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cover of episode Should I Take Social Security Now or Later?

Should I Take Social Security Now or Later?

2024/11/18
logo of podcast Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger

Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger

Chapters

Barry, aged 67, seeks advice on whether to start taking Social Security now or wait until he turns 70. Jill provides a detailed analysis of the financial implications and recommends waiting to maximize benefits.
  • Barry's wife is still working and contributes significantly to their income.
  • Waiting until age 70 to claim Social Security can increase benefits by almost 8% per year.
  • Jill suggests pulling money out of pretax accounts before required minimum distributions kick in at age 75.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
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Welcome to the jail on money show. IT is monday, november eighteenth, and we are here trying to help you make Better or less Better, more considered financial decisions. And if you've got a question that's bubbling up or maybe something's wearing on you, a bitch just need a little relief.

You just want to some guidance. Why did you get in touch with us? You can go to jail on money dot com, click the contact us button. And when you get a form at to pop up, just write us a note that your email, and if you'd like to join us on the show live, all you need to do is check the box mark, the very best executive producer in the world, will get back to you and try to arrange to get you on the air.

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That is very easy to do. All right, let's get to our listener. This is bary from bosman. And barry is very busy arguing for mark to get a raise. That's what happened when we were first talking to you. And now, barry, are you sticking with that now that we are on the air? Barry, make the case for monkey is the best.

Listen, you would be nothing without mark.

I would not be and I know, why do you think I dedicated the book to him?

You would be wondering out their endlessly and no, I love you jail. And I think mark is a good job and you you make a great team.

you know yeah I would be I would be wondering amnesty, you know, I don't know what he'd be doing, but I thought what he wouldn't be doing this.

And for anyone listening, I will tell you they do read the emails because that's how you guys contacted me. Marketed a good job. yeah. So I want to thank you. I want to thank you for everything you do for, you know, middle america, the average investor.

And I really appreciate I doubt that we are the middle because so many people will complain to me that our people have too much money. But I am happy of our community that we have built with everybody support, including yours, barry said. Mary, what brings you to us today?

So have a question for you. And it's kind of load. I'm sixty seven.

I'll sixty eight in April. Have yet to draw social security. My wife will turn sixty four in december.

She's my super mom and she's a cardiac happiness. So SHE keeps us a float and got blessed. And i'm just wondering, shi takes social security now hold off until i'm seventy.

If I take IT now, I can invest IT. I don't really need IT. What is your advice show?

So barry, tell us a little bit about you guys. Your wife is still working. How much to share .

h six figures?

How many lower six .

are like one .

hundred and something .

or two hundred and something? I think combine we're about one twenty, one thirty have a part time to okay.

And um how much you guys need to live on? What's the actual monthly need approximately between .

five thousand and fifty five hundred.

okay. And how much longer do you think should work? Is e's just going to work another year as SHE like what .

you yeah SHE loves what he does, what she's ready, I think to call IT a career relation and move on so yes no SHE SHE is a great nurse and I think she'll work in to twenty twenty six, the end of the end of our and at twenty twenty five sh'll start retirement twenty twenty six. Possibly maybe you work longer than that.

Do either of you have pension benefits?

I A four hundred dollar month pension.

That's what can you do for four hundred dollars a month, like a gym .

membership, you can pay.

oh, okay. Well, that's pretty good. Um how did you save for retirement in your worklife? Did you have a four one? kay?

Yes, I have close to four one k and roth and all that close to a million .

little bit great. And what about your wife? Did you have a plan through um her employer?

Yeah he does.

And how much is in there?

I am not sure our finances are sacred, which is probably not on your worst list that we should combine them.

But this a second marriage yes.

IT is. And we've always kept the finance separate way, split everything .

I say .

there two things that couples of good arguments about parenting, money and sex hm.

what do you think .

it's in that order as the kids get little argue about IT?

Yeah, we don't care so much.

So we don't have any argue and said that's a great thing. SHE does her thing and I do mine.

Okay, tell us about the difference in your social security benefits. So if you were to claim at sixty seven now, what's the benefit right now that you would appreciate at sixty seven?

I believe I received thirty six or thirty seven hundred thousand or 我是 没 毕业 right now。 Next year I think IT goes up to a about four thousand. Then when I hit sixty nine, it'll be forty three or forty four hundred. And at seventy it'll be forty seven .

and forty eight hundred. Do you have longevity? Do you have any condition that would make me think that, oh, he's gonna be able to .

make IT or everything good? There lived to be eighty nine, and my grandparents on my mom side were ninety two and ninety.

So that's great. The argument to wait to claim until age seventy is that you will receive almost eight percent more a year. Obviously, you go from thirty six, thirty seven like, you know, get next one thousand and a eleven hundred box. And one of the reasons that kind of nice for someone in your situation is that there is this consistent didn't come on, which there is a cola cost of living adjustment every year. And so that will continue for your whole life. And if the reason I ask you about how some people said to me like what IT, what is that matter because if you are in poor health or if you don't have assets, there is a sense of um maybe I should take the money today not to invest IT so much because I needed and I won't live long enough to make that extra money, the money i've forgone worth IT but I think in your case, IT probably is worth IT at this point even though you guys keep your finances separate. When you say you make between one hundred twenty and one hundred thirty thousand dollars together, i'm going to guess that she's a lion share of that how to earning part time .

yeah yeah she's the lion share of that.

And so i'm thinking that you know if she's gonna a whole another full year, there's definitely no reason to claim that right now. And then the other question I have is um when you said yet close to a million dollars and between pretax and rough, is IT tilted more towards pretax rather than rough? Yeah yeah how much is pretax right now?

Seven hundred seven to seven fifty OK .

and another .

two two fifty in raw.

So maybe the game plan and again, I would the only reason why it's good to have your finances combined is that just understanding like where's the money coming from? What's the overall strategy? Because are you tax? Are you filing your tax? This married filing jointly? Yeah.

we fall together. okay. So if you're .

filing together, you are together so you can keep your self finest as a separate as you want as far as I concern here together. thanks. So here is my game plan. You don't take social security yet. I would wait to, i'm seventy.

Your wife's going to retire at the end of next year, right? And so maybe what happens is in twenty twenty six, you have like basically two more years after that um where I if I were, you start taking some of the money out of your pretax account to either live on or just to have because do you have any brokers account asset, any other money besides the the two pots of the the pretext and rough money for that you have? And let's just I assume it's mostly pretext for your wife.

Is there other money as well? No, no. okay.

So one thing that we could do is right now married, filing jointly, your top tax bracket is twenty two percent. okay. All right. So i'm just going to give you round numbers. It's going to be more than this.

But generally, that bracket means that you could go up to two hundred thousand dollars in income, maybe little bit more because you're probably claiming the standard deduction and you could pull that money out of your for a one k over the next couple of years. So like maybe it's one hundred fifty grand year for the next two years in twenty six and twenty seven. So you get that money out as you are in the lower tax bracket, right? Because when sher retires at sixty five, right, SHE won't get a pension, right? no.

okay. So now you're tax break goes down, but what you're going to do is you're going to say no worries is honey, even though we keep our financial separate, you've been hat Carrying the load for a little bit here. So i'm going to take one hundred fifty or a hundred eight grand out of my pretax account in twenty twenty six. And in twenty and twenty seven, we're going to live our lives and we're going to start building up our non retirement assets.

Were going to try to pull that money out so that when my social security starts at age seventy, when i'm having when I have that extra money that's coming in, i'll pull out a little bit less money every year from my foo 1k try to get as much money out before the government forces me to take that out when I turned seventy five。 Because at seventy five your required minimum distribution is gonna kick in. The governments gona say, hey barry, you let's just pretend at that time you have you've taken a bunch of money out of the four or one k you've lived on IT and now you're gonna the government going to say, okay, well, now you got to take out some more money.

Got to uh, three point six percent of whatever left in the account. And so you're going to be forced to take money out. I think between your social security, your the money that you pull out of your retirement account in terms of either an r md or whatever you withdraw and eventually your wife's social security, which which by the way.

SHE she's gna draw mediately. Even though before her full retirement age, because he does not have long gevalia .

her side okay, yeah, enough. Yeah, kay, that's fine. And so between those those sources of income, you should be good. You really should be good. But waiting for you makes more sense.

for sure. So you would drive out of the four o one k, first, before the roth, I were the rose within the last, last.

correct? correct. Because that money has already been taxed. Let IT ride. No implication. And the government is going to force you to take that pretax money and it's going to force her as well.

But if she's going to retire at sixty five, between sixty five and seventy five, SHE also has an opportunity to take some of the money. But I won't worry about IT so much if on her. I mean, I don't know how much is in there. If there's millions of dollars in there, then we should probably look at IT. But you don't need that much money to live on.

Joe, would would you convert some of the four one k to a roth ira?

Will you have no money to pay for the conversion? That's the problem. So what we're essentially doing is we're sides skipping a conversion and we are just pulling the money out. You don't need to convert. You want to put you just going to you're gna pull the money out because if you unless you have a million dollars sitting around in the savings.

can you haven't told me about?

No, no. What's your house worth .

by our house with four fifty? We the only debt we have is the mortgage. We only all about three hundred thousand, but we just purchased this about eighteen months ago.

What's the mortgage interest state?

It's below six. I bought some points down. So IT is below six.

Okay, and that's the only property.

right? Only perty, only dead. We have period.

okay? And you've got some money. Just save money in the emergency reserve.

Yeah over over six figures, about one hundred and thirty.

Okay, that sounds good. So you know, essentially, if you had said to me, oh, jill, I have a million dollars sitting in savings when I would start talking to about converting. We don't want to worry so much about a conversion because I want you to have some liquidity.

I want you to have access to money. Sure, you could you could potentially pull money out of the rough. But since the governments gonna force you to take money out of that for that pretax account, yeah, i'd rather get a jump on IT and do IT and control your tax liability. So I think you're in very good shape now because you said second marriage, do guys have updated state .

documents? no.

So kids from .

first marriages, yeah yeah all adults now in their thirties.

Okay, but you uh, you need to put something down on paper because i'm not familiar with you know the estate law in the state of montana. But you know maybe you'd want your kids to get some money in addition to your wife. If that's the case, got to put IT down on paper.

Well, I love the thing you did on transfer death. I learn that from you.

So thank you. Yeah that's good, right? That you d but you know even just to make sure like um you have kids, not every kids should necessarily you can be equitable without being equal. Maybe one kid needs a little more than the other if you want to write .

a document to make that happen.

OK does does your wife work for a big in fusion of practice?

Works for hospital.

Maybe you should just check with a hospital. Sometimes they have a benefit of legal services. Check and see because you if you wanted to.

maybe you could use that. I don't know .

you might check. We have drop .

the ball on that. We've got five years. Yeah, I thought you had laid out beautifully. And there there were some road blocks along the way.

Isn't IT in Terry like until you do IT yourself your I know what a pain in the neck is .

that these companies are horrible to deal .

yeah I know and like giving the information and you know even I had to do um I just settled in a state in new york and supposedly new york has a very good project process but I was just backed up after cove IT and IT was a mess. So it's hard Better to get something down on paper and and besides that, talk your wife about the financial stuff.

I know you can you can be separate, but you should still know about IT really should you should both be aware of what the total financial situation is because you are really together doesn't mean have to give your money to each other. You have to leave your money to each other. But you know, for the time that you guys are both on this earth, you are going to be linked financially simply because of the tax situation. So you should probably have a conversation about that with one another.

okay? And she's a beneficiaries and all my stuff with my kids.

Second dad, for my SHE, as you said, SHE is the one who's getting a health insurance and SHE, I mean, to be married to somebody who is a nurse, I mean, that's that's a pretty big benefit right there. Sugar 妈妈, sugar 妈妈, sugar 妈妈, sugar montana 妈妈。 Hey, barry, thank you so much for getting in touch with us.

If you like barrier or trying to figure out what's the best claiming strategy or you're trying to look ahead at your future retirement or maybe IT is a second marriage and you want some advice, give us a holler. Good to Gillian money. 点 com, click the contact us button, and if you'd like to join us on the air, just check the box wire on the website.

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