“This calculator takes the guess out of when to take Social Security benefits.” Save your money. Read: A Guide to Social Security Disability. How to Maximize Social Security With Spousal Benefits Understand how Social Security spousal benefits work to make the most of your retirement funds. We like Maximize My Social Security's easy-to-use tools and reports. You can trust the integrity of our balanced, independent financial advice. Your email address will not be published. Seeing as Americans have been saving for Social Security with every paycheck since 1935, it is important to know how everything works to squeeze out as much value as possible. They're fine for the casual user who wants to get a basic idea of where they need to be when it comes to savings. Read Your Social Security Statements. The app automatically looks at all potential scenarios to help you best understand when to withdraw for the best results. She spends her spare time bargain hunting and meal planning for her family of three. Once the family is setup, you’ll have to import or manually add your earnings information. But not everyone can wait -- most take it early -- so there's some trade-offs. Yes, there is a way to increase your Social Security benefit. Best Prepaid Credit Cards That Build Credit. Hands down, Kotlikoff is the expert when it comes to Social Security strategies. Maximize My Social Security is a powerful tool that offers personalized Social Security withdrawal strategies based on your real earnings history, expected future earnings and expected lifespan. Investor Junkie does attempt to take a reasonable and good faith approach to maintain objectivity towards providing referrals that are in the best interest of readers. Maximize My Social Security helps single or married persons decide when to collect retirement, spousal, widow(er), divorcee spousal, divorcee widow(er), child-in-care spousal, mother (father), young child, and disabled child benefits. Maybe I’m not looking in the right place at ssa.gov. Five tools are listed, but despite the title of this section, #5 isn't free. Give me a link to the place where it provides the above analysis and I’ll agree with you. She has a B.A. Read on to learn how Social Security disability checks are issued and what you can do to increase your overall income when facing a disability. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. There are free tools available to optimize your Social Security benefits. All rights reserved. Helping make finance easy. A must read. All products are presented without warranty. Investor Junkie strives to keep its information accurate and up to date. Social Security will pay you a premium if you wait until 70. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Car Insurance, A Homeowner’s Guide to Homeowner’s Insurance, Tax Benefits for Buying and Owning a Home, Turbotax vs. TaxSlayer vs. Credit Karma Comparison. In plain English, that means if you wait until 63 to take Social Security, then your monthly checks will be 8% bigger than if you claimed your benefit at 62. The following free calculators will help you decide. If $40 is nothing to you, go ahead and Kotlikoff will hold your hand. True, there are free apps and calculators available online (such as the one provided by AARP), but these free services pale in comparison to the in-depth analysis Maximize My Social Security can provide. Can You Really Pay Off Your Mortgage Early with a HELOC? Review of: Maximize My Social Security Software | Reviewed by: Abby Hayes | Last modified: November 27, 2019. Maximize My Social Security is a powerful tool that offers personalized Social Security withdrawal strategies based on your real earnings history, expected future earnings and expected lifespan. So if you don’t mind some data entry time, sit down and run your numbers through this system. Archives: You can explore the site through our archives dating back to 2007. in English Literature from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, and lives with her husband and children in Indianapolis. Eric Rosenberg is a finance, travel and technology writer in Ventura, California. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). “file and suspend” is no longer available. After all, the more you collect from the feds, the less you have to … However, it's an outstanding tool, which is why we're including it. 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I don’t see any place at ssa.gov that will compare present values of benefit streams, and certainly not any place that will calculate the maximized present value for a married couple with different earnings and retirement ages, taking into account spousal benefits, widow(er) benefits, disabled child benefits, earnings test and reduction factor, restricted applications for those who were born before 1/1/54, different life expectancies for those with family histories of living into their 90s, and the combination of those factors and others that generate the best strategy. Besides the two free calculators, there are also two paid calculators, Social Security Solutions and Maximize My Social Security. Required fields are marked *. We know that managing finances is not easy. Financial advisors are getting in on the act, too. If you’re more than a decade from retirement, you should probably wait to purchase this software down the road. Or you might consider a partial retirement while putting off your benefits. Get a few more years’ earnings in and let the rules change before you run your numbers. It covers just about any Social Security claiming scenario you might encounter, from child benefits to whether you're a divorcee, parent, retiree, spouse, or survivor. When you plug your numbers into this easy-to-use system, you can quickly find the best withdrawal strategy and compare several scenarios to make the most informed decision. Investor Junkie strives to keep its information accurate and up to date. If your recent earnings make the top 35, it will increase the monthly average and your benefit payment. It even takes pensions into account if you expect payments coming your way. Maximize My Social Security also shows you the other potential scenarios that it ran through. Free Online Tools to Optimize Your Social Security Benefits. SSA's Retirement Estimator. Your email address will not be published. He is a professor of economics at Boston University and president of Economic Security Planning, Inc. I said that both Debbie and Mark earned about $40,000 per year for much of their career, but you would want to use accurate data to ensure you get the right results. InvestorJunkie.com© Copyright 2020, All Rights Reserved | Investor Junkie is a financial publisher that does not offer any personal financial advice or advocate the purchase or sale of any security or investment for any specific individual. The program accounts for all the types of Social Security benefits, including spousal benefits and even childhood disability benefits. He has in-depth experience writing about banking, credit cards, investing and other financial topics and is an avid travel hacker. Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of the bank, credit card issuer, or other advertiser, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the advertiser. Your Social Security benefits are based largely on your earnings during your working years. Understanding the strategies for maximizing your Social Security retirement income benefits should be prefaced with a review of the three basic forms of retirement benefits: The Worker Benefit: This is the benefit you receive based on your own personal earnings history, and for which you become eligible after 40 quarters of work. This site may be compensated through the bank, credit card issuer, or other advertiser Affiliate Program Disclaimer: The content on this site is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as professional financial advice. However, it's geared primarily toward people who are nearing retirement. Your birthday and your spouse’s birthday (if applicable), Information about your former spouse (if applicable), Earnings information and potential future earnings, Information about your children (if applicable). The information on Investor Junkie could be different from what you find when visiting a third-party website. But you’ll also put in other information, including: Then, the system puts all this information together to allow you to run multiple scenarios. How Much Should I Have Saved For Retirement, What Happens If You Overcontribute To 401k, Best Calendar-Based Personal Finance Apps, Maximize My Social Security Software Review – Calculating the Best Time to Bank Your Benefits. Free information and reports tailored to your specific situation. You can call Social Security at 800-772-1213 to ask about how your earnings might change your benefit. Maximize My Social Security Compares the Maximized Strategy (black line) with Any Number of What-if Scenarios (orange line). It may be worth it to you to leave some money on the table for an extra year or two of retirement. At age 66—their full retirement age—Bob and Wendy are eligible for monthly Social Security benefits of $2,182 and $815, respectively. That’s the secret. In addition to estimating those benefits, two commercial calculators will optimize you… Misrepresented, incomplete analysis of SS benefits. This program was developed by Social Security guru Laurence Kotlikoff. It’s quite a haul to get all the information in. Investor Junkie has advertising relationships with some of the offers listed on this website. Deciding when to take Social Security retirement benefits can affect your income by hundreds of dollars a month. Whether you receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, or both, you should be prepared for periodic continuing disability reviews. If you wait longer, you could get a significantly higher payout. 1. Though it may be tempting to toss these papers out if retirement still feels far away, this information can help you plan for your future. You can get an increase of around 8% per year over and above what you would get if you started drawing benefits at your … (Well, a portion of them. We analyze and compare tools to help you make the best decisions for your personal financial situation. Kotlikoff and his team created Maximize My Social Security to help folks nearing retirement determine their ideal benefits strategy. If you are a financial advisor, an advisor edition is available as well at a rate that makes it affordable for most advisors to add this to their arsenal of financial-planning utilities ($250 per year). But those just tell you what you ought to get, monthly, depending on when you claim. Just wait until age 70 before filing for Social Security benefits. Abby is a freelance journalist who writes on everything from personal finance to health and wellness. User Generated Content Disclaimer: The comments below each article are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. The credit card offers that appear on this site are from credit card companies from which doughroller.net receives compensation. Navigating Social Security income can be complicated, but there are strategies to maximize your Social Security benefits. © 2020 DoughRoller. I ran two test scenarios, one for “Divorced Debbie” and one for “Married Mark.” Both offered a quick and easy setup process that took me less than five minutes to complete. Monitor Your Earnings . While we do our best to keep these updated, numbers stated on our site may differ from actual numbers.See our Privacy Policy & Disclaimer for more details. But if you want to be sure you’re making the right choice about when to take your benefits, you might check out Maximize My Social Security, a more robust tool. 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