Social security is changing, join Heather Majka the owner of Citizens Insurance Solutions to keep up with the changes.
To sign up for this seminar call the Tellico Village public library at (865) 458-5199.
This event is on July 11, 2023 at 4 pm at the Tellico Public Library located at
300 Irene Ln, Loudon, TN, United States, Tennessee.
Join Citizens Insurance Solutions at the Kodak United Methodist Church, 2923 Bryan Road, Kodak, TN 37764 for a FREE veterans breakfast!
We invite Veterans of all branches of the service, all eras, and their guests to enjoy hot food and warm fellowship at no cost.
This event takes place on July 8, 2023 at 2 pm.
Join Heather Majka, Tennessee’s only Social Security Claiming strategist for basic rules and filing strategies when filing for Social Security retirement. In just 30 minutes learn:
– How to decide when to collect your benefits.
– How to coordinate benefits with your spouse.
– The Social Security options available to divorcees.
– How the death of a spouse affects your Social Security benefits.
– How work affects your benefits.
– How your benefits are taxed and what you can do about it.
—-You must kindly RSVP by calling the library @ (865) 458 – 5199—-
A message from Andrew Saul, Commissioner of Social Security:
About a year ago, I took the unprecedented step to close our offices to the public. I did this to keep our employees and you—the public we serve—safe. As we enter year two of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines and other precautionary measures give us cause for hope. For now, we will continue our current safety measures as described in our COVID-19 Workplace Safety Plan. This plan is iterative, and we will update it as we receive additional government-wide guidance and information from public health experts in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We understand that the public wants to engage with us on some matters in person, and our local offices are integral to our communities. We also know that not everyone can conveniently come to us in person and that when you do visit, you want the process to be efficient. For example, we may need evidence from you, but we do not need to interview you in person. We are currently testing drop box and express appointment options for the public to bring in documentation.
Often, you only need to know your Social Security number and do not need a physical Social Security card. However, if you do need to replace your card, we are testing video appointments if you need a new Social Security card but do not need to change any of the information in our records. Although ideas like these began as solutions during COVID-19, we are considering how they could improve service in the future.
Some of these concepts also allow us to consider how we might continue to use telework, something that most organizations and companies have depended on during the COVID-19 pandemic, to drive longer-term operational efficiencies like reducing space. We could use those savings to provide you more online service options and hire more people to serve you more quickly as well as to retain outstanding employees. We will continue to engage our managers, employees, and unions on ways we could use telework to improve customer service and other issues.
You can find the full statement, and links to helpful resources, here.
There has been a certain amount of educated speculation about the effect of COVID-19 on the Social Security and Medicare systems. The 2020 OASDI Trustees Report, which was prepared before the pandemic gained a foothold and showed financial results through 2019, projected an exhaust date of 2035 for the combined OAS and DI funds. In April, Alicia Munnell of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College issued a brief saying that if the COVID-19 economic collapse causes payroll taxes to drop by, say, 20% for two years, the depletion date would move up by about two years, to 2033.The latest weigh-in has come from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Its September 2020 report, CBO Outlook for Major Federal Trust Funds 2020 to 2030, projects the following exhaust dates:
The CBO report also explained how trust fund financing works. It’s basically an accounting mechanism to link earmarked receipts (that is, money dedicated to a specific purpose) with corresponding expenditures. Retirement, survivor, and disability benefits, for example, are paid out of the 12.4% payroll tax collected from employees and employers. Medicare Part A benefits are paid out of the 2.9% Medicare tax as well as the additional 0.9% paid by couples with income over $250,000 and individuals with income over $200,000. When the receipts from these taxes exceed the amount that needs to be paid out, the overage is held in the respective trust fund and invested in special-issue Treasury securities.
It should be noted that when Congress and the president are planning their spending, they use the unified budget perspective. Rather than attaching an expenditure to the earmarked receipts (e.g., payroll taxes), the expenditures are based on the underlying authorizing laws. Both Social Security and Medicare are mandatory expenditures, making up about 60% of the total federal budget. This means they are protected from the appropriations process. The only way these expenditures can be reduced is to change the authorizing laws, which requires a 60-vote majority in the Senate.
If the trust funds were to run dry, the United States would still be obligated to pay Social Security and Medicare benefits. The trustees, in their annual reports, generally say that when the trust funds run out, payroll taxes will be sufficient to pay X% of benefits (depending on which trust fund they are talking about). But the Social Security Act of 1935, as amended, requires benefits to be paid. There would be a conflict between two federal laws. Since we’ve never been in this situation, it’s impossible to know how it would be resolved.
No. Medicare and Social Security are MANDATORY expenses! Mandatory spending pays for U.S. federal programs that have already been established by Congress under so-called authorization laws. These laws both establish the federal programs and mandate that Congress must appropriate whatever funds are needed to keep the programs running. In other words, Congress cannot reduce the funding for these programs without changing the authorization law itself. Social Security and Medicare are the major mandatory spending categories.
Clients who are worried that Congress can just decide to cut Social Security or Medicare benefits as part of the budget process – the way they play with defense spending and food stamps – need not worry. Because these programs involve mandatory spending, they cannot be cut without changing the authorization laws underlying them. This would take a 60-vote majority in the Senate.
We’ve been saying for years that Social Security benefits for baby boomers are not jeopardy.
Social Security is completely self-financed. Payroll taxes are deposited into a dedicated trust fund, along with income taxes on benefits and interest on the securities in the trust fund. The trust fund currently holds about $2.8 trillion in excess cash (currently invested in special-issue Treasury securities), an amount that will gradually be drawn down as baby boomers retire. By 2034 assets will be depleted and income will be sufficient to pay about 79% of promised benefits, under the trustees’ intermediate-cost projections.
Social Security does need to be reformed in some way. The trustees have been telling us this for years. If it’s not, the trust fund will be exhausted in 2034 and payroll taxes will cover only about 77% of promised benefits. No one wants an across-the-board benefit cut in 2034. There are great reform measures proposed (and will likely be voted on closer to 2034) view them here. View Social Security’s current solvency here. Medicare is the largest government health program and the federal government is the largest payor of health services.
Any time you move, contact your insurance agent no matter what your age to see if you need to change or SHOULD change plans.
Often, your time is limited to do this so it’s important to contact your agent BEFORE you move so they can help you plan. Usually you only have 60 days and if you notify your current plan too soon, there is a chance they could automatically end your enrollment too soon.
DID YOU KNOW?
The USPS postal service is required to let insurers know (health and life insurance know) about a change of address? They are also required to let Social Security know.
If you are on Medicare, or are drawing Social Security, here is how you can easily submit an address change online. If you are not computer savvy, do not despair, simply call Social Security, at 1-800-772-1213, and they will take your address change over the phone.
Don’t hesitate to ask us for assistance. That is why we are here.
Retirement saving plays an important role in the U.S. economy. Americans hold more than $18 trillion in private retirement accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs, while defined benefit pensions in the private and public sector hold trillions more. Social Security and Medicare comprise nearly 40 percent of the federal budget. The government also provides tax subsidies for retirement saving, and funds Medicaid, which covers elder long-term care. Yet despite existing research, policymakers do not have access to reliable data when making decisions that affect the retirement security of tens of millions of families. There are many major outstanding questions:
Obtaining better answers to these questions and using the insights they provide to guide changes in the American retirement system could improve living standards for generations of retirees and control the federal budget. But to obtain these answers, researchers and policy makers need better information— that is, more than access to more comprehensive data. They must also employ better study designs. In the absence of such robust studies, it hardly surprising that almost no retirement policymaking is rooted in evidence; programs simply continue indefinitely with little or no Congressional oversight. Federal tax expenditures for retirement saving—which totaled $252 billion in 2018—have never been formally evaluated, while the Social Security Administration devotes less than 1 percent of its administrative budget to research and evaluation.
Making effective evidence-based policy requires both a comprehensive understanding of the policy challenge and attendant remedies, as well as the will and ability to implement the necessary reforms. The federal government should commission a large-scale panel survey that, coupled with linked administrative data, provides detailed information on household wealth, labor market, health and demographic data. No current data set provides such information.
You can find the full Retirement Security Project at Brookings paper here.
AARP reports that Americans are concerned and even afraid for their retirement security. And the news headlines often don’t make them feel better. The latest is a claim from the National institute for Retirement Security that “A plurality of older Americans, 40.2 percent, only receive income from Social Security in retirement.” If true that’s very worrying. But does this frightening factoid hold up?
The NIRS report’s data source is the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (the SIPP). The SIPP surveys households by asking them a wide variety of questions, including the sources of their income. From the SIPP, NIRS declares that 40.2 percent of retirees receive all of their income from Social Security.
And yet, a 2017 study by researchers at the Social Security Administration, also using the SIPP, found that only 19.6% of Americans 65 and over received at least 90% of their total incomes from Social Security. That’s less than half the share of retirees than NIRS claims and SSA measures dependence using a lower bar—90% of total income rather than NIRS’s 100%. Clearly, there’s a conflict.
Moreover, a second 2017 study, from two Census Bureau economists, analyzed retirement incomes using IRS tax records, which are more accurate than households’ responses to a survey. The Census Bureau study found that only 12% of Americans aged 65+ received 90% or more of their income from Social Security. Again, it’s not clear how that is compatible with NIRS’s claim that over 40% of retirees receive all their income from Social Security.
From a policy perspective, one-fifth of retirees being heavily dependent on Social Security isn’t a huge problem: the poorest fifth of workers are indeed quite poor, and Social Security was designed to provide a retirement benefit for workers who can’t easily save on their own.
You can find the full article, including a discussion of why the NIRS data might be wrong, here.
According to AARP, one in 3 Tennesseans 67 and older are living on Social Security alone. To find out about poverty and the elderly learn more here.
Since 2012, the Social Security Administration has scaled back the mailing of paper statements after it established a website, My Social Security, that offered access to that information online. The agency was able to save on the costs of mailing paper records—in 2018, the total cost was $7.6 million, compared to $24 million in 2016. During those years, the cost per statement was 52 cents.
