"Interim" retirement solutions for those without pensions (friends, adults, support)

[sweepea]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

simply put:
marilyns ss at 62 is 7200 a year .... if she earned 29,600.00 rounded off she would lose her entire check as an additional 14800.00 over the 14,800 limit would negate the 7200.00.

she would get full credit for a year as if she never filed..

if she earned 22k she would have earned 7200 over the limit wiping out 3600 of her checks. 7200 - 3600 = about 1/2 so she would get 6 months credit.
so in this case at 62 we would get to keep 3600 of the payments and get 6 months credit .

lets say you accumulated 2 years credit from having to give back the money.

at full retirement age they recalculate you as if you retired at 64 and not 62. from that point on you get the higher amount for life.


thats how it works which is in contrast to how many think if they work they just lose the money.

This helps. So it's based on the annual SS I would get at the time I file. Right now my projection is around 15,600 at age 62. So if I filed and earned $29k, that would be 14,800 over the 14,800 limit and would negate any credit. Anything less, I subtract it from 14,800 and then subtract that number from my SS annual to get the percentage of credit?

[mathjak107]

Rember though you only lose 1 dollar for every 2 you earn over the 14,800 limit

[Submariner]

Yesterday a lady came by my farm to explore the possibility of her setting up a large garden on my land [I had never met her before, a mutual friend had suggested that she should talk to me]. After we finished making those arrangements, I invited her to go out picking fiddleheads with me. We had a long conversation. She is a school teacher, recently moved to this state and she is concerned about how this state's teachers use their own pension fund and walk away from their S.S. benefits.

She has another seven years to go before she would qualify for S.S.

Through moving here, she says that her cost of living has dropped enough that she only wants to work part-time from now on.

So it seems that while she is not old enough to get a S.S. pension yet, and really does not want to revoke her S.S. policy. She no longer sees any need to work full-time, and is nearing a semi-retired status.

She shares an apartment, her children are raising their own children now, her needs are less, and she enjoys spending time outdoors gardening and picking edibles.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

...and she enjoys spending time outdoors gardening and picking edibles.

Yep! I like to pick stray dogs, cats and children too.

[HappyTexan]

SS has brought back statements. You can now go online and get your statement..the very same they used to mail out annually. You can view it, download it and print it out.

I missed getting my annual statements and now I can do it myself.

Here's the website to sign up..this is not a calculator but your actual statement with work history.

https://secure.ssa.gov/RIL/SiView.do

[sweepea]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

SS has brought back statements. You can now go online and get your statement..the very same they used to mail out annually. You can view it, download it and print it out.

Yes! I recently did that, too! It was great having the whole statement just as it used to be.

[jghorton]

Sweepea, ... just a sidelight note: One problem with getting ready to retire mentally, before you are ready financially ...is that it can really sour you on the added work time necessary to achieve the financial goals. It's a lot like running a long race. If one focuses on the finish line too soon, they will tend to run-out-of-gas before they get there; --- if, instead, they just keep the next stretch in focus ... and the next one after that, they will likely get to the end of the race.

[Escort Rider]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

....We had a long conversation. She is a school teacher, recently moved to this state and she is concerned about how this state's teachers use their own pension fund and walk away from their S.S. benefits.

She has another seven years to go before she would qualify for S.S.

Through moving here, she says that her cost of living has dropped enough that she only wants to work part-time from now on.

So it seems that while she is not old enough to get a S.S. pension yet, and really does not want to revoke her S.S. policy. She no longer sees any need to work full-time, and is nearing a semi-retired status.

The lady you talked to seems very confused. How is it that your state's teachers can "use their own pension fund and walk away from their S.S. benefits"? If the teachers in your state do not fall under Social Security (i.e., no FICA taxes are taken out because they have their own pension) then they are not "walking away" from anything because they never had it in the first place. In other words, they are not making some kind of choice, except insofar as they have made the decision to be public school teachers in your state. Or, if the state allows them that choice (S.S. or the state pension), that is the first I've heard of such a thing.

One cannot "revoke" one's S.S. policy. Either one has qualified to receive S.S. retirement benefits by working 40 quarters (10 years) under S.S. or one has not qualified. Is she (or are you) confusing the reduction in S.S. benefits under the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) with the complete disallowal of those benefits? (S.S. benefits are reduced, not eliminated, if one falls under the WEP).

Or perhaps I am the confused one. If so, please set me straight.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Escort Rider

The lady you talked to seems very confused. How is it that your state's teachers can "use their own pension fund and walk away from their S.S. benefits"? If the teachers in your state do not fall under Social Security (i.e., no FICA taxes are taken out because they have their own pension) then they are not "walking away" from anything because they never had it in the first place. In other words, they are not making some kind of choice, except insofar as they have made the decision to be public school teachers in your state. Or, if the state allows them that choice (S.S. or the state pension), that is the first I've heard of such a thing.

She has a S.S. policy which she has been paying into for decades. Now she lives in a state which has never used S.S. So she would be expected to stop paying into her S.S. policy and shift to the municipal policy.

In her case, to stop paying into her S.S. policy would feel like walking away from that investment.

I understand that by using the phrase 'walking away' I may have interjected some confusion.

I know one other teacher who moved to this state and went through the same process.

... One cannot "revoke" one's S.S. policy. Either one has qualified to receive S.S. retirement benefits by working 40 quarters (10 years) under S.S. or one has not qualified. Is she (or are you) confusing the reduction in S.S. benefits under the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) with the complete disallowal of those benefits? (S.S. benefits are reduced, not eliminated, if one falls under the WEP).

Or perhaps I am the confused one. If so, please set me straight.

I will PM you.

[Escort Rider]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

She has a S.S. policy which she has been paying into for decades. Now she lives in a state which has never used S.S. So she would be expected to stop paying into her S.S. policy and shift to the municipal policy.

In her case, to stop paying into her S.S. policy would feel like walking away from that investment.

I understand that by using the phrase 'walking away' I may have interjected some confusion.

I will PM you.

Thank you for your response above and also for your direct message, which I have read. The material in the direct message regarding opting out of Social Security was something that I didn't know anything about. It seems totally bizarre to me, which is not to say I do not believe you, as you have the links to prove it. I appreciate that eye-opener, about which I'm still shaking my head.

Back to your lady friend, the school teacher. I don't see her as "walking away" from her investment in Social Security. If she has already paid into it for decades, she will receive retirement benefits at the appropriate age upon applying for them. It's just that they will be smaller than they would be if she had continued to pay in for the full 35 years that are used to average earnings and compute the benefit. But that smaller amount will be offset by the municipal pension - I don't mean offset to the penny, but more or less. So she will not have lost anything, basically.

The specific language you have used ("she would be expected to stop paying into her S.S. policy and shift to the municipal policy") leaves me very puzzled. It's not as if she had made a decision to pay into S.S. - the employers did that for her automatically. And now, with the change, it's not as if she is "expected" to shift, she will be shifted automatically because she has no other choice, other than not to work as a teacher in that locality. To put it another way, you are speaking of S.S. as if it were the same as a 401K, for which an employee chooses the amount to contibute (within cerain limits) or not to contribute at all. The S.S. contribution is fixed by law and doesn't vary up or down, and the basic nature of it is quite different from a voluntary retirement account in that there is no "personal" amount, or account, set aside individually in S.S. Rather, records are kept of one's earnings, and later rights to benefits are based on the earnings records.