14 Oct Steps When Claiming Social Security
Throughout your lifetime you are required to be paying into Social Security Taxes. Eventually the time will come to where you want to regain that balance you have been paying that will help you greatly throughout your life after retirement. There are many steps that are crucial to having a successful retirement plan and knowing the necessary steps to take just before claiming Social Security. Here we will be covering what steps you should be taking in order to claim your Social Security in a smooth manner and how to best set up your future years in retirement.
When you are fully confident in your ability to claim Social Security, one of the main things to reconsider that we have covered many times is that you truly are working till your full retirement age also known as your FRA. By doing so, you will help to receive the appropriate monthly payments you should be receiving. If you cut it short, your monthly benefits will be reduced significantly so keep this in mind! Also be mindful of your family. Including them can help with additional benefits if you are to have a child under the age of 19 for example.
Once you have accomplished this, a great tip is to start with a retirement budget and planner. By this you will be able to help organize your costs and help to make your retirement money last. During your retirement, it is extremely critical that you are mindful of your savings because since you are no longer in the working force, it is much harder to gain large sums of income and you are dependent on your social security payments mostly.
Another useful tip that many people nearing their retirement age do is to calculate how long you believe your lifespan will be. By this, you will be able to effectively adjust your retirement lifestyle with the remaining years you have to help figure out how you can spend your retirement savings. You can also hire someone such as a financial advisor to help control and create an appropriate financial plan as well. Professionals like these are great at helping to understand your retirement goals and it can help alleviate some pressure off of your shoulders.
Depending on if you are married or not, you and your spouse can take a different route which may be more effective for you both. A common route that some couples take when both approaching their retirement ages are claiming their Social Security benefits at different ages. For example, one spouse claims their retirement benefits at age 65 and the other claims theirs at 70 years old. Doing so can help to cover more years while spreading your benefits out and not relying on both accounts of Social Security benefits at the same time from the start. With that in mind, both spouses could also wait till age 70 to both claim their benefits and doing so at age 70 would drastically increase their benefits combined by almost ¼.
Regardless of what route you take and whether you have joint benefits or not, taking simple steps such as the ones we have just covered are extremely encouraged and will be helpful for you to maximize your lifetime benefits.