Social Security Planning
For many, Social Security is the largest source of guaranteed income they will receive during retirement. The wrong election can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars of income during your retirement.
Why Retirement Savings Accounts are important
According to the Social Security Administration “On average, retirement beneficiaries receive 40% of their pre-retirement income from Social Security.” Most retirees live on 80% - 100% of their pre-retirement income during retirement. This means that the other 40% - 60% of retirement income will come from retirement savings and pensions. It is crucially important to make a plan that includes how your savings will be impacted by your Social Security Election Strategy. The wrong strategy could put too much strain on your portfolio in several ways and cause you to run out of money during retirement.
What we can do for you
As you start planning to elect your Social Security, you’ll likely have many questions that you need answered:
- What’s the best strategy for my personal situation?
- When should I start collecting?
- How much will I collect?
- How much will I need to supplement my Social Security for a “comfortable” retirement?
- How will my election affect my taxes?
- How will working longer affect my benefits?
- How much earned income can I have and not have my benefits affected?
- Will Social Security be there for me?
- What if Social Security is reduced will I still have enough in retirement?
- Can I retire when I want to?
Our specialists will help address all your questions. You will be able to make informed decisions about how your Social Security will affect your retirement portfolio and put you on a path to meet your particular retirement goals.
Our Social Security Election specialists will help you navigate the plethora of options available to you, some of which include:
- Social Security Election Strategies: We will incorporate contributing factors such as retirement desires and concerns, health, expected portfolio longevity, income stability ratio (ISR) to find out what will be the best strategy for your personal situation
- Calculate your ISR: Income stability ratio can often be strong indicator of your changes of outliving your money. In our experience the retirees with and ISR of 70% or better have the best chances of not running out money in retirement. Our personal recommendation is to have an ISR at minimum of 65%. The correct Social Security election can make a significant difference here.
- Integrate Retirement Planning: The best plans work together not against each other, by integrating your Retirement plan with you Social Security you will see significant advantages for you and your legacy.
- Tax Planning: Social Security begins 100% federally TAX FREE, but the IRS Provisional Income Tax Rule can cause up to 85% of your Social Security to become taxable as ordinary income, leaving only 15% tax free. Proper tax planning can minimize the amount of Social Security that becomes taxable keeping more in your pocket
- Income Gap Planning: Social Security typically represents 40% - 60% of your retirement income, the difference between your spending and what Social Security provides is called the “Income Gap”. Your plan for this gap is twofold.
- For married couples you will have one gap while you are both living and typically another larger gap when one of you dies and loses the smallest Social Security check. For single retirees the Gap is consistent but is often the same as that larger gap surviving spouses experience causing a larger gap over all of your retirement years.
- The income represents your withdrawal rate in retirement. If your withdrawal rate is too high you are at a much higher chance of running out of money during retirement. It can be significantly affected y sequence of returns risk (how your portfolio experiences the market)
We can put a plan into place that fills your income gap, with little to risk while allowing you the best chance to outpace inflation long term, providing a better retirement longer.
