When you’re married to someone who has worked under the Social Security taxation system, you have two different benefits that may be available to you: Survivor Benefits, and Spousal Benefits. These two benefits may be more than the benefit you’ve earned under your own working record. Spousal Benefits are available while your spouse (or ex-spouse) is still alive. Survivor Benefits are available after your spouse’s (or ex-spouse’s) death. Social Security Survivor Benefits are much different from Spousal Benefits in several ways. In fact, there’s very little to compare between the two, other than that they are benefits for the spouse or ex-spouse of someone who earned a Social Security Retirement Benefit. Here are the primary things that you need to know about Survivor Benefits: Survivor Benefits can be claimed as early as age 60. Of course, as with all early claims for benefits, the amount will be reduced if you […]
Social Security
When Your Birthday Isn’t Your Birthday
(According to the Social Security Administration) There are a couple of circumstances where the Social Security Administration changes your birthdate for you. Chances are if this applies to you, you already know this, but I thought I’d explain it anyhow just so you’ll know what it’s all about. First of the Month If your date of birth is on the first day of the month, then for Social Security purposes, your Birth Month is actually the month prior to your actual date of birth. So if you were born on July 1, according to the Social Security Administration, your Birth Month, and therefore the month that your benefit is based upon (for example, Full Retirement Age), is June. In this example, your Birth Year remains the same, but that’s not always the case… First of January In the case of a date of birth being January 1, your Birth Month […]
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The Impact of Zero Years
Remember when we talked about how your Social Security Benefit is calculated? Your highest 35 earning years during your career are put into a formula, and the earnings are indexed, then averaged by dividing the result by 420, the number of months in 35 years. And if you have less than 35 years of earnings, those years without earnings are counted as zeros… So, you can guess what might happen when you have years with zero earnings in your record. Naturally your average is going to be reduced (perhaps dramatically) by any year when you had zero earnings. Let’s say you have 35 years of earnings at the maximum amount, which will give you (for 2022) a FRA benefit of $3,262. But if you only had 30 years at the maximum earnings amount, your benefit would be reduced to $3,010, an annual reduction of $3,024. Taking this further, if there […]
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Your Payback from Social Security
One of the big questions that many folks face with regard to Social Security benefits is – I’ve paid in so much, will I ever see it come back? I thought I’d show what a payback break-even might look like, in terms of the money you put into the system and what you’ll get back out of it. I made an assumption in the calculations: Future COLAs were not calculated into the example, keeping things in terms of today’s dollars. COLAs would only confuse the calculations. Full Retirement Age In this first series I assumed the normal, Full Retirement Age scenario, with two options: 1) you earned exactly half of the wage base that SSA requires withholding for each year of your 35-year working life, and you’re now age 66 and 2 months, Full Retirement Age; and 2) you earned exactly (or more than) the maximum amount of money that […]
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