#035: Why Social Security is Important for YOU (even if you're not close to retirement)
Big Picture Retirement®
Devin Carroll
4.7 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2017
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Social Security is an important source of income for older Americans, but it can also provide many benefits beyond retirement income. Life is full of risks, and Social Security helps provide some income for those who have faced these situations.
Think about these statistics:
- In 2014, 3.3 million kids received Social Security benefits
- 34% of all benefits are paid to the spouse or child of the covered worker
- Average age folks begin to receive disability benefits is 54
- Over 24% of today's 20-year-olds will become disabled before the age of 67
As you can see, understanding Social Security benefits is an crucial part of your overall financial planning. Today, Devin and John talk about the non-retirement benefits provided by the Social Security program, and why they are important to you.
There are two main categories of benefits: Benefits for the worker, and benefit for the worker's family. Benefits for the worker include retirement income, disability income, and Medicare health care coverage for the disabled. Benefits for the worker's family include benefits for the worker's spouse and family if the worker dies or becomes disabled.
Highlights include:
- What is a family maximum benefit?
- When and how you can receive survivor or disability benefits
- How various financial plans can impact eligibility for benefits
- How you might want to use this knowledge as part of your financial plan
For more information, visit http://bigpictureretirement.net
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Big Picture Retirement Show does not provide specific tax, legal, or financial advice. |
| 0:05.1 | Listeners are encouraged to seek out their own advisors in these areas. |
| 0:12.5 | Hey everyone and welcome to the Big Picture Retirement Show where we deliver insight on what you need to know for a meaningful retirement. |
| 0:20.3 | If you are planning for or living in retirement, this is the show for you. |
| 0:26.1 | I'm Devin. |
| 0:27.1 | Join today by John, my co-host. |
| 0:30.7 | Hey, John. |
| 0:31.2 | Howdy. |
| 0:32.9 | Hey, John, before we get too far into the show, I want to remind our listeners about the Amazon Echo that we're given away. I know you've mentioned it's one of your favorite pieces of technology, |
| 0:41.9 | and I use it all the time in my house and here in the office as well. So if you don't already have one, |
| 0:47.8 | you need to get signed up for this. Just visit big picture retirement.net forward slash echo, |
| 0:53.7 | and you'll get all the details right there. |
| 0:56.6 | John, what do you think about when you think about social security? |
| 1:01.4 | A vision in my head of an older American. Yeah. Check in retirement is what most of us think. |
| 1:07.3 | Yeah. Yeah, no, I think I think of my parents. Yeah. Yep, getting their social |
| 1:12.4 | security checks. And that's what most people think about. And, you know, I'll even hear people say, |
| 1:18.0 | this is a future episode, I know, but they'll say, Devin, I don't think Social Security is going |
| 1:21.7 | to be around when I need it. Well, I've got news for you. Social Security is more important |
| 1:26.8 | than just retirement benefits. |
| 1:28.9 | Sure. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of risk that it covers way before we get to retirement. |
| 1:35.9 | And so I just want to cover some of those and talk about what kind of risk that we're looking at that could happen way before retirement. |
| 1:43.4 | I'm going to get into some numbers. And I know numbers in an audio format like this sometimes don't work out that well. But there that could happen way before retirement. I'm going to get into some numbers. |
... |
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