{"id":9888,"date":"2015-06-23T19:50:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T19:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9888"},"modified":"2015-06-23T19:50:41","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T19:50:41","slug":"social-security-makes-my-head-spin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9888","title":{"rendered":"Social Security makes my head spin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is\u00a0the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This morning\u00a0my 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

Oh, no. Not even close.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Don’t want to do that.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That money becomes part of our taxable income.<\/p>\n

So that money also is factored into what the feds can tax us.<\/p>\n

At this point, as I listened to our financial adviser explain all this, I could feel the veins in my neck start to throb.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

It turns out there’s no simple answer to the question. It’s complicated. Highly complicated.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Little did I realize that retirement could be so complicated.<\/p>\n

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This is\u00a0the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement. This morning\u00a0my 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 … Continue reading Social Security makes my head spin<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2338,2587,3921,4301,4382],"class_list":["post-9888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-iras","tag-journalism","tag-retirement-funds","tag-social-security","tag-ssi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}