Alarming New Commercial, And Perhaps It Will Effect Pm's....

Just to clarify, from a website



The government taking this money to pay off debt seems very unconstitutional. If I did that with someone elses money, I'm pretty sure I would be thrown in jail...

Ya it wasnt the font, it was one of the delimiters, but I changed it, no worries

It's close to 7% now. The salary cap is meaningless. You pay more in, you get higher benefits. As it stands now, they figure someone making six figures doesn't need a nursemaid in the form of SS.

The problem is someone making $20,000 (poverty) is paying $3000 into SS. That's way more than any legitimate insurer would charge for a million dollar life insurance plus retirement annuity.

Indeed it is. But politics has a HUGE impact upon the prices of PMs, the value of the US dollar, and many other PM related things, so is discussed here from time to time. Purely political discussion is discouraged here but that which relates to PMs should still be OK.

If you open an insurance company, you start with no money, except what you borrow. The premiums taken in pay normal claims and some is put back for huge future claims.

If you "really needed" that money, where were you going to get enough to pay back eight years of it if he lived to 70? If you're physically similar, and were planning on using the gambit, you'd be lucky to make 70, much less hand them money you wouldn't get back until 72.5.

Well, I am no SS expert by any means, so take my comments accordingly. He may be able to retire at any age if he has a disability that is severe and of indeterminate duration. Basically, a person has to be judged unfit for work by a qualified physician and for an extended period of time. The qualifications for this are extensive and a lot of info would be needed. My sister had a stroke at age 60 and was able to qualify for this.

Other than that, he should be able to retire at age 62, if he chooses. Doing this results in a smaller monthly benefit but for more months. The SS actuaries have set the system up such that a person living an average lifespan will get very close to the same total benefit whether they take the benefit at age 62 or at their full retirement age. The whole issue revolves around how long a person expects to live. If their health is good, they take good care of themselves, and their parents / grandparents had long lives, then the odds favor them also living a long life. For these people, waiting for the higher monthly benefit might very well pay off. If they do not have these features in their lives, then waiting longer might not be a good idea. There are no guarantees in any of this, so about all we can do is try to shave the odds a bit in our favor, if and when we can.

His Full Retirement Age should be listed on the SS web site. There should be a chart there that shows various birth year ranges and the FRA for those born in each range. My FRA is 66, for example, with a birth year of 1949.

Of course, in all this SS discussion, politics is very involved. All of the so-called "entitlement programs" will be discussed and probably modified. The demographics of our situation has put great pressure on these systems as they are currently designed. Previously, the older generations were smaller than the younger generations so their SS payments easily paid the benefits of those who had retired. The huge bulge in the size of the so-called "baby boom generation", however, is making this unworkable. There are too many retirees for the number of younger workers to support them at the current benefit levels. The current economic climate with its reduced employment and stagnant wages is also not helping the situation very much. The politicians will HAVE to do something about all this, whatever that might be. Whatever it is, a scaling back of the current benefit levels seems pretty much assured. A good retirement plan will consider all these political solutions as well. Not that there is much we can do about them but they may influence when we elect to take benefits, which they have in my case, and from what I have read on-line in the cases of many others as well.

Whether or not it is wise to take the SS benefit at any particular age is a very complicated and personal question. We each have to figure this out for ourselves.