The Big Picture Retirement Show does not provide tax, legal, or financial advice.

Listeners are encouraged to seek out their own advisors in these areas.

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to The Big Picture Retirement Show.

I'm your host, Devin, and today, John has the day off.

But I'm not doing this alone.

I'm joined by Benjamin Brandt.

For those of you that have been around podcasting

for a while, I'm sure you're familiar with his show. Retirement starts today. And if you're not,

you need to go check it out. It's one of my favorite retirement planning podcast. We're going to have

a discussion about retirement planning, distribution rules, and some of the big mistakes that retirees

make. But before we get there, I wanted to cover something that I've seen in the news a lot lately, and some of the big mistakes that retirees make. But before we get there,

I wanted to cover something that I've seen in the news a lot lately, and that's the Social Security

Cost of Living Adjustment. And one of the misconceptions on that, I've gotten a lot of emails from

financial planners and people getting ready to retire wondering, do I need to file for Social

Security in order to be able to get the 8% to

9% cost of living increase that's coming out?

The short answer is no, you do not.

You can find this in the Social Security Administration's website.

They have a piece titled Your Retirement Benefit, How It's Figured, and it says very succinctly,

you are eligible for cost of living benefit increases

starting with the year you turn 62. This is true even if you don't get benefits until you're

...