social security benefits early at that reduced amount that's locked in so you're not going to get back to a higher amount but maybe that question was about if you're working and so you get a reduced amount that might be the case okay if that question was if you are if you're wait if your um social security benefits are reduced because you're still working and you took it early once you stop working you're going to be entitled back it won't keep reducing your social security benefits perfect okay jeffrey says if you want to leave a legacy might it not be best to take social security early so you can preserve your transfer on death money yep that's a strategy that a lot of people look at right it's why looking at everything else you have going on because if you go ahead and take social security early and that means that you need less from your own portfolio to live on then absolutely you might end up with more left over to leave to your beneficiaries absolutely uh and let's see sylvia says my ex is receiving his benefits could i claim from his i'm 63 i was planning to wait for mine until i'm 65. uh yes so there is a slide that goes into more information on that and like how old you need to be when you're divorced and things like that so we'll definitely get into it and that'll be in the social security handbook as well all right and and again i have already put the link for the social security handbook in the chat if you missed it because there has been a lot going on uh i will post that again momentarily as soon as we get through a couple more of these questions uh cecil also asked is spousal benefit capped at full retirement age versus potentially 70 yes so that was yes essentially right if we go back to let me pop back through a couple of these slides real quick [Music] okay so this slide kind of shows that right like in this scenario her spousal benefit is capped at eleven hundred so even if she waited to take it it's still not going to be more than eleven hundred so that is capped you're at once you hit full retirement age your social security spousal benefit is not going to increase past that point okay um i have a few more questions number of people when we were talking about what type of income reduces your social security benefits people ask about a whole bunch more options so uh real quick guido said is a pension considered part of income subject to limitations no it has to be like earned income so pension income doesn't count against you in the calculation interest and dividends capital gains things like that earned income okay so yusuf's question does ira income affect the retirement income that would be a no correct beatrice wants to know about capital gains is that considered income nope not for this purpose and then jeff says if i own a business but not receiving wages only profits does that reduce social security um so it will depend on the kind of business and how the income flows through to your personal tax return a little bit more important for this but so again we have a number of questions i will try and uh wade through the rest of them while you continue with the presentation yeah it's weird that this is generating questions as i understand it there are 2700 rules that guide social security so it's no question no no wonder that it's this confusing right trying to get through this streamlined for a webinar but a lot of information out there so yes keep asking questions check out the social security handbook and we'll keep going from there sounds good all right um so here to a couple of the questions that were just asked right spousal benefits and survivor benefits for people that are divorced right so to qualify for spousal benefits you have to have been married to your ex-spouse for at least 10 years you have to currently be unmarried so if you got remarried then you can't file on the ex-spouse's claim anymore you'd be working with your own benefit on your current spouse both people have to be at least or at least age 62 um and divorced for at least the last two years so right yes you can claim on your ex-spouse's benefit but the same 10 years applies whether you're married or not and then there's a few other factors there for survivors benefits so if you're divorced and your ex-spouse has passed away same rules you have to have been married to the ex-spouse for at least 10 years and then you have to be unmarried or you're you are remarried after age 60 and you have to be at least age 60. so if these all apply then you would be even if you're divorced from that spouse then you would be eligible to claim survivor benefits based on that ex-spouse's earnings record okay um now let's get into the taxation of social security and i'm sure this will not generate any more questions it will uh because of course they don't simplify anything right social security taxation whether or not your social security income is going to be subject to federal taxation depends on a few other factors in addition california does not tax social security income but some other states do so depending on the state you live in you want to make sure you know what's how that's going to be treated only 13 states tax your social security income but still it's worth finding out whether that's going to apply to you or not but from a federal level whether or not your social security is going to be taxed here's the chart that determines that if you had nothing about social security income it would not end up subject to tax but something called your provisional income gets calculated and your provisional income is calculated by taking the total of these things so half of your social security benefit any additional ordinary income so that would be pension income business income earnings wages dividends and capital gains and any non-taxable interest so if you have tax-free interest that still adds in to calculate your provisional income then that number is taken and it looks at this chart and if you are married if that number is under 32 000 none of your social security is going to end up taxed if it's between 32 and 44 000 up to half of it could be taxed if it's over 44 000 up to 85 of your social security could end up subject to federal taxation here's an example of that calculation and the tiers are marginal so it's not incredibly straightforward but top example assumes that somebody has twenty thousand dollars of social security income they took forty thousand dollars from their ira so their provisional income again is half of that social security benefit plus the ira so it's 50 000 then that is looked at using those scales right 32 000 below that in between 32 and 44 and in this scenario 55 of the person's social security income is going to be taxable so in this example 11 100 of their 20 000 social security income is gonna flow through on your tax return and be subject to tax the second scenario the person has the same amount of total income right forty thousand dollars of social security twenty thousand dollars of an ira withdrawal but because of the way provisional income is calculated their provisional income is actually lower right because it's 20 000 of social security 20 000 of the ira 40 000 of provisional income again taking a look at those thresholds and in this scenario only 10 or 4 thousand dollars of that social security income is subject to tax so this person has twice as much social security income but only ten percent is subject to tax this person has way less social security income coming in but more of it is subject to tax right so it's important to know how you're generating income where it's coming from so that you kind of see the impact of when you take your social security what's going to happen to it from a tax perspective okay before we get into the future of social security and kind of start to wrap this up i feel like this is a good time if we have additional questions especially after going very quickly through the taxation of social security andy what do we got all right as i mentioned i know that we are not going to be able to get through all the questions we have a few hundred people on the call and a few hundred questions i think have come through uh so again i'm gonna start at the top ron says does taking survivor benefits reduce your own benefits no but okay you would you would get one or the other right so you're gonna ever you're always gonna end up with the highest option like so if you took you wouldn't take the survivor benefit unless you were entitled if you were entitled to more but there would be a strategy of the timing of taking social security versus taking your own so it's something to take a look at okay v says my full retirement age is 66 and a half if i want to claim social security at 65 how much does that decrease my retirement payment yep so it will be like a year and a half roughly of that calculation so somewhere around right that one full year early is like seven percent so if it's an additional half a percent you're probably looking at you know a 10 or 11 percent decrease and that's permanent right right correct yep okay uh rose says my spouse has retired at 63. i'm still working and planning to retire at 67. is she eligible for spousal benefits uh not yes but she couldn't actually take your social her spousal benefits until you as the longer higher earning spouse files and starts taking your social security benefits at that time then she could start taking the spousal okay here's an interesting question beverly says what if you have had a significant other for 50 years can you still get spousal benefits if he passes first um unfortunately not you have to be married okay um do you want to take some more questions or two no we can take more questions you're watching the clock so as long as we have time i'll take more questions and actually i will just say that uh sylvia says you are extraordinary and i am so glad i registered for this webinar thank you thank you uh regina says i have been permanently laid off for my job i turned 65 in august should i take the survivor benefit of my husband now or would it make sense to wait until i'm full retirement age in december of next year so i can't answer that question in this call right we i'd have to know a fair amount more about your overall situation you know potential asset levels withdrawal needs things like that um but you can check out our social security handbook that might help you calculate what the differences would be plus you know we'll we'll give you our contact information so you can reach out to us to help out with that in the future too cecil says how does a high required minimum distribution like over i'm just making sure that that says a hundred thousand dollars uh effect one social security benefit strategy yeah so that's a really good question um because if you have you know again that's where that provisional income calculation comes in so if you have a large amount of other income sources ira withdrawals required distributions from your retirement accounts that's going to impact your provisional income and i can just tell you like if you have a hundred thousand dollars coming out of an ira you're going to end up with 85 percent of your social security income subject to federal attacks gay says i am five years older than my husband and i earn more than him when i sign up for social security how do i also set it up where he gets part of my benefit and how old does he have to be for me to do this yep so uh that's where the spousal calculation comes in so if you're older and earning more then he would he could take his own you know whenever 62 or at full retirement age that would be what you'd want to look at and then he would he would be eligible to take the spousal which sounds like it would be more once you have actually filed and are taking your social security benefit that's when he would be able to take the spousal benefit all right and for the moment i'm gonna go ahead and put a hold on questions so that you can finish up the webinar okay so the future of social security so here's the thing this has been talked about a lot right that the the social security which is called the old age and survivors insurance trust right is is on schedule or at risk of being depleted in 2033 which is obviously not that far away and what's factoring into that is the number of people currently getting social security benefits versus the number of people working and paying into social security and how that's going to continue to change right so 65 and older that are currently taking social security is about 56 million and it's projected to go to over 78 million by 2035. additionally currently there's 2.8 workers paying into social security for every social security beneficiary by 2035 that's going to be even less right so we have progressively fewer people paying into social security compared to the number of people receiving benefits so all of this is obviously not helping out the longevity of the assets in social security so while we don't know exactly what is going to happen it would be reasonable to assume that we will probably see some changes to social security whether that means they would you know push out full retirement age for for younger people whether that means they would change the percentage of fica tax that your wages are subject to or the amount of wages that are subject to fica tax right all of those things and and certainly many other things could continue to evolve to ensure that social security continues to last and be available for people okay thank you to everyone for attending the webinar and i know that andy is going to put up an offer but we'll probably get to some more questions here but if you have additional questions or concerns obviously you can get that social security handbook in addition you can reach out to us for a free financial assessment you can click the link and schedule that right away um and we're happy to continue to help you can email us you can give us a call happy to answer more questions i'm sure we have more yes we absolutely do have more questions so i'm going to jump into some more of those right now um let's let's talk a little bit more about the difference between spousal benefits and survivor benefits because lena asked can i still collect my social collect spousal benefit even if my husband is still living well you can collect spousal benefits if your husband's still living but survivor benefits are what you would collect after your spouse passes away don says i am on ssdi married and 59 years old i have some health issues my spouse is 56 and retired if i were to pass away can my spouse take my social security disability even though my spouse isn't collecting social security until 62. my ssdi is larger than my spouse's ssi will be no they wouldn't take your ssdi that's the disability income that you're entitled to based on a disability but they would be entitled to your survivor benefits um but they would but not at their current age right they would still have to wait if until for survivor benefits at least age 60 but 62 or their full retirement age changes the calculation but they wouldn't get your social security disability income they would get your actual social security survivor benefits uh greg says how much is social security taxed if you live in california so i guess the question would be is there a state tax on social security as well as federal tax yeah so it's subject to federal tax based on those calculations no matter where you live whether or not your state also taxes it depends on your state california does not tax your social security income so like when you look at your federal return and your california return your your taxable income on your federal return will be higher than your california return because social security is an adjustment and taken off and not taxed in california uh sasha says what happens with social security if you don't have 35 years worth of earnings yeah so it will still take your 35 highest years which means that some of those years would have a zero and it would be based on that calculation uh ileana says i know people that retired and collected their social security at 65 but then got a job and continued working is that a good strategy uh it totally depends on your specific situation like if somebody started taking it at 65 which is still early um it would depend on when they went back to work if they had reached full retirement age before they went back to work as to whether or not that benefit was going to be reduced so it depends on the your individual situation on whether that would make sense or not what other assets you have can you live on them can you not right so every situation would be a little bit different there jeffrey says you mentioned once you start taking social security you have to remain at that level that you receive but i thought within a year you can pay back your social security and then wait to a new level that yes that is correct so there is a small caveat if you start taking your social security early and for some reason you decide that was not a good idea within the first 12 months you can pay all that money back you've got to give it all back and then you could start over essentially so then if you decided to wait until full retirement age then you could go to what you would have been entitled to yeah that's true okay lena also asked will my husband's benefit decrease if i uh collect a spousal benefit now no no so when you file for the spousal benefit the person whose earnings record that is based on is not impacted at all excellent and again as i mentioned if you do have further questions because i i think i might have missed some i tried to get to all of the ones that were in the chat but i i may very well have missed some um i will put our contact information in the chat you can also schedule that offer send us an email at info purefinancial.com if your questions did not get answered or you can call us at eight four four feet only that's eight four four three three three six six five nine and uh uh i'll leave chat up for a couple seconds more here just in case anybody else wants to re-up their question so that we can get that answer to you right now um otherwise allison thank you so much for this incredibly informative webinar don says thank you you both have done an excellent job must be nice being so smart [Laughter] thank you glad it was helpful hope like there's a ton of information obviously and i'm sure you know it's kind of just the tip of the iceberg what we got into today but glad it was helpful and i'm gonna post that link so here is the social security handbook again one more time in the chat uh if you need to estimate your social security benefits i will also put that link in the chat that will take you straight to the uh social security website for their estimator uh and then i will also of course put in the link so that you can sign up for a free financial assessment so that we can help you to determine the best social security slam claiming strategy for you all right allison thank you so much i appreciate your time today thank you all for joining us uh and have a great day have a great rest of your afternoon thank you bye-bye you

Channel: Pure Financial

Views: 50,035

Keywords: pure financial advisors, social security, social security claiming strategies, when to claim social security, spousal benefits, social security rules, future of social security, how social security spousal benefits work, social security explained, social security benefits, social security number, how does social security work, social security basics, social security benefits explained, social security income limit, social security at 62, taxes on social security benefits

Id: LU37c4JHBSw

Length: 44min 31sec (2671 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 02 2022