All right, Tony kenzi, you're back with you. Today we start talking about social security. For those of you with more than five years to go before you reach your plan retirement date, this might seem unnecessary. But it's not. You'll realize why before we get to module four. In this lesson, my goal is to give you some solid ideas about social security, and how you can best navigate these waters.

Before we do a quick recap. In Module One, we talked about retirement in general and helping you better understand it conceptually. I said that sooner or later you will retire. And since time travel is not yet possible, many of the steps you take along the way are critical steps if you want your retirement to be as successful as possible. Once you turn off the work for money switch, there's no going back. You have to live with life as it is, unless you get really lucky and score with a lottery ticket.

Module Two was spent talking about investing money. about risk about finding people you can trust to help you about rules to follow about making your money last and about taxes. For the vast majority of us, we make the best decisions we can at the time we make them with the information we have at our disposal. It helps if we've had the motivation and discipline to figure it all out in advance. If you weren't motivated before, perhaps you are now. You've been listening to me now for a couple of hours.

And hopefully you're ready and able to start creating an effective roadmap to follow. I certainly hope so. Please don't let paralysis by analysis takeover. Now comes Social Security. As a functional government program. It came into existence in 1935, largely as a result of the social chaos from what we now call the Great Depression.

At first, it was called the old age survivors and Disability Insurance Program. Today, it's simply known as social security. This picture is of history. significance as item a fuller was the first person to receive a monthly retirement check from Social Security. It started when she turned 65 and lasted until she died in 1975 at age 100, obviously, she got far more out of it than she put in. When Social Security started then life expectancy was about 63.

It was designed to benefit the lucky few who live longer, and to keep the elderly who had no money from dying in the streets, or perhaps in the woods if they lived in rural America. Before we go any further a quick digression. The Social Security Administration has a great website full of good and easy to understand information. It's not an oxymoron to include government website, an easy to navigate in the same sentence. I encourage you to go to this website and establish yourself on the site. Some of you will respond with a shrug and ask why since you may have many years to go before social Security benefits even reaches your mental Horizon.

Well, here's a good reason why you should to check for mistakes. The sooner you find them the better. If, for example, 20 years from now, and you turn 62, you have the ability to sign up early and start receiving a monthly check. You go to the website, you open an account, you look at your employment history, and you see something strange. You recall being employed in 2005, for example, but it shows you have zero dollars credited that year. What happened to the money you know, was withheld from your check?

How did that affects your 40 credits? Oops, the company you work for then has gone out of business. They siphon off money and not send it in when you can't find them, but you can find out what you need to do at this website. In order to receive any monthly retirement income benefits from Social Security. You first have to qualify to do that. You must have a minimum of 40 credits, since you can only get for each year, that means that minimum you have paid into the system over a period of 10 years.

With money attributable to each quarter set another way, it means that it's a waste of time to apply for retirement benefits. If you haven't paid into the system. Sometime during your working years, a minimum of 40 calendar quarters, whether you're employed by someone else, or you're self employed, that's the minimum criteria for getting a monthly income benefit starting at age 62. Or until you're 70. If you don't have those 40 credits, you're out of luck. And we've talked here about not relying on luck to pay your bill.

What you'll be looking for is known as the primary insurance amount or P IAA. All your benefits are based on this amount. Let's assume you paid attention over the years and you now have at least 40 quarterly credits. You're now looking at countless different age claiming strategies and more than almost 600 different sets of calculations. to consider when applying for your Social Security benefits, the difference between the best and the worst could easily be more than $100,000. over your lifetime.

Some people say it's up to a quarter of a million. If you have a surviving spouse that number it could be really critical. Whatever the amount, monthly income from Social Security has become an absolutely critical component. When it comes to living one's life in retirement, even the very wealthy want to make sure they get their monthly check. One of the first questions asked by people in my Social Security workshops is whether Social Security will still be there when they retire? My answer is probably yes, but not without some timely adjustments.

Throughout our lives, there will always be things beyond our control. Some of them will attack your retirement plans. All you can do is position yourself so that when and if those things happen in your future, they will have a minimal effect on your standard of living and how you live your life. Whether Social Security continues to Be a vital or a viable source of income and your retirement is something none of us can know. My guess it will continue in some form, but the political landscape will forever keep its future uncertain. This simply means that you must pay attention over the years, and do your best to influence the political landscape.

So the decisions made are in your best interest. If you're curious about what might be done to keep it viable financially, this is a link to my blog post from April 18 2017, where I talked about it at length. You should think of social security as an annuity, sending you money every month for the rest of your life. One with cost of living adjustments every year. When you start, how much you get, what the annual increases will be, are as yet unknown, completely unknown. But get there you will, and knowing how to get all that's coming to you is important.

There are going to be pros and cons every step of the way. So let's get started in Module Two lesson two, we're going to explore some of the details about social security so you can make better decisions for yourself and your family.