Filing for Benefits and Helpful Tips

Most of our articles deal with Social Security claiming strategies and how to improve you income stream but thought we would take a break and offer some helpful tips to make the process easier to navigate. Need your date and place of birth and Social Security number. Your bank or other financial institution’s Routing Transit […]

Survivor Benefits – Ouch

One of the areas we work the hardest for our clients is in the area of Survivor Benefits.  People do not realize that with the proper advice and calculation, that the Survivor Benefit can be improved in most cases by quite a bit.  Remember, in a married couple, when one of you dies, only one […]

Social Security Review before Filing

Each and every day, we are confronted with choices that can alter our course of life.  Some of these are short term situations, but many are long term situations that we cannot go back and change.  The same with Social Security and the choice you make about your benefit.  Many times, a quick decision cannot […]

Divorced Exception to the Rule

We received a phone call this week from a lady that wanted some clarification about something she had heard – this is a red flag to us because most of what people HEAR is fake news or not a legitimate rule of Social Security.  Anyway, she had been married for 8 years, divorced, and two […]

Do-Over Case Study

We receive many phone calls from people that want to know if they made a mistake when they filed for Social Security. They either read an article, or someone told them another about a way to file and they start questioning their decision. These phone calls are sometimes very hard because unfortunately some of them […]

Be Careful What You Read

I am sitting at my desk just shaking my head.  I have just read five articles from highly acclaimed financial spokespersons or firms and each of them contained wrong information about Social Security claiming strategies or benefits.  Not little errors either – errors, that if followed, would have cost the retiree a lot of money […]

Death of Young Workers

This is a tough article to write, but needs to be addressed as it does happen.  What do you do if the main breadwinner in the family dies and leaves a widow and child or children behind, and this young person has not accrued the 40 required quarters of earnings to qualify for Social Security […]

GPO and Social Security

If your household receives or expects to receive a pension from a government job considered a non-covered employer (while working your employer did not withhold Social Security taxes) and Social Security benefits from other employment, you’d better learn about the Government Pension Offset (GPO)– because it may leave you with less income than you expected. […]

Are you Ready to File? Social Security Questions that Need Answers

1. If married, who should file first? 2. Should we both just wait until age 70 to file? 3. 30% (down from 45% because people are becoming informed) of the population take their benefits age 62 – why should I not follow suit? 4. Since Delayed Retirement Credits are 8% per year, should I wait […]

Earnings Test for Dual Income Families

Working later in life, has almost become the norm. People love their jobs, have good health, look forward to additional income and savings, and sometimes just need to stay busy. With that said, whatever your situation might be, taking the Social Security benefit while still working can create quite a challenge. The Earnings Test is […]