Tag Archives: Social Security

Taking the big leap toward retirement

December 6, 2015 kanelis2012

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

I am a happy man today.

Perhaps you’re asking, “Why?” Well, I’ll tell you.

This morning I took the huge — or, as Donald Trump would say, “Yuuuuuge!” — leap toward retirement by applying for my Social Security benefits.

My 66th birthday is right around the corner. That’s when I become eligible to draw full retirement benefit from the Social Security Administration. That means I can draw the benefit and keep working part-time — which I intend to do.

On the advice of three women I trust implicitly — starting with my wife — I made the decision to go ahead and not wait any longer.

The other two are our tax accountant and the manager of our retirement investment portfolio. They both have concluded that it’s best to go now. Don’t wait any longer, they say, even though the longer I would have waited the more I could get monthly once I got approved.

Part of my Social Security income will be subject to income taxation if I earn more than a certain amount annually. But it’s a small enough portion, with the tax liability being minimal, I figure, “Why not go now?”

I should stipulate as well that I’ve never minded paying taxes. Unlike some of my fellow Americans out there who rant, rave and rebel against paying taxes, I never have harbored that kind of anti-tax sentiment.

I made the application this morning and ever since submitting the information online I’ve feeling strangely satisfied that I’ve done the right thing.

I want to add another good word. Many of us bitch constantly about the government and its sometimes-complicated machinery. I was amazed today at the ease of applying for this benefit online. The questions were clear; the government website provided “help” links if I stumbled — and yes, I checked with two of them to make sure I was answering the questions correctly.

It was easy, man.

It’s a big step. I had been looking forward to taking it for a good while. Now that I’ve taken it, I’m feeling even better about the decision my wife and I have made.

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Social Security makes my head spin

June 23, 2015 kanelis2012

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

This morning my wife and I had a conversation with a woman who manages our retirement account. She is as sharp as they come and she works for one of the financial services giants.

It involved Social Security. I’m about to become fully eligible for SSI benefits. That will happen near the end of the year when I turn 66 years of age.

So, what’s the issue? Easy to do. Just sign up and start collecting the benefit into which I paid for my entire working life. No sweat, right?

Oh, no. Not even close.

I’m likely going to have to jettison one or more of the part-time jobs I’ve been working at since the fall of 2012, shortly after my full-time job as a print journalist came to a screeching halt.

Why is that? I’d make too much money … possibly. If I earn too much income in addition to what Social Security benefits I’d start collecting, the federal government could start taxing me heavily on the SSI income.

Don’t want to do that.

Do I want to wait until I’m 70, at which time the monthly benefit would increase? Probably not. I’m still working those part-time jobs, and by the time I turn 70 1/2 years of age, I need to start withdrawing money annually from the retirement fund my wife and I have built over many years of hard work.

That money becomes part of our taxable income.

So that money also is factored into what the feds can tax us.

At this point, as I listened to our financial adviser explain all this, I could feel the veins in my neck start to throb.

My wife and I had gone downtown to get some answers to a simple question: When is the best time to collect Social Security; do we do it now or do we wait?

It turns out there’s no simple answer to the question. It’s complicated. Highly complicated.

The more I listened to all of these explanations of what happens if we do this or that, or don’t do any of it, the more I began to think that perhaps the tax-simplification advocates out there may be on to something.

Our adviser’s final recommendation: Come back and see me just about the time of your 66th birthday and we’ll see where we stand.

I want to collect the benefit to which I’m entitled. However, these jobs I’m working are providing me with too much fun to give any of them up.

Little did I realize that retirement could be so complicated.

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The older I get, the more I sound like Dad

September 14, 2014 kanelis2012

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

“I keep opening my mouth and my mother keeps coming out.”

I saw that saying once and laughed when I heard it. I never thought I’d be living it.

What do I mean? Well, my father had this habit of adding years to his life. It seems that whenever he celebrated a birthday he would start referencing his next birthday whenever the question of his age came up. The next-year reference wouldn’t start on the day of his birthday, but it would commence about a week or two, maybe a month later.

I’m not making this up.

Dad died just a bit past his 59th birthday, on Sept. 7, 1980.

I’ve since gone a good bit past that point in my own life. I’m 64, about to turn 65.

And what I’ve discovered myself doing is referencing my next birthday.

I don’t say that I’m 65. Instead, I usually say, “I am going to be 65 in December.” I’ve been saying that since, oh, this past June.

Why am I sounding a bit like my father? It might have something to do with the anticipation I’m feeling toward retirement.

I become eligible for Medicare benefits when I turn 65. I’ll start collecting a small pension from a previous employer effective on my 65th birthday. I’ll become fully vested in Social Security when I turn 66, so that date is looming quite large as well.

As for Medicare, I learned some time ago that my Veteran Administration health care enrollment makes it unnecessary for me to sign up for any of the supplemental coverage that Medicare offers — and I had that notion reaffirmed by a friend of mine who works extensively with elderly medical patients.

It’s not a bad thing that I’m sounding more like my father. He was a good man with a fairly compelling and outsized personality.

Perhaps I should take some advice that my mother offered many years ago. I’d say “I can’t wait” for something to happen, or “I wish it was the weekend.”

Her response: Don’t wish your life away.

The older I get and the closer I get to retirement, Mom’s advice is coming in loud and clear.

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Medicare info overflows from my mailbox

July 22, 2014 kanelis2012

This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

My 65th birthday looms just a few months down the road.

Someone must have ratted me out to every health insurance company on the planet. Nearly every single day our mail box contains something from someone telling me about my Medicare options when I hit that magic number.

Maybe I should send them all return slips telling them “Stop sending me these mailers.”

Would they heed my command? I doubt it. Strongly.

They’ll keep coming.

Here’s the latest on my Medicare sign-up planning: I have given it hardly a thought.

Medicare was that genius legislation cooked up during the Lyndon Johnson administration. President Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in 1965. Unlike the hassling and haggling over the Affordable Care Act, there was little overt opposition to the then-new law when the president signed it.

Yes, they tweaked the provisions within the Medicare program once they figured out how to solve the problems. They didn’t toss it all out and start over, which is what many ACA critics keep insisting must be done now. To borrow a phrase from Col. Sherman T. Potter: buffalo bagels!

Medicare is still a seemingly complicated matter. My mother-in-law is on it and my intrepid wife is forced on occasion to sort out some kind of issue with it as it relates to her mother’s health care.

You’ve got parts A, B and D. I think that’s it. Whatever happened to Part C? Maybe it’s part of the pile of mailings I’ve gotten, but have just missed it.

Someone advised me once that my Veterans Administration health care coverage — which, of course, is prepaid — would be sufficient, that I wouldn’t need to mess with Medicare.

I’ll get to poring through the Medicare mailings eventually. Maybe I’ll decide on a plan to cover me in case I get sick.

It can wait. All these mailers make my head hurt.

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Full-time work wears me out

June 29, 2014 kanelis2012

This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

Epiphanies arrive at the strangest times.

Such as when one is in the middle of a part-time job and the realization hits: I no longer have the energy to work full time.

That one hit me at some point this afternoon. Thus, I figure I’ve taken another important step toward retirement.

I no longer want a full-time job. I busted my backside for 40-plus years, most of that time toiling in daily print journalism.

These days, my work consists of essentially two-part time gigs — or maybe one part-time job and another “job” that involves my favorite hobby, which is writing on politics, public policy and other current events. The actual job is at an auto dealership in Amarillo. The fun job is the blog I write for Panhandle PBS, the public TV station based at Amarillo College. (Look up “A Public View” at panhandlepbs.org and you’ll see how much fun I’m having.)

I already have chronicled — a little bit, at least — the circumstances of my departure from daily journalism. The event occurred almost two years ago. I was more than a little unhappy over the circumstance that brought it about.

The bad news is that I went into mourning for a time after I cleared out my office and drove home that day. The good news is that I got over my grief fairly quickly and have been looking forward to the future ever since.

I suppose now I ought to thank my former employer for telling me at the end of August 2012 that someone else would be doing the job I’d been doing at the Amarillo Globe-News for more than 17 years. Maybe I will do so one day. I might thank him for sparing me the chaos I understand has gripped the place as it transitions from what it was to whatever it’s going to become.

I might do that. Just not yet.

Retirement is looking better all the time, although I likely won’t ever give up the writing part of what’s left of my working life. Why would I want to stop receiving the kind of enjoyment I get from prattling on about this and that?

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Another retirement milestone reached

May 30, 2014 kanelis2012 4 Comments

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

I love it when decisions make our paths a little clearer.

My wife and I made another key retirement decision the other day. It’s a tentative one, but we made it nonetheless.

I am reluctant to divulge the details of the decision, because circumstances might force us to change our plans. The decision involves when we plan to sell our home in Amarillo and move southeast, to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

Why there? I believe I’ve mentioned our granddaughter, her two big brothers, our son and daughter-in-law, correct? Well, there you have it. They live there. We want to be nearby.

OK, why not spill the beans? I don’t want to go on record — just yet — on our intentions. Plans have a way of changing suddenly, depending on a lot of matters relating to health and finances — or a combination of both. We intend to inform certain family members of our plans upon request.

We’ve already decided when I’ll start drawing Social Security retirement. My wife already is drawing her Social Security income. I’m going to soon begin receiving a monthly pension from a newspaper company where I worked for nearly 11 years before coming to Amarillo. I’ve got these two part-time jobs, one of which I’ll be able to continue doing after we make our move.

The stars are lining up pretty well for us — at this time.

We’ve learned, though, never to take life for granted. Unforeseen things happen. Neither of us is clairvoyant, so we cannot know what the future — immediate or longer term — holds for us.

Suffice to say that if certain things remain stable, if we maintain our excellent health, if se are able to sell our home in a reasonable amount of time — and at a reasonable price — then we’re out of here.

Our baby granddaughter already is growing up too quickly.

Knowing, though, that another key decision is now — more or less — out of the way, we’re looking ever more happily toward the future.

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Key decision made on retirement

April 25, 2014 kanelis2012

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

Decision-making can be a liberating experience.

It brings relief and an almost palpable feeling of weight lifting off one’s shoulders.

I made such a decision this week. I have decided when I’m going to officially “retire.”

It will occur on my 66th birthday, which arrives on Dec. 17, 2015. That will be the day I plan to start collecting Social Security income.

Big deal, you say? What’s so special about that? For starters, that will be the day I can start drawing SSI without incurring a penalty if I choose to keep working part-time. I become eligible for my full Social Security benefit on my 66th birthday. I am working two part-time jobs at the moment and I’m likely to keep working at them even after I start drawing my “retirement” income.

I feel quite good about making this decision. It signals another big turning point in my life since the moment I stopped working full time as a daily print journalist. I won’t go into the details of that event, except to say that I wasn’t ready for that moment to arrive. It did. The circumstances of that moment still anger me but a year and a half later I’m actually glad to have moved on to this phase of life.

My wife and I haven’t been this happy in years. We’ve been able to travel some in our RV. Our granddaughter is growing and developing beautifully. Our sons are thriving. I’m working these two part-time jobs and enjoying them both immensely, mostly because neither of them places much pressure on me. The auto dealership job allows me to meet people and get reacquainted with old friends; the blog I write for PanhandlePBS.org allows me to stay involved with public affairs TV programming.

Of course, I have this blog to which I often contribute several times daily.

I now await another key stage of my retired life when I turn 66 and will start collecting some income for which I’ve worked many years.

There’ll be more to report on this blog as we move forward.

A decision on when to start collecting Social Security might not seem like a biggie to some. It is to me. I’m glad I’ve made it.

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I’m now calling myself ‘retired’

December 1, 2013 kanelis2012

This is the latest in an occasional series of blogs commenting on retirement.

I made a decision this weekend that involves my immediate future.

I’ve decided to say that I’m retired — even though I’m still working, sort of.

The decision came from a Facebook notice that popped up. It asked me to update my employment status. I clicked on the “retired” box and then saved it. So now my Facebook profile has me listed as “retired,” although I later — at my wife’s suggestion — entered “blogger” along with it. So it says I’m a “retired blogger.”

This is a big deal in my evolution from working guy to fully retired guy.

I’m working part-time for an auto dealership here in Amarillo. It’s a customer service job; I work about 24 hours a week. My job is to welcome folks who bring their vehicles in for service or who are waiting while they purchase a vehicle. I make them feel comfortable, offer them something to drink or eat, ask if they need a ride somewhere, talk them up a little bit.

The job is so much fun I have a hard time calling it actual “work.” I spend my afternoon with individuals I like in an environment that produces little pressure. My employer asks me simply to treat people with courtesy and respect, which I am able to do.

I have another job. I write a blog for Panhandle PBS’s website. Panhandle PBS is the new name for the site for KACV-TV, the public television station based at Amarillo College. It’s a free-lance gig and, too, is a serious blast. I write about public affairs programming at Panhandle PBS/KACV. I also write about other public policy issues as I see fit. I submit the blogs — titled “A Public View” — as drafts and they’re posted by the staff at KACV.

Check it out here:

http://panhandlepbs.org/news/

So, those are my jobs. They are more fun than I can possibly have imagined having.

My wife says it well. I am getting paid for doing something I love to do: talk to people and write.

Social Security is still down the road a bit. When that income kicks in, then I’ll be able to declare myself officially and fully “retired.”

For now, I’ll settle on pretending to be retired. I’ll get lots of practice. Who knows? When the day arrives, I’ll be proficient in all that retirement entails.

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