Back To School Retirement Planning Quiz

The kids may be heading back to class, but it’s not a bad time for adults to hit the books too, especially when it comes to retirement. So, let’s test your knowledge with a quick financial pop quiz and see how ready you really are.

 

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Transcript: 

Marc:

The kids may be heading back to class, but it's not a bad time for us adults to maybe hit the books too, especially when it comes to our retirement strategies. So let's test our knowledge this week on the podcast and play a quick financial pop quiz with Tony here on Plan With The Tax Man.

 

Welcome into the podcast folks. Thanks for hanging out with Tony Mauro and myself. Tony, of course, is here to answer all the questions and give us some insights as he is a CPA, CFP, and an EA of 30 plus years in the industry and over there at Tax Doctor Inc, helping folks get to and through retirement. And Tony, I want to send you to school today, my friend. How you doing?

 

Tony Mauro:

I'm doing well. Enjoying the summer. It's fair time here.

 

Marc:

Good. Good, good.

 

Tony Mauro:

And kids here are heading back to school.

 

Marc:

Yeah. Are you a good test taker?

 

Tony Mauro:

I used to be. I've taken a lot of them, so I've had a lot of practice, but back in school, I wasn't all that great.

 

Marc:

Got you. Got you.

 

Tony Mauro:

Especially in grade school.

 

Marc:

Well, this will be pretty easy for you, but I thought it'd be fun for our listeners to play along as well. And feel free, Tony, once we go through this, it's multiple choice, so it's pretty easy. I'll give you the question, possible answers and then you give us the correct answer or the answer you think, and then maybe just share a client story or elaborate on the answer a little bit, wherever you want to go with that.

 

Tony Mauro:

Mm-hmm.

 

Marc:

But we'll let folks play along as well, see how they do. So, ready for it? You ready to get started?

 

Tony Mauro:

I'm ready.

 

Marc:

All right, here we go. Question number one, what age can you receive full social security benefits if you were born after 1960? Is it A; 59 and a half, B; 62, C; 65 or D; 67?

 

Tony Mauro:

Well, for this one, since I'm in this group, I know this one, it's D for 67.

 

Marc:

Okay. And the trick is the 60, isn't it? The 1960?

 

Tony Mauro:

It's the 1960 and a lot of people still have, in their mind the magical retirement age is 65 and that's still theoretically true, but what they started doing was moving up the age that we can receive full benefits when the trust fund started seeping out more money than it was taking in. And so that's what they did as a step back from that. But a lot of people still think 65, the 62 answer is, you could take it as early as 62, but for us after 1960, it's 67.

 

Marc:

Right, for that full retirement age. And it's always, what is it, like 66 and some months or something? I think my brother was one of those, he was 66 and seven months or something like that. But we'll see what happens if they change it. But a lot of times people wonder is it worthwhile to extend it to 70 and all that stuff. But this was again, just when you can do the full and of course the caveat there being Tony, if you don't do the full, if you go early, there are income limitations.

 

Tony Mauro:

There are a lot of income limitations, yeah, if you take early because if you take it at 62, you can go out and earn income, but they're going to reduce your social security. And this is all the way up to full retirement age, a dollar for every, I believe it's $2 that you earn. And so, the whole idea, I believe, of probably this question is you need to work with somebody and try to figure out what's the optimal age for you depending on your situation.

 

Marc:

Correct.

 

Tony Mauro:

Because everybody's going to be a little bit different there.

 

Marc:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And of course, once you get to 67, you can make all the money you want in the world and go from there. But yeah, so there you go. Good job. So good job with this first one. All right, so how'd you guys do? Did you get the question correct? And most people, I think, probably know that one, but again, you might not be aware that depending on when you were born, it could affect your social security or when you turn it on. All right, number two, what is the maximum annual contribution limit for a traditional or a Roth IRA for individuals that are age 50 and older