Inbox Question | Cutting Work Hours at 60: Will It Reduce Social Security?
Big Picture Retirement®
Devin Carroll
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rosemary's husband is scaling back to 32 hours a week as part of his transition plan before switching careers. With Social Security in mind, she asks: Will this reduced income impact their future benefits? In this episode, we break down how Social Security calculates benefits, whether lower earnings in the final working years can reduce your check, and what to consider before making the shift. If you're thinking about adjusting your workload before retirement, this is an episode you won't want to miss!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Big Picture Retirement Show. |
| 0:07.7 | Today, we're going to the inbox to answer questions sent in by you, our listeners. |
| 0:12.7 | Now, if you'd like to send us a question, just head over to big pictureretirement.com and click |
| 0:17.3 | the Ask a Question tab in the top menu. |
| 0:19.8 | Oh, and just a quick reminder. |
| 0:21.2 | On this podcast, we provide general information |
| 0:24.3 | and not specific tax, legal, or financial advice. |
| 0:28.0 | But if you're ever ready to move from the broad education we provide here |
| 0:31.9 | to personalized advice that's specific to you, |
| 0:35.6 | you can find links to our websites down in the description. |
| 0:39.2 | Now let's jump in to today's question. |
| 0:45.3 | John, today's question comes from Rosemary. |
| 0:48.4 | All right, she says, my husband, who just turned 60, is reducing his work hours to 32 hours a week. |
| 0:54.0 | This is his two-year plan. |
| 0:55.8 | And then he wants to find a different line of work all together. He has a very physical job |
| 0:59.6 | and wants to move into something less taxing on the body. Will the lower income affect our |
| 1:04.6 | Social Security benefits at all? Good question. It is. And Rosemary, the answer is it depends. So as most of our listeners |
| 1:14.4 | know, I'll walk back through this just for those who may not. Social Security has calculated |
| 1:19.3 | based on your highest inflation adjusted 35 years of earnings. So at 60, there's a really good |
| 1:27.2 | chance that his earnings, you know, he's already |
| 1:30.8 | qualified for the 35 years of earnings. The only way that it could really affect that Social |
| 1:36.6 | Security benefit is if his future earnings were also counted in those 35 years, right? So they would |
... |
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