Did you realize that your Social Security benefits are based on the highest inflation-adjusted 35 years of your income? To maximize your benefits, it’s important that you have 35 years of a solid wage history. A zero-earnings year or two can cause your benefits to drop significantly.
A recent study by the Center for Retirement
Social Security
It is easy to get frustrated with the discussion of Social Security, in part because the same sliver of data is used to support completely opposing arguments.
To illustrate, most articles about Social Security mention “the shortfall” at some point. While all those pieces reference the same concept, that information in some cases may say
For those who have invested unwisely or not saved much money for retirement, the bridge to Social Security income is clear — keep working. If you still have debts you want to pay off before retirement, the free Debt Optimizer by MoneyTips can help you reduce your interest payments and lower your debt. However, if
Nothing is as easy as it seems. If life were easy, we could solve the financing gaps in Social Security in five simple words – eliminate the cap, problem solved.
Life isn’t easy In the words of H.L. Mencken, for every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. Nothing is
To plan properly for retirement, you have to know how much money you should expect to receive in Social Security benefits. Fortunately, you can check your estimated benefits anytime by establishing a my Social Security account on the SSA website. Unfortunately, these estimates are just that — only estimates, subject to significant change. That change
It should not come as a surprise that people with lower incomes have lower levels of retirement savings. However, many people with lower incomes have no retirement savings at all – and a recent Federal Reserve report suggests that far too many Americans across all age groups fall into that category.
The Federal Reserve’s Report
Social Security is generally considered a tax-free benefit, but that is not always the case. Depending on the amount of alternate income that you have in retirement and your filing status, you could owe taxes on up to 85% of your Social Security benefits.
If you receive Social Security or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)
If you are closing in on retirement age, you are keenly interested in how the three remaining Presidential candidates — Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders — plan to deal with the fiscal challenges of Social Security and Medicare. If you are not close to retirement age, you should be even more interested, as
Whether you believe it is a good trend or a bad one, the number of households that receive benefits from the Federal Government has almost reached the halfway mark.
Welfare Dependence Keeps Growing According to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 152.9 million out of 308.9 million total Americans received some form
For most people, the death of a spouse is the most traumatic event imaginable. Nevertheless, as bad as the emotional trauma can be, the financial trauma is often equivalent — and can last for much longer — if widows and widowers do not take the right financial steps in the immediate aftermath of their spouse’s
MoneyTips Are you planning on pushing your retirement age out as far as possible, or continuing to work part-time during your retirement years? A growing number of people are following this path, driven partly by enjoyment of their work and partly by economic necessity. In addition, since people are living longer in general, retirement may
Benefits for Social Security and traditional pensions are apportioned very differently. With traditional Social Security, your benefits are calculated based on your work record and supported by taxes removed from your salary during the course of your working life. With pensions, the company or government entity you worked for puts aside money in a fund