Get Your Finances Ready for Retirement

Posted by Lily Chung

How Social Security Reform Affects Women

Copied and Pasted by Lily Chung

"There is broad, deep opposition among women to any reforms that would weaken Social Security and undermine their retirement security," said National Partnership President Debra L. Ness. "Women want lawmakers to ensure that they will get the benefits they are paying for-not privatize the system."

The poll also found that when told that private accounts would reduce Social Security's guaranteed monthly benefit, women's support for privatization drops to just 33 percent.

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Deferring Social Security Benefits

By Lindsay Chin

The Social Security system allows workers to begin collecting reduced benefits at age 62. However, those who wait until full retirement age are not ranging from 66 to 67 people. Get some 30 percent higher monthly benefits than those who received benefits at 62. Also those who wait until 70 see about a 60 percent more monthly benefits. Another way to maximize Social Security benefits is for couples to use a strategy known as voluntary suspension or file-and-suspend. However, your spouse must agree by signing the Voluntary Suspension of Retirement Benefits Form. Voluntary Suspension of Payments meaning that you have retired and want to stop your benefit now so you can receive a higher early retirement benefit later or receive a late retirement increase. For example a husband who earned more than his wife would be eligible for more than double her benefits. If he starts collecting early he would reduce his wife’s lifetime benefits and his own. Under the Senior Citizens’ Freedom to Work Act of 2000, which eliminates the Social Security “earnings test” which currently limits the amount of outside income retirees can make without suffering a reduction in Social Security benefits. Under the Act if the husband files for benefits but defers collecting them, and they wife starts to collect on his employment record while he accrues credits for the delay.

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Social Security

By Lindsay Chin

Social security was designed to provide security for individuals, to protect individuals from unforeseen catastrophes. It spreads the risks among members of a society so no one single family bears the burden. Social Security was created in 1935 to provide old age, survivors, and disability insurance benefits to workers and their family. Depending on an individual or his or her family contributed depends on the benefits that are paid to the individual. Social security is one of the three things to consider when planning for your retirement. Social security Opponents to social security have been striving to convince American workers that social security will not exist by the time they retire. And many people believe that social security is going broke and there will not be enough funds for the future. However that is not a truth. Social security can pay 100% of promised benefits until 2040 and any incoming revenues are enough to pay more than 70% of the benefits in the future. To be fair for future generations there the government would need to strengthen social security. Those who oppose can be considered alarmist, those who are hostile to the government and favor replacing all or part of the nation’s successful and essential programs with private investment accounts.

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Franklin Roosevelt on Social Security

Posted by Amina Isakovic

Social Security should not be a retirement plan

Posted by Po-cheng Huang

As I search for general American public’s plans for retirement, I learn that the Social Security program is a big part of general Americans’ retirement life. While looking into the structure of Social Security program, I came across the criticism on Social Security being the greatest ponzi scheme of all time since the Berni Madoff’s 500 Billion ponzi scheme were discovered in late 2008 and ponzi scheme is again on the headline. The way some articles described it is that Social Security simply uses the current worker’s income to pay off current retirees. That is exactly what the ponzi scheme is like, paying the previous victims with new victims’ money, and the game will keep going as long as there are enough new victims coming in. Unfortunately, this is the reason why lots of people are calling for Social Security reform because now the system is facing significant financing problem since the U.S. population is ageing and Social Security will eventually run out of money to pay the retiring baby boomers, and thanks to the advances in the medical field, people now lives longer and healthier which will ended up making Social Security shorthanded if no changes are being done and will most likely have significant affect on future retired Americans. So here is what I think, is either people start saving for their retirement and forget about Social Security and have a comfortable retiring life, or depend on Social Security and suffer when it collapse as the result of government failed to make changes to it or step up to help.

References

http://www.ncpa.org/pi/congress/socsec/socsec19jj.html

http://www.wisebread.com/is-social-security-just-a-grand-ponzi-scheme

http://www.socialsecurityreform.org/problem/index.cfm