Social Security Navigation and Optimizing Benefits
Social security is one of the most important fund and it plays a really vital role in how Americans decide on funding their retirement accounts today. Many researches indicate that more than half of the American population rely on Social security as a huge retirement income source.
How to navigate social security and earn benefits:
In the past few months, there were some alterations made to the process of married people earning retirement benefits. The “Restricted application” and “File and suspend” strategies that were used by some of the federal employees who also happened to have spouses working in the government are soon to become a matter of the past.
The “File and suspend strategy” allows a married couple to maximize the Social security benefits. This will be applicable when both of the spouses have reached their full retirement age and one has been the main bread runner. Let’s say that the primary earner is eligible to earn a specific Social security amount then their spouse would ideally be liable to get half of that amount too. The real magic happens when the primary earner goes on and suspends their benefits till they reach 70 and thus gets advantage in the form of added suspended retirement benefits. This strategy will die on May 1st.
The restricted application strategy is still going to be available for another 4 years. It’s when you are at your full retirement age and have not applied to receive any benefits previously and you file solely for the spousal benefit that is pertaining to the record of your spouse.
These two strategies have been in practice for quite a long time now and while they are exploitable (till they expire) if you manage your contributions throughout your career properly, you can end up having substantial social security when you need it.
