Tag: Favorites

The Pyramids, actually the retirement income pyramid.

Surprises

When we say ‘surprises’, we mean surprises that can damage your retirement income plan and by ‘damage’, we mean permanently lower your retirement income.  We will focus on ‘surprises’ can increase your retirement budget (spending more than planned) or decrease your income (or not have it increase as you expected).

The retirement income pyramid (below) shows you income sources you may have by decreasing levels of income surprise-ability (which you might also recognize as risk). Green – less surprise-ability.  Orange, yellow and red – more surprise-ability We’ll take small bites.

Income pyramid - png - v5

For today, let’s look at Social Security.  Down at the bottom in a safe green color, it must be safe from surprises right?  Yes and no:

Yes
-Government guaranteed (and you can vote to help maintain that)
-Inflation protected (to an extent) with potential for an annual cost of living adjustment (COLA).

No
-Medicare premiums come out of Social Security – if you don’t subtract your Medicare premiums from your gross Social Security, you may be planning to spend more that you receive – a bad retirement surprise!
-COLA protection with Social Security is based on a different Consumer Price Index (CPI) than you commonly see on the news which can give lower COLAs than the inflation your budget experiences.  If you don’t plan your budget on the Social Security COLA CPI, you could end up with too little cash  – a bad retirement surprise!
-Healthcare inflation hits Medicare, so Medicare premium increases can exceed any Social Security COLA – if you plan on a COLA increase in your budget and don’t factor in a Medicare premium increase, you may have a budget problem – a bad retirement surprise!

Up next – the Retirement Teeter-totter.  Look for the next update on Friday, July 14 at 12:30 PM.

Actions you can take:
-Learn about Medicare premiums. Paying Medicare premiums.  Medicare costs.
-Learn about Social Security COLAs  – www.ssa.gov COLA Fact Sheet (pdf)

Questions, comments, or suggestions for retirement surprise areas you want to know more about?
-Leave a comment
-Use ‘Contact’, above, to send an email.

 

 

 

 

 

Why you should read and follow this blog. What’s in it for you? (WIIFY)?

WIIFY – What’s in it for you?
Have a better retirement by:
-Learning about potential retirement surprises
-Taking actions to mitigate or avoid them.

Premise
As ‘No Surprises Retirement’, we will try to help you avoid bad surprises, primarily on the expense side of the ‘budget teeter totter’ (more on that in a future post).  I want to help you avoid surprises that could damage (i.e. permanently lower) your retirement income. Many fine books, blogs, and advisors will give you direction on income accumulation and investment allocation; we won’t do that here.