Social Security Strategy
You likely know the dates of when you can start receiving Social Security. You've most likely factored it into your retirement plan.
...but, do you know the best date to start collecting based on your exact situation?
When & Why
Lets start with this... Can you answer both when AND why you're going to start taking social security at a specific age?
If not, maybe it's time to create a strategy around it.
Lets look at two situations.
Mary & Bill
Mary is 59, Bill is 60. They've both been working for over 40 years, they're tired, and ready to retire as soon as possible.
Social Security will play a large part in their retirement and right now full retirement age is 8 years away for Mary and 7 years away for Bill. (full retirement age is 67 if you're born after 1960)
...that's a long time when you're tired of working!
Bill decides he's going to start collecting Social Security at 65, he's done going to work everyday.
Bill has looked up his numbers at SSA.gov and sees that he'll be able to collect $1772/mo starting at age 65. He figures they'll be good because their house will be paid off by then and they don't have any other debt.
Mary will continue working for one more year bringing in $55,000 per year. When she retires one year later she will collect $1452 per month bringing their monthly income in retirement to $3224 per month.
... not a lot of thought has gone into their plan, however, this is a common scenario.
A better plan
We could take Mary & Bill at their word and say "if it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me"
...but... we can do better.
The first step is to dig a bit deeper into the numbers.
Deep dive into the numbers
Diving deeper into the numbers, here's what we found.
Current salaries
Bill's current annual salary is $78,000
Mary's as mentioned above is $55,000
$133,000 combined annual
Monthly bills
$4200
Current debt
They have just $68,000 left to pay on their house which is set to be completed one year before Bill's early retirement.
No credit card debt
Two cars are paid off and in good working order
Cash savings
$34,000 in savings
Retirement accounts
Bill has an old 401k with $150,000 from his previous job
He has $50,000 in his current account with a 4% employer match
Mary has a 403b from her job as a Teacher with $78,000
Lets put the money to work
When considering where to put the money it's important to factor in risk tolerance as well as how close to retirement you are.
The closer to retirement to less risk you should be taking. (Read more on that here)
Retirement accounts
Bill's old 401k $150,000
This money is just sitting in Bill's old account, which is typical. As I write this there is an estimated $1.35 to $2.1 trillion left behind in old 401k's!
Taking a look at our Crash Proof Retirement Plan we're going to pull from the FI Strategies and see what we can turn that 401K into before Bill hits retirement.
Based on current rates as this is being written we can conservatively turn that $150,000 into $255,064 in 5 years.
...but I think we can do even better than that.
If we move the $150,000 from the old 401k and contribute an extra $25,000 per year for the next 5 years that gives us $374,608 at age 65.
We can then look to our Crash Proof Retirement Plan in our Get Income category.
What makes the most sense here is to move that $374,608 into an income product creating a personal pension. We would be able to generate $25,136 per year or $2,094.67 per month.
Because of this, Bill can hold off on taking his Social Security at age 65 and push it out to full retirement age at 67. That alone moves the social security income from $1772 per month to $2234, a difference of $462 per month!
If Bill delayed until age 70 that SSI payment moves to $3,333 per month, which is now an option because of the plan.
...not saying this is a good idea BUT it is an option that he didn't have before we created a plan.
If you look at the image above you'll see that the "Personal Pension" we created has income that's adjusted for inflation.
Year 2 income goes up to $27,950, year 3 goes to $30,178 etc.
We didn't even address Bill's current 401k or Mary's 403b. This extra money would give them even more options once they hit retirement.
In this scenario we would talk with them once they've hit retirement and address their needs and goals at the time to see what makes the most sense.
If you're ready to Crash-Proof your retirement plan, click the button below. We'd love to talk with you and help you gain clarity around your numbers.
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