<p>@anxiousmom. You have a good point that social security may change in 12 years. However it may not and I would think it would be smart to find out today if you are on track. It is probably easier to make changes if needed over the next 12 years vs waiting. By then it may be too late. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>We used to get annual printouts mailed with SS estimates. Now we view/print online. </p>
<p>The estimates show different monthly payments depending on starting date:
- age 62
- âfull retirementâ (age 66 and 2 months for DH 1955 / 67 for me 1962)
- age 70 </p>
<p>Sure, it may not be accurate down the road if SS changes. But at least we have a general idea of our monthly SS if is stays as-is. </p>
<p>We had to recently make the pension survivor decision. The company did different calculations. We looked at the amounts for 50%, 75% and 100% survivor benefits and decided on the 75%. The amount paid to the worker for 100% was so reduced probably due to our age difference so we decided against it. The difference between 50% AND 75% wasnât huge. We also figured that there are expenses that we have related to 3 separate entities, each spouse and the house. If one person was gone, the expenses wouldnât go down 50% because of the house expenses. 75% was the closest to the 2/3 number (1 person + house). Everyoneâs situation is different of course. We really struggled with this for awhile but needed to decide quickly or miss receiving the payments for the first month of eligibility.</p>
<p>I think once you reach 55, itâs a safe bet whatever change DC is going implement is not going to affect you. </p>
<p>Not there yet⊠
I plan on investigating my SS options, but the earliest I could take them is in 8 years so I will wait awhile until I spend money on the software. Hubby and I have defined benefit plan and fairly similar incomes. The âtake half of spousal SSâ thing probably wonât work well for our situation. Right now we are working on paying off the house (26 months from now) and saving in a Roth. Also saving up for weddings; I can see them coming!</p>
<p>âI got a pleasant surprise like that a couple of years ago. I asked them, in every way that I could: âif I start to collect at 60, I will receive exactly the same monthly amount as if I wait to 65?â They kept saying yes, so my response was that, yes please, sign me up, and while youâre at it, could I have the phone number of anyone who declined, because Iâd like to invite them to play poker at my house.â</p>
<p>Maybe you should ask a lot of guys I work with to play poker, @IxnayBob. At our company, we get a full pension at 60 (as long as you have 25 years in, most people will), and we canât convince these guys to get outta there. Many stay till 65, only leaving because they have to. Even though itâs making their lifespan shorter, they like the extra money that working provides. Now if pension was at 100%, as opposed to 50% (up to a maximum payout), I think theyâd all be retiring the day they turned 60.</p>
<p>I got advice from someone not to get a survivor benefit for either me or my spouse, to take the entire amount. Weâll probably retire at exactly the same time, with the same pension. Who knows about lifespan, reallyâŠso it sounded reasonable to me.</p>
<p>busdriverâthat is the can we have kicked around for the last few months. Our FA first said to go for the annuity as is a good deal and he will handle the other half of our retirement $ ( we do not have the desire at all to by pass him) and then he said he could beat it and then he said, again it is a great deal. He is as honest as FAâs get and we think that it is a 50/50 so he would rather we were safe for that half.</p>
<p>But now you all have me working new numbers as H just settled on 100% survivor and I am crunching the numbers and coming up with 75% as giving us $565 more a month and if one of us dies just 1200 less a month. I know I cost more than 14,400 a year. That would be less car insurance, health insurance, cell phone, travel, food just to get started.
We are suppose to sign in the morning. Any thought appreciated!</p>
<p>
I should have mentioned that in my case, the company had been purchased by another company and I was already retired (well, a stay-at-home-dad, anyway). I understand trying to encourage workers to retire early, but for me it was an extra 5 years of pension (not a huge one, but enough to notice the deposit arriving) with absolutely zero downside. </p>
<p>Hereâs an issue Iâm mulling overâI donât think anybody mentioned it, but I might have missed it. How (if at all) to account for an expected inheritance in retirement planning? My mom is 86, and when she passes away my sister and I will split an inheritance that should be enough for each of us to retire on nicely. (Most of it is in a trust, so it is likely to mostly be there when the time comes.) I can probably retire OK even if I never get itâbut it could affect when I retire. Itâs creepy to be trying to figure out the odds of your mom living to be 100.</p>
<p>@Hunt, I would treat an inheritance as I treat deferred compensation: it doesnât exist until it shows up in an account. IRL, it is in the back of oneâs head (in our case, if megacorp doesnât go belly up and DW isnât caught in some scandal, we have $x in the oven), but it is IMO unwise to count on it. </p>
<p>I generally agree with what you say, IxnayBob, but the difference here is that there isnât too much doubt about whether this deferred amount will appearâjust when.</p>
<p>Hunt, we are in the same boat, but we are not counting on this in our calculations. I told our financial planner about it, but he still runs the financial model without it. When he says we have a 75% chance of our investments lasting until we are 95, I use the expected inheritance to just say, âWell, that is the other 25%,â but there is no science to that.</p>
<p>I would treat the inheritance as extra fun money, not counting on it but it will be nice when it happens.</p>
<p>@Hunt, I donât know your respective ages, health situation, your sisterâs financial situation, etc. You probably have a much less complicated situation, and without going into too much detail, my fatherâs assets were intended to provide for his wife (my step-mother) and after her death, their various offspring. When my step-mother passed away (years after my father died), her will did not resemble what we think my father intended.</p>
<p>The âjust whenâ is important; what good is an inheritance if you have already spend many many years of retirement? I donât know you, but I have a strong sense that youâll do just fine even absent the inheritance. If you really needed the money, that would make a case for some distribution of your motherâs assets before her death. </p>
<p>Maybe Iâm just squeamish; I donât factor in an inheritance for the same reason I refuse to have a life insurance policy on a child.</p>
<p>Hunt, Iâd also treat any possible inheritance as lagniappe. Even if your inheritance isnât decimated, as mine was, by a Trustee acting in bad faith, you could see its value drop considerably depending on how the funds are invested and what happens to those markets in the meanwhile. Dh and I didnât count on that money, but one of my older siblings did and now faces a very different sort of retirement than expected.</p>
<p>Ok does anyone want to take a stab at explaining SS situation in divorce/remarriage?</p>
<p>Here EX-H (10 plus years) and soon-to-be new H both make equivalent high incomes and I make less but still decent money. Iâm younger by 5 years. Iâve tried to figure out an easy explanation but it evades me. I donât quite get the âmyâ SS, vs spousal SS of various (only two!) husbands and ages of retirement/what happens in case of death etc⊠</p>
<p>Edited to add:
I gather once Iâm remarried the former Hâs goes away but does the new one kick in automatically as long as you stay married? I know you must have ten years marriage to keep it post-divorce. What happens if older spouse pre-deceases?</p>
<p>^ Once you remarry, you cannot collect benefits based on your first spouseâs record, unless your 2nd marriage also ends.</p>
<p><a href=âhttp://www.ssa.gov/retire2/divspouse.htmâ>http://www.ssa.gov/retire2/divspouse.htm</a></p>
<p>"busdriverâthat is the can we have kicked around for the last few months. Our FA first said to go for the annuity as is a good deal and he will handle the other half of our retirement $ ( we do not have the desire at all to by pass him) and then he said he could beat it and then he said, again it is a great deal. He is as honest as FAâs get and we think that it is a 50/50 so he would rather we were safe for that half.</p>
<p>But now you all have me working new numbers as H just settled on 100% survivor and I am crunching the numbers and coming up with 75% as giving us $565 more a month and if one of us dies just 1200 less a month. I know I cost more than 14,400 a year. That would be less car insurance, health insurance, cell phone, travel, food just to get started.
We are suppose to sign in the morning. Any thought appreciated!"</p>
<p>Sorry, @oregon101, I have no real idea on what is best. Most people I work with get the survivor benefit for their wife, as much as they think she would need. Except one guy told me that he is not getting the survivor benefit for his wife, as he is very healthy and thinks heâll live a long time, but just in case he has a big life insurance policy for her instead. Those numbers might be worth running, as far as cost of life insurance vs survivor benefits.</p>
<p>The only reason I was told not to get it, is because we both get a pension of the same amount, and it is enough to support either person should something happen. I donât know what the best idea is at all!</p>
<p>
Well, ours is complicated enough. Iâll describe it, in case anybody is interested, and perhaps to help somebody avoid this situation. The situation is that my father, because he sold a family business, had substantial assets. Over the years, he gave quite a lot of stock to my mother which she insisted on keeping in a safety deposit box and not in a brokerage account. Nobody realized just how much heâd transferred to her until after he died. At his death, his separate assetsâwhich were still very substantialâwent into a trust for her benefit for life, and then, upon her death, to their children. She canât access the principal, although she has to be paid a certain percentage each year. Now, it turns out that my mother has, in her own name and outside the trust, enough assets to support her In her current fashion indefinitely, even if she ends up in a nursing home. Unless there is a huge stock market crash, she will not need any of the money in the trust. It would have been better (at least from my point of view) if my father had ensured that my mother had enough, and left the remainder directly to my sister and me. I think he would have done this if he had really understood the facts. So weâre sort of left with the situation of my mother sitting on all this moneyâmore than she will ever needâand the only way to move some of it down to later generations is for her to gift itâwhich she generally is willing to do, but doesnât really get.</p>
<p>So I guess the moral is: if you, or a parent, has a lot of assets, get really good advice when youâre drafting your will. My father didnât (because my mother insisted they use the local, long-time lawyer instead of the out-of-town expert), and the arrangement doesnât really do what he would have wanted to do.</p>