Welcome to the third edition of the Retirement Rebootcast! This is a special limited-edition podcast series focused on my new book - Retirement Reboot: Commonsense Financial Strategies for Getting Back on Track. The book is out this month, so I invited some of my favorite experts on retirement to join me on the program to talk about some of its key ideas.
I wrote Retirement Reboot with a very particular group of readers in mind: people getting close to retirement who are not financially prepared. In other words, people who have not been able to save much -or anything - for retirement. They’re headed toward a retirement living only on Social Security, which typically replaces about 40% of their working income. Meanwhile, the rule of thumb is that most of us will need to replace at least 70% of our wage income when we retire.
The book offers a series of strategies for improving on that math. The key chapters discuss the importance of making a plan, timing your retirement and how to get the most from Social Security and Medicare. I also discuss strategies for building savings, even late in the game, and tapping home equity. From there, I go on to discuss managing your career late in the game, the value of professional advice, how to manage long-term care risk and how to approach the idea of aging in place.
For this third episode of the series, let’s have a conversation about how to get the most from Social Security. For most of us, Social Security will be the most important retirement benefit - full stop. Decisions about when to claim can make a big difference in your lifetime income. Especially for couples, there can be some interesting choices. Making smart choices has never been more important, especially because Social Security benefits are less generous than in the past. The gradual increases in the full retirement age put in motion by the reforms of 1983 are close to being fully phased in - and that effectively raises the bar on what it takes to generate income from the program.
For this episode, I invited two of the most knowledgeable people I know on the topic of Social Security claiming.
Mary Beth Franklin is a contributing editor at Investment News magazine, specializing in Social Security, Medicare and Retirement income. She’s been a financial journalist for more than 40 years, covering everything from federal budget and tax policies as a Capitol Hill reporter to consumer finances at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine. One unusual twist for Mary Beth as a journalist - in 2015, she became a Certified Financial Planner in 2015. She is the author of “Maximizing Your Social Security Retirement Benefits.”
William Reichenstein is a professor of investment management at Baylor University, a co-founder of Social Security Solutions - a company that has developed a terrific set of online software tools that help individuals and financial professionals sort through claiming decisions. He is the co-author of a book titled Social Security Strategies: How to Optimize Retirement Benefits.
Along with claiming strategies, I asked Mary Beth and Bill to talk about Social Security's financial challenges and public worries about the program's future. We also talked about how Social Security might change in the years ahead.
Click the player icon at the top of the newsletter to listen to the podcast - or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (search for “Retirement Revised”).
The Retirement Rebootcast will have six episodes. Next week we’ll take a deep dive into navigating Medicare. My guests will be Tricia Neuman of the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Fred Riccardi of the Medicare Rights Center.
Retirement Reboot in the news
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.