Covisum Blog

While researching the impact of male Social Security claiming and poverty rates for widows, I have read article after article that illustrates the need for competent financial advising, especially in the area of Social Security claiming decisions and retirement income planning. There is no shortage of research literature that directly ties the financial futures of many women to the claiming decisions of their husbands. For example, a study commissioned by the Federal Reserve in 2012 concludes the following: Husbands are very responsive to their own benefit incentives, but they are not responsive to the incentives created by dependent benefits.1

Several calls to our office in the past month reaffirm what advisors with Social Security expertise see all too often — consumers can get short-changed when they receive advice at their local Social Security office. To illustrate this, we’ll use the real-life example of a widow who elected to first claim her widow benefits while waiting for retirement benefits to accumulate.

At the end of the software’s client wizard, or input screens, you see the question, “What is the desired pre-tax monthly household income upon retirement?” Subscribers often ask the support staff why we ask this question or how the client’s answer effects the calculations. We often see this field blank.

If you have a client who questions the benefit amount in a strategy, walk him or her through a selected strategy’s monthly cashflow to help them understand the strategy better. You can locate the cashflow feature while you have the main workspace open.

Many subscribers have been asking for a column that calculates the additional years of work and non-Social Security pension income, since we reflect that income in the projected-versus-desired-income graph on the printed report. Thanks to our development team, the summary columns on the cashflow pages now feature a category titled “Other” in the printed client report. The total income from Social Security and the other possible income (additional work years and non-Social Security pension income) is calculated and either subtracted or added to reflect the income gap of the client’s annual income need.

Once you are logged into your Social Security Timing® software account, you’ll notice a new cog wheel tab at the top right side of the page. This is a global navigation tool to help you get back and forth easily to the front end of the website, your profile information and the software, without having to log in to the software every time. When you click on the cog wheel, a menu appears. Select “Subscriber” under “Resources,” to view all the items you have access to. If you have any questions on this new feature, contact us at 877.844.7213.

Every two years, we get a small dose of election campaign rhetoric regarding Social Security, and every four years, we get a big dose. Candidates claim their opponents’ plans to save Social Security will bankrupt grandma, rob children of their future, or worse. This year, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie kicked off the tradition with a bold proposal to scale back Social Security benefits for some Americans. Christie, a potential presidential candidate, proposed means testing that would reduce the size of benefits for people earning more than $80,000 annually and phase them out completely for those earning $200,000 or more. He also wants to raise the full retirement age from 67 to 69 for people born in 1960 or later. When the rhetoric heats up, we inevitably get panicked calls from advisors asking for our prognostications on what will happen and how it will impact the strategies we help you identify. Our answer can be summed up this way: This is a big ship, and it doesn’t turn quickly. 

Most of you are probably already familiar with a simplified version of the widow calculation which says that the surviving spouse receives the higher of his or her own benefit, or the benefit of the deceased, which may have been reduced or increased depending on if and when the deceased filed for Social Security benefits. See Figure 1 below.