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, joined by my co-host, John Ross.

Howdy?

John, let's answer some listener questions. So, Big Picture Retirement.com. You go there. On the right hand side, what do you do? You leave a voicemail. Yes, leave a voicemail. You click the button. You leave a voicemail with your name and your question and not your last name. That's right. Not your last name.

Just give us your first name. We don't need all of that details. And our editor doesn't want to have to bleep out the last name. So today we have a few more questions. And we were going through some of these. And it looks like we've got quite a few social security questions again. Of course. And that's fine. We will absolutely answer those, but I do want to remind our listeners that your questions don't have to be limited to Social Security. No, you can ask what you want. Taxation, estate planning, financial planning, any of that, we've got you covered. And if we don't know the answer, we'll Google it until we find it. That's right. Disability, long-term care, you name it. All right. Let's jump in with the first question. Hi, thanks for taking my question. I understand that rental property cash flow does not

count against Social Security benefits, but I recently retired at 62 and I'm thinking about

collecting Social Security. I have multiple investment properties with the total unit succeeding

$100,000 per year. I'm not rich, but I have expenses. I have multiple investment properties with the total units exceeding $100,000 per year.

I'm not rich, but I have expenses.

I have mortgages, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, other expenses.

Now, do they consider this a business?

And will a scenario like this account against my Social Security benefits?

And if so, how?

I don't provide any services. It's only

rental property cash flow that I'm speaking about. Thank you. Okay, John, so a pretty astute question.

Sounds like this guy's been a pretty successful real estate investor. Yeah, I think so. A thousand dollars a

year in gross income coming in. That's pretty good. Now, the question that he's asking is, does this count against me for Social Security? And what I presume he's really asking is the earnings test. Does this count as earnings or the earnings test? As you know, if you're below four retirement age, there's a limit on the earnings you can have and collect Social Security. Correct. You can't earn over a certain amount. I think it's

$20,240 in 2003. That generally increases every year. So he wants to know does this $100,000 count?

The answer is, generally speaking, no. It has to be either earnings from a job like you get on a W-2 or net earnings from self-employment.

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