Discover the tips and strategies that will help you achieve your retirement goals.

I'm your host, James Canole, and this is the podcast dedicated to helping you retire well.

It all starts right here on Ready for Retirement. for retirement.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to another episode of Ready for Retirement.

I'm your host, James Cannell.

And on today's episode, I'm going to be responding to a listener question.

Here's the question.

So my question is in regards to filing date for a single person to collect Social Security. My thinking is the main benefit to wait is to obtain a larger monthly benefit

and also survivor benefit. I have no one who will receive a Social Security survivor benefit,

but I fear that if I pass away prior to collecting, my estate would have less for beneficiaries.

So now I believe it best just to collect shortly after

full retirement age and either bank it or invest it. I do not believe I would need larger monthly

income to protect longevity, but who really knows? So that is the question. Thank you for your question.

And the crux of it really comes down to how do I think about collecting social security as a

single filer? So it's a good question because if you're married, then this becomes a two-person decision.

It's not just to maximize the income that you could receive, but it's also to protect your

surviving spouse and even potentially children in some cases.

So the more people that are based on your benefit or could collect benefits based on your

benefit, the more complicated the strategy gets and the more

the more work is required to see what makes most sense. That's not to say that there isn't work

involved in determining when you should collect a benefit if you're single or if you don't have

...