By exercising reasonable care—including getting good advice from a professional—many people can increase the value of their lifetime Social Security benefits by tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. We first examine worker behavior and review Social Security’s rules. After that, we explore how those rules can be utilized to maximize the expected value of future benefits.
Author: Bruce D. Schobel, FSA, MAAA, CLU, CEBS, is a consulting actuary in Winter Garden, Florida, who worked for SSA during 1979 through 1988 and has stayed involved in Social Security matters since then. He was staff actuary to the National Commission on Social Security Reform (the “Greenspan Commission”) that developed the framework for the Social Security Amendments of 1983.
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