Everything You Actually Need to Know About Social Security Right Now (SB1873)

There's a new bill in Washington that sounds like a fix but is really just a promise to eventually have a debate about one. That's not why this episode matters. What matters is that Social Security is suddenly everywhere in the headlines, and if you've been putting off understanding how your own claiming decision actually works, that's a gap that gets more expensive the longer it sits. This episode is the one to finally close it. No single mistake, no one hot take, just a real walkthrough of the claiming ages, the spousal rules, the survivor benefits, and the myths that trip people up most, so you can stop guessing and start deciding with confidence. What You'll Walk Away With Why the "estimated benefit" number on your Social Security account can be wildly wrong, especially if you're not planning to work until 67The real reason waiting until 70 pays off, and why it has almost nothing to do with growthA subtle, surprisingly common mistake that can quietly wreck a smart claiming strategy years after you made itWhat actually happens to your benefit if your spouse passes away first, and how remarriage timing can change everythingWhy the industries where workers never pay into Social Security create a completely different retirement mathThe dollar threshold that can force you to pay back benefits you already claimedA 2024 rule change that may directly affect certain public employees and hasn't gotten nearly enough attentionWhy raising the retirement age matters a lot less than people assume, depending on how you actually want to retireHow a totally different tax, the Medicare surcharge, quietly rides along with your Social Security decisionsA quick true-or-false round that separates Social Security fact from the myths everyone repeatsWhy This Matters Now If you're in your 40s, Social Security can feel like something to figure out later, right up until a headline makes it feel urgent and confusing at the same time. The truth is, you don't need to predict what Congress will do. You need to understand the mechanics that are already in your control: when you claim, how you and a spouse coordinate, and how your own work history shapes the number. Get that right, and you turn a source of money stress into one less thing you have to worry about, freeing up mental space for the parts of your financial life you actually want to think about, like the next trip, not the next committee hearing. From the Basement Doug tests his trivia chops with a game built to separate fact from political fantasy, and OG gets fired up about something that has absolutely nothing to do with retirement, and everything to do with golf tickets. It's the reminder that even a deep dive into claiming strategy still comes with a little basement chaos along the way. Resources Mentioned The PROMISE Act, explained https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/14/social-security-reform.html — CNBC's breakdown of the bipartisan bill and the 2032 trust fund deadlineCreate your SSA.gov account https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ — check your earnings history and benefit estimateid.me login for SSA.gov https://www.id.me/ — the identity verification step for your Social Security accountThe Walt Disney Company: Walt's Era — Acquired podcast https://www.acquired.fm/episodes — the four-hour deep dive Doug referenced on Disney, Oswald the Rabbit, and protecting your nameStacking Benjamins Guides https://StackingBenjamins.com/Guides - Scout + a quick and easy checklist are just two of the reasons these complete reference tools are your top choice to manage your HR Benefits, your taxes, or college planning. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Maybe it's time we talked. Kiplinger calls it the trillion dollar talk, a conversation about inheritance, estate planning, wills, and the questions families should be asking before those decisions become urgent, because knowing what your family wants and having a plan for it can be one of the most important financial conversations you will ever have. Ready to start yours? Visit kiplinger.com to learn more about the trillion dollar talk and what this historic wealth transfer could mean for your family.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet, like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  It is Monday, and that means we are back. Oh gee, how you doing, man?

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Fair to middling?

• 1:12Speaker 02

  I don't know what middling is, but I'm fair.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Doug, are you middling?

• 1:18Speaker 03

  I'm meddling.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  Well, at the beginning of the show, we take fair up a notch because people that performed well beyond fair performed above the call of duty where the men and women in our armed forces, and we salute them to begin every week. So grab those mugs, stackers, because it's time to salute the troops. On behalf of the men and women, Make a Podcast, Mom's Basement, and the men and women, stack of Benjamins around the world. Thanks for all you do. Let's go stack some Benjamins together now this week, shall we?

• 1:52Speaker 03

  Thanks, everybody.

• 1:53Speaker 04

  Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! There's one! I'm not dead! What? Nothing. Here's your ointments. I'm not dead! Here, he says he's not dead. Yes, he is. I'm not! He isn't? Well, he will be soon. He's very ill. I'm getting better! No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment. I can't take him like that. This is against regulations.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Live from Joe's Mom's basement, it's The Stacking Benjamin Show.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug and social security is back in the news as legislators in Washington work to duct tape one of the biggest government social programs. We'll cover that, but even better, we'll share what's important to know about your social security benefits so you can maximize your money and avoid some common mistakes. And that's not all. You know what else we're gonna do? I'm gonna wow you with some of my money-themed trivia. So buckle up, buttercup. And now, two guys who are only podcasting so they can get out of mowing the lawn, it's Joe and O-J-J-J-J-G.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  Hey there, stackers. And you know how difficult mowing the lawn would have been last week if we were further north, OJ, than Texarkana? It would have been wild. I went to visit my sister and it was, talk about middling, it was a little, little overcast there from all the fires.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks, Canada.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  There, there goes Canada again.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Can't we just get like a big ceiling fan to exhaust all the...

• 3:51Speaker 00

  That's all Canada had to do was get some fans, put them up. We could have actually even done that at the border. Oh, welcome back to the Stacking Benjamin Show, everybody. We have a great show on tap. We haven't talked about social security in a long time. And the reason we're addressing it, Doug, as you mentioned, there's some new legislation out around social security. So I think that is a good signal to go, you know what, we should talk about not really what government's doing, although we will dive into that a little bit, what's on the table. But in the second half of today's show, we're also gonna do the more important thing. Regardless, what should you do to make sure you don't make some of the common mistakes? A lot of people make because man, people making mistakes all over social security.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  So we've got all that and more on today's episode. But first, we have a few sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. Let's talk first about Scout benefits. Open enrollment time is coming up for a lot of the companies around the world. And we've got a very quick checklist at the front of every guide that if you do these things, you're going to avoid many of the common mistakes. But we have guides to your benefits, your taxes and college planning. Talk about that's also coming up here as another group of students become freshmen at colleges and universities.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Why trust AI versus the wisdom of a team that's been doing this for over 55 years collectively? Stackyourbenjamins.com/guides gets you Scout where you can look up your exact question and Scout will give you the answer specifically from the guide. So there isn't any of this hallucinating that we hear out of social media. Educate yourself when you're ready to learn more as well. Stackyourbenjamins.com/guides. We've got a couple more sponsors. We're going to hear from them. And then, oh gee, Doug and I getting into the promise act. What's that all about? We promise we're going to talk about it in just a minute. Well, you may know that chaos is the name of the game here in mom's basement. What with guests coming in and out, Cooper the cat getting in the way, Doug being, well,

• 5:59Speaker 00

  being Doug. The holidays make it even worse because it's all about food and big meals. And the problem is prepping for those takes forever. But what about those between meals, right? The meals between those huge, huge, huge bookends. Well, that's where Factor comes in. Factor is made with high quality ingredients that you recognize and trust with over 175 banned ingredients. You always know you're eating something that's good for you, even when you don't have time. It's ready in two minutes. Whether it's lunch between meetings or dinner after holiday shopping, Factor requires zero prep cleanup or effort from you.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  More mom so you can focus on everything else in your day. Factor even has heart smart options like the green goddess barramundi with tomato, rice, peas, kale, and green beans, or the enchilada style chicken and sweet potatoes. Those are so good. They're crafted with lean proteins, fiber packed fruit and veggies and healthy fats. Try those out. Your heart and your taste buds will thank you. For Cheryl and I, factor has been a great way for us to stay busy and focus on family life and beating mom at card games. I use factor and you should too. So let's eat real stackers. Head to factormeals.com/ sb50off.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Use code SB50OFF. And you know what? You're going to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until December 31st, 2026. That is code SB50OFF at factormeals.com SB50OFF at factormeals.com. See website for more details.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  Hello darlings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's headlines.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  All right, guys, I was reading this CNBC piece last week. Reporter Lori Konish talked about big moves in social security, potentially. It's called the promise act. And I thought immediately Doug, I thought, oh, Congress is promising to do something. Finally.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  And they always follow up on that. They're good for it.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Promises from Congress, those are, those always happen. Yeah. But that's not actually what the bill is, is a promise to fix social security, something different. The latest social security trustees report says the retirement trust fund used to supplement payroll taxes. Well, that's projected to run short around the fourth quarter of 2032. If Congress does absolutely nothing. They're pretty good for that, Doug.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  You're asking me, Doug, what are your thoughts? Do you think Congress does a lot and works really hard?

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  But if Congress does absolutely nothing, the system could pay only about 78% of scheduled retirement benefits. So Congress has a problem. Well, it's all of our problem, right? Here's what's interesting. The Promise Act doesn't tell Congress how to solve it. It creates a process that a group of Republicans and Democrats have agreed on could lead Congress on the way how to fix it. It's a process to force Congress to debate and vote on solutions. So today, we're going to spend a few minutes talking about what the process actually looks like, but then we're going to spend most of our time talking about something even more important, how you can maximize your own social security benefits. So, oh gee, I think this is where people are getting confused.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  People hear Social Security Reform Act and immediately think Congress has decided what they're going to do, but that isn't what this bill says. It actually says, hey, we're actually going to finally take this seriously. You and I, we've been talking about social security for the past, what, 14 years that we've been on? And 14 years later.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  This isn't the government taking it seriously.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  You don't think so? We got Republicans and Democrats saying we have to take this seriously.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Co-sponsored by half the people, hold on, co-sponsored by half the people who are retiring at the end of this term, who want to be able to say, oh, I did something for social security. You've only had 25 effing years to do something about it. And so now you're going to pass a, well, it's, it's so early in the stage that none of this is actually going to happen. This is like just some proposal by some senators, a handful of senators, to create another government process to fix the government process. Like, how friggin stupid is this? Like, I know.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  How far have we gotten to this point?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Hold on, here's the solution to social security, everybody. What we really need, what we really need is another meeting. That will totally solve it. And if we put it in, if we put it in writing that we actually have to have a meeting, then by God, we'll actually solve this problem. What a bunch of friggin dumb asses. This is stupid.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Nice job, Joe. Way to get them all wound up.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  But you don't think the fact, well, no, that's good.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  That is good. You don't think the fact that we finally, how many times have we reported on even being an agenda item? We haven't. We never do. We keep hearing about what the problem is, but we don't even hear about it on the agenda. I think it's a progress that at the very least, we're finally actually talking about, well, guess what? Something's gonna have to change.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  I would bet dollars to donuts that even the stupidity of this bill won't pass.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Like, there's no logic behind it. Why don't we actually spend the friggin' energy, like, trying to solve the problem to begin with, as opposed to having a committee, like, I know, here's an idea. We have this major problem, everybody. What do you think we should do about it? Well, I'll tell you what we should do, because we're about to get the F out of here. We should force people to have a committee and like, have, we should force them to solve it. That's how we're gonna solve this. We're gonna force other people to solve this when we exit stage left, because we've only had a combined, how many hundreds of years of government time to solve this problem? This is, golly. And people wonder why they hate politicians. This is a, this is a prime example.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Well, two things.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  And I can't wait to read, I've read absolutely nothing about this, but I cannot wait to see some a-hole senator get on TV and be like, oh, we're proposing this plan, and you know, if the senator from Maine would get off his ass and like, actually come to the meeting, we could get this thing solved. No, you're proposing, to propose to have a friggin' meeting.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  But let's talk about where we're at, where we're at in Washington, which clearly, by the way, for us, that's not our forte. The second half of this argument is gonna be our forte, which is, who cares about what Congress does? Let's talk about what you do about it. But while we're on this topic. I think number one, the status of Washington that we can't even have the discussion. Number one, to have a framework to go, you know what? We're going to vote on the fact that yes, we are going to talk about this. And then number two, this is how we're actually going to talk about it. I agree that if you put away the fact that we don't talk about this at all, the fact that we're proposing a thing that we're actually going to have a meeting that gives us guidelines for that meeting is ridiculous. The reason I think it's not ridiculous is because of the fact that we don't even talk right now.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  If somebody is seen with somebody across the aisle from them currently, it's suicide. So if we put together a framework that goes, hey, I got forced into the, you know what? Constituents that don't read enough about this stuff to understand what's really going on. I was forced into the arena because of this thing. So we had to talk about it. No, guess what? This is the framework of how we had to talk about it. So if we finally agree on the fact that A, we have to talk about it. And then B, this is the way we have to talk about it. We actually do something even more ridiculous. We finally get to the fricking table and we start talking about it. Because it's been a problem for how long? And they're finally saying they're going to do something?

• 13:56Speaker 00

  And by the way, to take the stank off of, yeah, these are a bunch of people that retire at the end of their, their term. Well, why? Why? You know why? You know why they haven't talked about it until now? I'll give you the stank on the other side, which is if I'm going to be reelected, if I want to be reelected and I got caught talking to somebody across the aisle about this, you know what happens? I get attacked from either the farther left or the further right. I get attacked by my own base because guess what? Hey, Doug was talking to the guy across the street. We can't reelect Doug because he can't be, he can't be trusted to stay inside his own camp. So I feel like you almost have to be a congressperson or a senator who is leaving,

• 14:41Speaker 00

  who's going bye bye to even propose that we talk to somebody across the street? Because that crap ain't happening right now.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Be a lot easier if we just had term limits.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Okay, guys, take a CBD.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Big old drink of your water and let's get back on track here.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  Well, I think we are on track. I think it's a healthy debate. I think the debate that this is ridiculous. I think OG is 100% right. I think it is ridiculous. I also think if we look at the battleground and where we're at now, that's why I think this is a plus. I think it's a plus that we're actually going to talk about it. Call me crazy. Let's talk about some of the ways though, that we've seen people talk about change. Some of this is, none of this obviously is a part of the promise act. All the promise act is, is the fact that A, we're going to sit down. B, we're going to have a meeting. Here's the way the meeting has to go. We're going to shackle people to this process so that they actually have to talk about it. But let's talk about some of the ideas. Number one idea to fix social security, OG, raise the retirement age.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it'd be great. Totally solves the problem. I think the last data that I saw on this, don't know where it was, so don't quote me on it. But if they changed the full retirement age from 67 to 70 for people under the age of 40. So ostensibly you've got three decades to, you know, figure out how to cover those three years. It totally solves the problem.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  Which means stackers, and the reason why this is important for us to talk about is not that we're going to solve the problem with social security, but because this is on the table so much, OG, I think that in your own financial plan, showing the retirement age going up could be a wise move when you're doing your projections.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Well, I think for a lot of people, it makes sense to plan on social security at age 70 anyway. But if you're relying on it to like get you across the finish line at 67 or 65, I think it's certainly reasonable to, and you're a young person. And by young, I mean under 40. I think it's totally reasonable to. You know, to make some adjustments there. And frankly, you have way more control over this anyway, 30 years out, you know, 25 years out, like this is a, this seems like a, oh, they're pulling the rug out from underneath me. But, but honestly, you know, if you want to be done at early, I don't know a lot of people in our community that are pining for

• 17:07Speaker 02

  retirement at 67 and are going to be frustrated by having to wait to 70. If they're the type of people that are saying, no, I'm, you know, I love, I love what I do. I don't ever see myself not working. This is a non-event to you, right? Like 67, 70, I don't give a crap. I'm still going to be earning income. And then secondly, if you're on an early retirement track and you're like, I can't wait to be done with work. I don't see a lot of people going, ah, early retirement. Once that bug hits at 67, then I'm totally out.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  That screwed me over.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  You know, it's like you're planning on being done at 55 or 58 or 60 or something. And so, you know, you're having to fund that just little bit of that, you know, that gap, potentially, that's even if they changed it, which.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  You're taking matters into your own hands is what you're saying. You're not, you're not focused on them. You're focused on what I gotta do. I think that makes sense. Second thing, and this has been senators on the left and the right have both said this, remove or raise the payroll tax gap. So, so the payroll tax gap, for people that don't know how this works, in your paycheck, when you see that FICA line, that is your payroll tax. That's your social security tax and you pay part of it, your employer pays part of it. But they're saying to either raise or remove that, that could help fix it, OG.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  You know how sometimes, you know, your day is going on just totally peachy keen. And then you get in a room with somebody and everything derails because of that little conversation. Like today, everything was fine. I was having my coffee, was taking care of a little stuff around the house. There's not a lot going on here. Checked my phone. I say, hey, I gotta record this podcast. Okay, cool. I'll get on, you know, and then Joe starts talking about political stuff, which drives me crazy. That's not even, so that, that like kind of pointed me in that direction. This is unrelated to everything that we're talking about, but this is a little insight into OG for a second. Okay. So then my idiot brother, this is steak brother.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Friggin texts me this photograph. I'm gonna show it on the screen and I want your immediate reaction. And Doug, you in particular are gonna know how this like just on tilt this makes me. So whatever comes out, I bear no responsibility whatsoever for what comes out from here on out.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Do you know how this makes me feel? So my idiot brother just texted me, hell yes, a congratulations email from the Masters tournament that he got picked for tickets. I have entered the friggin Masters thing since I knew it was a thing to enter.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  You think?

• 19:54Speaker 02

  And I'm gonna be effing 50 next year. And this a-hole goes like, oh, I'll just check online real. Oh, hey, I'm gonna enter this thing. Okay.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  I don't even know what it really is.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  You think talking politics makes OJ mad? Not getting into the Masters. You know, it's funny, Doug, is that if I were OJ's brother, I would totally have AI make me that.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  I said that to him. I wrote him back and I said, this is AI. And he goes, it's not. I wish it was. And then he sent me another screenshot that showed that it wasn't.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Guess what he's gonna do next? He's gonna ask you to borrow money to pay for the tickets that he has the privilege of buying.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Tell him to take it out of the money he already owes me.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  All right. Number two was to remove the tax cap. Number three.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Oh, by the way, so removing the tax cap, I actually think that's a probably a pretty fair idea. Removing is maybe a strong word, maybe increasing.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Raising, yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Because right now it's 176K roughly. It goes up a little bit every year. And this seems like a pretty rational thing to, to say like, you know, I can just kinda.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  You gotta, you gotta explain this.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Why?

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Tell people, well, tell people what's the tax cap? Why is it 176? And why should we raise it? Cause I don't think most people know.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Any idea why it's 176 is because some.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  But tell, tell us.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  So we explained earlier, this is the FICA line on your, on your taxes. That number is capped. You only are taxed this tax up to a cap where they no longer tax it. Now part of your income no longer goes towards social security. It now.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Does this mean if my gross salary, let's say, is 176,000, they cap it there or?

• 21:37Speaker 03

  My salary, the amount they pull out maxes at 176.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  No, if your salary is 176.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Okay, so if I make 180, I'm only having FICA pulled out on the first 176.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  That's right. The last 4,000 is, you're skipping every day because you don't have to pay FICA.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Well, and that's not entirely true either. You're skipping out on the social security side of FICA. You still have to pay the Medicare side. So sometimes they line item it together, but anyways.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  You're saying raise it to 250 or something?

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. Change that number. Next up is, uh, Bill Cassidy has an idea, OG, not of giving people, privatizing your social security, which people have talked about before, but just having the government invest it in a diversified fund that would grow faster so that the investment returns of the social security money actually then does a better job of keeping pace with and maybe outpacing inflation.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  I'm far from an expert on social security, but one of the things that I understand that it provides is it provides the government the ability to borrow money against it. It's an asset that it's borrowing against, which arguably has a pretty profound impact on the economy already and helps buoy the economy when needed and, you know, all that sort of stuff. So if that money was no longer sitting there in cash, does that affect the government's lending borrowing rates? I should say. I know there's some accounting gymnastics that happens in those accounts. That's far beyond my comprehension, but, um, I think on paper, it makes a heck of a lot of sense,

• 23:24Speaker 02

  especially when you back test it, when you say, you know, if I'd have just put my own social security money in the frigging S and P, you know, for my entire life, I'd have way more money, which is true for most people, but, um, what other downstream effects are there?

• 23:40Speaker 00

  I don't know. Yeah, I think there'd be a lot of debate there, but at least getting in the room and debating it. So let's play a game.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Doug.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Is OG pissed or not pissed?

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, whenever it's a game, I get put under the interrogation spotlight.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  We do. Are you getting the theme here lately, Doug? That Doug plays the game.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Smoke in my face.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Just to make sure that everybody gets what we got. And the game is, we're going to call this game, is it in the act? Is it in the act?

• 24:08Speaker 03

  So in other words, I'm the lowest common denominator. And if I get it, then everybody can get it.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Hopefully, everybody else gets it. If not, then we've got to, because if Doug don't get it, all right. I'm going to read the line and Doug, you tell me whether it's actually inside of the Promise Act, or whether it's simply an idea people have suggested.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Here we go. Round one, the Promise Act raises the retirement age.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Nope, not in it.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  It's been proposed by a lot of people, but it's not inside the legislation. Round two, the Promise Act removes the payroll tax cap.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Nope, not in it.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  Separate proposal, not in it. Dude, you're doing good. This is great. Round three, the Promise Act creates a separate investment fund.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  No.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Not in it. Senator Cassidy's idea. Round four, the Promise Act creates a process requiring Congress to debate and vote.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Bingo.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Because that's what they're really good at.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Setting up processes to talk about processes.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  But the fact that we haven't even gotten that far. We're actually that far.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Well, and here, the reason I was so, well, let's just finish the game and I'll tell you why I am doing well so far.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  Round five, the Promise Act, we didn't talk about this one. It's the first one we didn't talk about. Requires recommendations aimed at 50 years of solvency for social security.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Yes, it's in there.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  It's in there. It is in there. You can't talk about it unless it's going to solve the problem for at least 50 years. Bonus question. We've got one more. This is for extra credit, Doug, because you got 100 on this deal. So let's see if you can raise your overall score on the entire season.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  Your idea, is this in there? Your idea of paying social security with scratch off lottery tickets? Is that a part of the act?

• 26:02Speaker 03

  Despite all of my letters to my congressman, no, it did not.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  And Stackers, you thought, you thought OG was angry earlier? Every time Congress doesn't answer the scratch off idea, the scratch off idea, the fact we didn't even talk about it earlier today, Doug.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  The reason that I was so quick to say yay or nay on all of your questions, and I was right about it is because all of the first three that you offered and three out of the four that you offered up were all very definitive changes. And this is such a third rail in politics that nobody wants to be that black or white or that definitive in recommendation. It's too risky to do that. And so it's easy to take a guess on whether or not those things were in or out of this bill.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  It's so frustrating, but I love this because now we've separated the process from the possibilities and the promise act is just about process. And I tend to agree with OG, probably not going anywhere, but the fact that we're talking about

• 27:05Speaker 02

  You know what process I want to talk about is the process for getting 30 straight years of rejections from the masters. Like what? That is the thing we need to investigate.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Welcome to short attention span theater, ladies and gentlemen.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Okay, we spent enough time talking about Congress. They certainly have work to do, but let's talk about us Stackers. If somebody listening today is maybe going to get social security in the future, what should they start doing today? First thing, OG, create an SSA account.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if you're working and you have any work history, which is, you know, you got a W two or you get a paycheck like legitimately, you need to, you need to make sure that that's being recorded correctly. For those of you who have been working for a while, but haven't created this login yet, it's also a fun trip down memory lane to go back and be like, oh, man, in 96, I made $1,800. Like, what am I doing in 96?

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Like, well, and that is the important thing because that memory lane could be, could have discrepancies.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Well, good luck trying to remember what the real number should have been in 1996, but you should check it every year, you know, right about this time, kind of in the summertime, I think is when they mostly post your prior tax year information. So while it's fresh, you should double check it.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  And the key here is to get comfortable with, well, before I even say that, people are wondering, well, wait a minute, how do I create this?

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just an id.me login, ssa.gov and it'll walk you through it. It's pretty straightforward.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  Yep. Id.me is, is where you go. And the calculation though, you want to start getting comfortable with, okay, how does social security calculated? It's a 35 year calculation. Can you go into that OG a little bit?

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely not. No human person can calculate this.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  But it's based on 35 years of work experience, I think is the point.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  It's based on, it's based on your top 35 years of work and it's in ZEX for inflation, except for years ages 60 through 67 or 60 and beyond, which is just the actual number. The important thing to remember is this, if you're looking at your social security estimate, let's say you're 45 years old and it says, you know, hey, we estimate your social security is going to be $2,200 a month, da, da, da, da. What they're assuming with that estimate is that you continue working in the same capacity, plus a little inflation until you get to that age. So if you're like, I'm 45, but I'm going to retire when I'm 52, you're probably going to have a bunch of zeros that get factored into that calculation

• 29:43Speaker 02

  that aren't factored into their estimate. So when you see, when you see online that it says, your estimate's 2,200 bucks and you're, you know, 63 years old, it's like, okay, that's a pretty legitimately close number. If you look at it and it says 2,200 bucks and you're 41, but you're planning on retiring at 55, well, you're going to have 10 years, 12 years, maybe 15 years if they go to 70 of zeros against that 35 year calculation. Because, you know, I mean, you probably haven't worked 35 years total in your life yet. So understand that that number, and there's really not a process, at least that I'm aware of, to be able to go in and estimate your earnings in the future to say like, well, let me plug in

• 30:27Speaker 02

  a bunch of zeros to see what it does. You're just going to have to know that that number's BS by some order of magnitude.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. If you're an early retiree, you throw a lot of this out the window. A lot of what it tells you when you go to the, go to the website.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. A hundred percent.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  You spent decades earning social security. You want to make sure social security knows that you earned it. You want to make sure that the numbers are right. I like the idea. Love the idea of going in there once a year. All right. We come back, we are going to talk about claiming mistakes. We're going to talk about some of the gotchas that people get caught by when it comes to social security. But before we get to that, Doug, you're going to help people impress their friends and neighbors with maybe the most hard hitting part of the show, your trivia segment.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  That's right, Joe. Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. And today we're talking about stacking money. Which reminds me, there's one financial advisor who's been asking the same question since 1940. What's up, Doc? Your expense ratio? On this day, one of America's greatest smart Alex officially made his debut. So riddle me this, what famous cartoon character first asked, what's up, Doc?

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Think I nailed that impression.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Well, you may know that chaos is the name of the game here in mom's basement. What with guests coming in and out, Cooper the cat getting in the way, Doug being, well, being Doug. The holidays make it even worse because it's all about food and big meals. And the problem is prepping for those takes forever. But what about those between meals, right? The meals between those huge, huge bookends? Well, that's where factor comes in. Factor is made with high quality ingredients that you recognize and trust with over 175 banned ingredients. You always know you're eating something that's good for you, even when you don't have time. It's ready in two minutes, whether it's lunch between meetings or dinner after holiday shopping.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  Factor requires zero prep cleanup or effort from you or mom. So you can focus on everything else in your day. Factor even has heart smart options like the green goddess barramundi with tomato, rice, peas, kale and green beans. Or the enchilada style chicken and sweet potatoes. Those are so good. They're crafted with lean proteins, fiber packed fruit and veggies and healthy fats. Try those out. Your heart and your taste buds will thank you. For Cheryl and I, Factor has been a great way for us to stay busy and focus on family life and beating mom at card games.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  I use Factor and you should too, so let's eat real stackers. Head to factormeals.com/sb50off. Use code SB50OFF and you know what? You're going to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until December 31st, 2026. That is code SB50OFF at factormeals.com. SB50OFF at factormeals.com. See website for more details. There is a financial conversation that's coming to millions of American families and there's a pretty good chance nobody wants to be the person who starts it. Inheritance. And here's why that matters.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  An estimated $124 trillion to heirs in charity is expected to be transferred by Americans over the next 20 years. It's an extraordinary amount of money, but Kiplinger's research found that 51% of adults and their parents, get this, never talk about money. And there's a pretty big disconnect. 47% of parents expect to leave a meaningful inheritance while only 24% of adult children expect to actually receive one. Nearly 30% of parents don't even have a will in place. Maybe it's time we talked. Kiplinger calls it the trillion dollar talk, a conversation about inheritance, estate

• 34:30Speaker 00

  planning, wills, and the questions families should be asking before those decisions become urgent, because knowing what your family wants and having a plan for it can be one of the most important financial conversations you will ever have. Ready to start yours? Visit kiplinger.com to learn more about the trillion dollar talk and what this historic wealth transfer could mean for your family.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  It's incredible at a small company like Stacking Benjamins, how one, one hire makes all the difference in the world. If you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break. Hoping the right people see your job posting isn't the best growth strategy. When the pressure's on, you need the right hire. This is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed Sponsored Jobs is a boost whenever you need to find quality talent. When workplace chaos hits and you need the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post even seen at other sites. Get matched with and hire quality candidates who can drive the results you need. Reach candidates that meet your specific criteria like skills,

• 35:40Speaker 00

  certifications, or locations. Sponsored jobs boost your job post on search results so you can reach the people that can help your business thrive. Plus, with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, you only pay for results. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, listen to this. Companies like yours have made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. And sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, that's a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And guess what?

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Our stackers are going to get a $75 sponsored job credit. That's you to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support Stacking Benjamins by saying you heard about Indeed in mom's basement. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Hey there stackers. I'm Carrot Lover and Guy who took a wrong turn in Albuquerque and ended up in a basement. Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. Mel Blank was the voice of a bunch of cartoon characters, including today's birthday boy who said, "What's up, Dak?" But before I tell you who said that famous line, there's actually some cool money stories here. Most people assume the guy behind all these voices must have become fabulously wealthy from the character, but not exactly. Mel Blank voiced not only the character to today's question, but also Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, OG, and a whole cast of Looney Tune characters. Yet he never owned the rights to any of these characters. According to biographical

• 37:44Speaker 03

  accounts, he never made more than about $20,000 in a single year from Warner Brothers despite being the voice behind many of its biggest stars. But it's not all bad. What he did negotiate was something almost unheard of at the time. After Warner Brothers turned down his request for a raise, Mel Blank asked for and got an on-screen credit that read "Voice Characterizations by Mel Blank." That credit made him one of the first voice actors most audiences actually knew by name, and it helped launch decades of additional radio, television, commercial, and voiceover work. So here's today's money takeaway. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can negotiate isn't a bigger paycheck, it's building a personal brand. But that

• 38:28Speaker 03

  brand was built primarily on the guy who said, "What's up, Dak?" And that was, of course, Bugs Bunny. Happy birthday, Bugs. And now, back to two guys who are nearly as good-looking as Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck. It's Joe and OG.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Thank you, Doug. And by the way, you're the one that alerted me to the fact that A Choir Podcast now is diving into another four hours, this time on Walt Disney. But Walt Disney had a similar problem. Early on in his career, I didn't know that all of his animators got stolen. He didn't own the rights to Oswald, the rabbit. And so when he created Mickey Mouse, he made sure at the end of his shorts it said Walt Disney on the end. So when people tried to do it again, which they did, they stole his animators, everybody's like, "No, no, I want the Walt Disney one." So people wanted Mel Blank. Like, "I want, I want Mel Blank."

• 39:24Speaker 00

  Pretty interesting. Make sure that you keep control of your assets. Well, let's talk about one thing. Congress, we talked about in the first half of today, has plenty to figure out. OG is not going to figure out that. He's going to figure out the system, another important system, how people get into the masters. But let's assume none of us is heading to Augusta, Georgia, or to Washington this afternoon, and look at what we can actually control. And the question everybody asks, OG, is the first question you hear people ask all the time, when should I take social security? And I have a feeling that might be the wrong first question. Is when should I claim actually the first question, or where we head first, OG, when it comes to social security?

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Ultimately, all of this kind of just boils down to your individual financial plan. The way that I evaluate social security from a planning standpoint, or the way that I encourage people to think about this, is it's one of the buckets of money that you have, right? So you have this bucket of money that's your social security bucket. You have a bucket that's your IRA, you have your 401k brokerage account, real estate, whatever. Like, you have all these different buckets of money. And now you have to figure out the best way to take the money out. Let's say that you're going to retire at 60. You can claim social security as early as 62 with a pretty substantial discount, you know, a reduction in benefits for your entire life. And so you're drawing from that bucket versus drawing from another

• 40:45Speaker 02

  bucket. Or you can wait on this bucket and draw from this bucket. It's just all about the timing of what's going on, you know, and like what the balances are in those different, in those different places and what the flexibility is. You know, there's plenty of people out there who have limited resources and, you know, IRAs and 401ks and that sort of thing. And it's like, well, the only way I can actually retire, especially since, as we've reported before, the vast majority of people retire before they're ready, because they get retired, right? You know, the majority of people are like, I'm going to work till I'm 65. And then they have a health issue or layoff or something, or 61. If you're in the situation where it's like, well, I mean, I get that the optimal way to do it would be to do A, B, and C, but

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Those aren't the cards I've been dealt. Well, then you just got to play the game that you've been dealt, right? Which maybe I have to take this at a suboptimal way because this is the only way that my plan works.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  Yes. And question number one might be, oh gee, then it might just be, do I need the money right now? Yes, these other buckets aren't ready, so I gotta have the money. I gotta have this money right now. Even though I understand it might be suboptimal, I might want to wait to get a bigger chunk. Something in the hand now beats having a bunch of money I can't get to.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  I think you have to evaluate your relationship status, like, you know, and I don't mean like status in terms of like, are we going to make it? But more like, you know,

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Are you married?

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Are you married? Like the health and wellness of your family? Again, you can be a super healthy, you can still have an accident, you know, you never know what's going to happen. And put in your plan, your spouse's benefit pool themselves and how that kind of layers into it as well. I mean, if you're fortunate to be in a situation where you've worked hard and you've got money in all these buckets and you're like literally just saying, what's the most optimal way? I would present this as an idea for you. I would say you've got one bucket that has an account that is going to grow at a varied rate of return, right? So you've got your IRA, it's invested, it's going to do whatever it does. Some years it grows by 30, some years it grows by negative 20. You have no control over that.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  You have another account that's going to grow at roughly eight to 10% a year, virtually guaranteed until, you know, you're 70. Well, which one of these do you want to keep growing for the foreseeable future? Well, if you're looking at it in the last 10 years, you'd say, well, I would want the S and P bucket to be there, growing and compounding at 20 odd percent. But if I asked you about the next 10 years, say, well, if you're 60 today or you're 62 today and you've got one bucket that can grow at 8% a year guaranteed for the next eight years. I think you might want to let that one be, right? You've got a pretty good return that's going to sit there and do its thing. I know it's a simplistic way to look at it.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  It's not exactly accurate, but it gives you a sense of what the difference is between claiming now versus, versus waiting until, you know, you're 70 to do it.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, because the one thing that you did walk through was health. And obviously if I pass away at an early age and I didn't take that bucket, it's not like the IRA bucket where somebody's getting the whole bucket. Somebody might, a relative might, your spouse will get a portion of that social security money that you didn't take. But if you're not married and you end up deciding to wait on that bucket, it might never happen for anybody.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  That's, that's the game we all play.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Oh gee, we have these three different ages that we hear about with social security all the time. We have age 62, you mentioned is the earliest age we can get it. We have a full retirement age and that depends on when your birthday is, when that occurs. Or we've got age 70, right? So is, you mentioned eight to 10%. Does it grow at a different rate between 62 and our full retirement age than it does between full retirement age and 70? Or is that a straight line continuum all the way through?

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Well, I've never thought of it that way. My guess is, is that it's more of a curve because of the amount of money that you're giving up by claiming early. So it's not so much that it's growing as it is that you're not getting penalized. And the penalty is most profound the earlier that you go. And then it's scaled in terms of how much it's five ninths of a percent per month that you claim it early from your full retirement age. And so that's linear, but where it becomes a little bit more of a curved outcome is the earlier you take it and the longer you live. So if you take it very early and you live a long time, you've given up lots of these

• 45:25Speaker 02

  little bits of percentages for a long, long, long, long, long time versus waiting until your full retirement age where there's no penalty or waiting until you're 70 where you earn credits for waiting, even if you have that for a shorter period of time, you know, if 62 versus 70 is eight years shorter, if you lived to the same age, generally speaking, the break even for most people is around age 79 to 80, 81 ish, somewhere in there. But once you factor into the equation, your surviving spouse's benefit. So if you just use the standard situation, which there's no stank on this, this is just how it's been.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  The man works, the woman stays at home. Right? That's the standard baby boomer scenario that we can describe. Also, generally speaking, the man dies soon and grandma lives forever. Right? If that's the case, and you add in the fact that the husband's going to die and then the wife's going to live some number of years beyond that, the benefit of waiting and ensuring that your spouse, surviving spouse gets the greater of the benefit, statistically, that's the man who dies and then the woman who lives a little bit longer. It's a pretty big difference in lifetime income. But the reality is, is that you don't spend lifetime income at 63 when you get canned from your job. So again, back to my original point

• 46:51Speaker 02

  about this, you can have the greatest plan in the universe at 51, but then just life is life at 62.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  The old Mike Tyson quote.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Everybody has a plan.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  OG punches you in the face, then you have a plan.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  So waiting till 70 can pay these big dividends. But let's take what some people may be thinking, oh gee, all right, I don't need the money at 70. I'm going to wait till 72. I'm going to wait till 73. Like I'm going to wait longer. Why not wait past age 70 then?

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Well, that's just simply not an option. They will start sending you money. Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. You don't get any more credits. There's no such thing as more credit.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  You can, yeah. The other thing I will tell people too about social security, which is really interesting, is if you still owe the government money when you go to file for social security, they will take it from the social security.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  Well. What about tax strategies and social security? Is there any timing I need to think about with my taxes when it comes to how I take my social security payments?

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Well, mostly has to do with your earnings. So if you're taking social security before your full retirement age, you're limited in the amount of money that you can make. In a sense, you can do whatever you want. You're just going to be paying back social security for the amount of money that you earn over a certain amount. So really, you want to think about that early retirement claiming or early social security claiming, that 62 to 67 period as like worst case scenario. Because generally speaking, if you're still working, you don't want to also claim social security because you'll probably end up paying it back. It's a really low threshold off the top of my head. I can't remember the number, but it's, it's something really small.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  25 to 30 K of earnings and you start paying back the social security that you received, basically.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  So if you decide to take social security at 62 and you're still doing some work at 62, you have a penalty on top of just throwing back money?

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, essentially how it works is you're limited the amount of money that you can make. And then for every dollar above that amount that you make, you know, gets credited back to your social security and you also have to pay back. So it's like it never happened, but it's a big mess. So if you're still working in 62, just kind of cross off social security off your list.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  There's a piece that truly isn't a tax, but I think people think about it like a tax, which is this surcharge, which we can get added to Medicare part B and part D premiums. Does social security have anything to do with this IRMA? They call it IRMA surcharge. Can it affect our surcharge?

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Well, it's part of your income. So yeah, I mean, ultimately your total income is your total income.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  If you have social security and you're working and you took a big IRA distribution or did a Roth conversion, all that shows up on your tax form and then that that affects your Medicare because your Medicare premiums are effectively means tested, right? So people that have more money pay higher premiums.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  More means. Yeah. Yeah. What's another place where people get it wrong when they're taking social security? You're thinking about their social security benefits and how they take them?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  I would say that the biggest thing that happens for most people that make mistakes in social security is the combination of planning for taking it later, drawing down their portfolio intentionally, saying, hey, from 62 to 70, I'm intentionally going to leave this bucket alone because OG said, hey, this is a good eight, 10% bucket. I'm going to leave that be. I'm going to intentionally draw down my portfolio so that at 70 I'll switch. And then they don't switch. Then they turn on social security at 70 and keep spending from their other bucket at the same rate. And so people, because it's a long period of time from that decision to the execution, they forget the rationale of the decision. And so go, oh, it's 70. Oh my gosh, this is great. I get like for another four grand

• 50:48Speaker 02

  a month to spend. Hell yeah. Like let's go. And it's like, no, no, no, no. That's the 50K a year that you're not taking from your portfolio anymore. That was the plan. The plan was draw 50K for the next 10 years from your portfolio, stop, draw 50K for the next 10 years from your social security, you know, and then add the inflation that you need to, to top it up. What we see happen a lot is they'll do that 50K limit themselves, do, do what they're supposed to for the first 10 years and then social security kicks on. It's like, oh, finally I get to do all the stuff I wanted to do. It's like, well, now you're drawing from both buckets. You're going to run out of this IRA one. That's probably the biggest cautionary tale is. Not, not remembering what the strategy was a decade ago.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  Everything we've talked about, I mean, you did talk about spousal scenarios. Besides that, everything we've talked about has been for whether you're single, whether you're married. But let's talk specifically married people for just a few minutes. If you've got two people retiring at the same time, would it make sense strategically to think about these, taking them in unison, or is there an upside to maybe taking one first? Like Cheryl and I, we look at our two numbers. Hers is bigger than mine because I've been self-employed my whole time. So, okay, we turn on Joe's early to get a little extra income. And then when Cheryl's comes around, bam, we get the bigger hit to offset that. Or maybe twist that around, get the bigger hit up front and then, you know, Joe gets his later.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  I just wonder what it's like to actually be of age to be thinking about these decisions.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  There it is, Doug.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Someday.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  People don't know that before we even hit record, Doug's like, we're gonna, we're gonna hear this. And it took him.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  We're gonna take a beating on this one.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  Took him almost 45 minutes to get there.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  I waited, I had to wait for the right opportune time.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  He did, yes.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Which is so weird because Cheryl's like 41, so I don't understand how. I don't know why she's thinking about so.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  She likes the older men and Cheryl likes you even more. She already.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  She already likes me more than everybody here.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  No, I mean, it definitely goes into consideration when you have two, two, you know, a couple, same age, different age, different earnings history, different benefits, different timing. All of that has to be factored into your decision for how and when and who and all that sort of stuff. There used to be a lot of really fun planning, gaming, the system strategies. Most of those have largely gone away now or been kind of,

• 53:14Speaker 02

  what's the word I'm looking for phased out, you know, like, like I said, well, once you're this age, you can't do that anymore. So you guys are young enough that in theory, those have been phased out.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 53:25Speaker 00

  But you're saying there is some efficacy in thinking about not taking them at the same time about, you know, one takes one here.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  You know, if you've got a spouse who has higher earnings, a lot of people say, well, I get half of my spouses. It's not entirely true. It's a shorthand way of saying it. Basically, you get all of yours and whatever is necessary to top you up to half of your spouses. And so if you think of it that way and recognize, well, I can take mine whenever I want. And then, you know, my spouse claims theirs when they want or when it's advantageous. And then I get a little top up in the ages matter, who's older, how much older or younger, you know, and like where that comes into play. So I wouldn't wander into the social security office or wander online to the social security page because you do most of this

• 54:14Speaker 02

  online now, you know, the day after you retire and go like, all right, let's get this social security all squared away. A lot of choices. Honey, which one should we pick? You know, like this, this probably requires a little bit of thought ahead of time.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  Do the survivor benefits work similarly? Cheryl passes away, then I get half of hers?

• 54:35Speaker 02

  In a couple spousal relationship, this spouse who survives gets the higher of the two. Whoever survives, you don't get both, you get the higher of the two. So, you know, in your case, if Cheryl's got a higher social security benefit than you, she predeceases you, you would get a step, like a top up basically to be the full amount of whatever hers was. If she passes away, or if you pass away before her, yours just goes away. She just keeps with hers.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  And then I want to ask about divorce because let's say that somebody married and then gets divorced from a person, remarried to somebody else. Does that affect it?

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sure does. It depends on how long you were married. It depends on what age you are when you remarry. You know, same thing for widows or widowers that that matters. Age at which that happens. Social Security, of course, most people.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  For widow, for widower, widower, it matters how long until they get remarried to somebody else?

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it can. Yeah. Or age you were when you get remarried. Sure. For people that have spouses that pass away early in life, there's benefits for children to a certain age and so on and so forth. There's lots of other things for people that are in

• 55:57Speaker 00

  And very specifically stackers, the number you want to look at is 10 years. There's a rule around if you were married at least 10 years before your divorce, you may then be eligible for

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's 10 years for how long you had to have been married and then you can use that spouses benefit for years, depending on how long, depending on how old you were when you got remarried, then you know what that looks like also. So

• 56:21Speaker 00

  And then let's get away from people that are married, just people in general. Are there some employees of different places OG that might not get social security?

• 56:30Speaker 02

  There are some certain industries where job situations where they don't actually pay into social security and you do some sort of private situation. Comes to mind some teachers, some public service employees, things like firefighters and police officers, potentially different counties and situations do a little differently. Railroad employees are popular ones that have their own little thing. But you're probably, if you're one of those people, you know, you're one of those people. And if you worked 40 quarters, which is basically 10 years of work in the social security system, like you're still getting something. You just have a bunch of zeros for the time that you were in your other career. So and then there's

• 57:15Speaker 02

  an offset, depending on how much you get from those. Anyway, you know, you're a unique situation. If you're one of those people.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  That's the big thing I wanted to point out because there were huge changes in January of 2024. So if you got, if you were people in one of two groups, and again, you'll know who you are if you hear these. If you don't understand what these letters mean, then it doesn't apply to you. If you were eligible for WEP or GPO, those rules changed. Time to go revisit all this. All right, Doug, back to you then, man. Before we say goodbye, it's time for Doug's test. We're going to talk some basement myths. Is social security going to disappear in 2032?

• 57:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  No, it will not disappear. It's going to be a smaller number if Congress does nothing, potentially, but if Congress does nothing, we're looking at 78% able to fund it at 78%.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  Be afraid.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Number two, I should always wait till age 70.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  Not always.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  Not always, but 70, oh gee, not at his head because I think you want to bias toward 70, but it truly comes down to where do you need the money? I should wait until 72.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  Well, no, because they're sending you money at 70 regardless. Sorry, irregardless.

• 58:37Speaker 00

  We don't get, we, there's no extra credit for waiting past 70. My social security can never be taxed.

• 58:44Speaker 03

  Not true.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  Not true, correct. My spouse's claiming decision doesn't affect mine.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  This is claiming decision. It could.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  That's correct. It is false. I'm like, is that, the answer is yes, it could, which means.

• 59:00Speaker 03

  I didn't realize I was constrained to true or false answering.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  I should review my social security earnings history every few years.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  You should, which is equivalent to a true response.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  True, correct. Nice job. Good work. All right. So the CNBC story is about Congress, but is you stackers know.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  Going away in 2032. You heard it.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Retirement doesn't happen in Congress. It's at your kitchen table. And after today, I hope your question isn't when should I take social security? I hope it's how do we build the smartest claiming strategy we possibly can? Cause those are different questions and a much better question than when is Congress going to address this? Because as OG opened this up a little fiery, Doug, he opened up a little fiery.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  That had nothing to do with the topic and everything to do with golf tickets.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  It turned into having golf tickets as the problem.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  We're going to go briefly out to the back porch because Doug, I, I wanted to tell you something. We are, I am home for the next few weeks. I am actually sending out some books to people. Who gave us reviews and sent them to me. Now, don't send us a review of our show. If you're just looking for a book, but my goodness, if you do give us a review, and I know I often only review stuff when I'm not that happy with it. So if you love the show, we always are looking for other stackers to help other people with financial certainty, financial literacy, and certainly next month, by the way, we're going to be talking about financial action, more to come about that later on this week. We're going to be talking about taking action. Everybody wants financial literacy.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  Let's talk about what you actually are going to do. And we're going to dedicate the entire month of August to financial actions. But if you leave us a review, write me [email protected] because you'll help somebody else and you also help me get off mom's bad side because she's like this basement's filling up with books. People send us books unsolicited, by the way, some people send us books because I'm prepping for an interview. Other people send me books hoping to get on the show and they all got to go. I just don't have enough room for all these. So help me help you.

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  You should unsubscribe from that adult book of the month club, Joe, then they stop sending them to you.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  You know, adult book of the month can mean two different things. It could mean an adult that's a book that's not for kids, or it could mean a book that's not for kids.

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  That's going to do it for the back porch for today. Thank you so much for listening. We got a special week this week as we kick off financial action month next month. We are doing not one, not two, not three shows like we usually do. We've got five shows this week. Special shows tomorrow and Thursday. Yes. But at the end of every show, we asked Doug, what should we have learned from today's episode?

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  And you're telling me I got to do this five times next week?

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  This week.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  This week? It's not in my union contract. Well, Joe first takes some advice from our social security discussion. Find out your amounts ahead of time. Pay attention to how social security is calculated and file your paperwork on time and according to your plan. That way, the money is there when you need it and as you need it. Second, take some advice from OG. Learn how the social security system or the master's tickets raffle works well ahead of time, just like OG's brother apparently did, and you'll be rewarded. That wasn't the point of OG's story? I should probably go back and listen. But the big lesson?

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Don't get excited about Warner Brothers cartoons around Joe's mom. When you ask for seconds at dinner, she's just gonna look at you and say, "Bidee, bidee, bidee, that's all, folks."

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  Also nailed that one.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Ready to celebrate financial action month? So are we. Grab your bingo sheet to play along with all the festivities in August at stackingbenjamins.com/bingo. And when we roll on Monday, you'll be prepared. Coming up tomorrow in this special week of shows, she's the CBS business expert and the host of Jill on Money. That's right, Jill Schlesinger stops by along with a woman who says companies aren't offering the most needed benefits, and there's an easy fix. Kristy Talarico also joins us on a wild and woolly Tuesday in this special pre-kickoff week of shows.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul Sehi. You'll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. And oh, yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  Maybe it's time we talked. Kiplinger calls it the trillion dollar talk, a conversation about inheritance, estate planning, wills, and the questions families should be asking before those decisions become urgent. Because knowing what your family wants and having a plan for it can be one of the most important financial conversations you will ever have. Ready to start yours? Visit kiplinger.com to learn more about the trillion dollar talk and what this historic wealth transfer could mean for your family.