Tag Archives: Social Security

Reminders of Important “Line in the Sand” Age-Related Dates that have Recently Changed …

This is an abbreviated article coming in the Q 4 2023 Newsletter … Important enough, we wanted to have its’ own airtime for future reference and emphasis.

The Secure Act 2.0 completed in very late 2022 made adjustments to many age-related “Line in the Sand” important dates as well as some other peripheral and yet undetermined information.

RMD (Required Minimum Distributions)

One of the most important and likely most confusing due to the recent multiple updates is the adjustment of Required Minimum Distributions (RMD) They are now mandatory to commence for those aged 73. Those turning 75 after 2033, your new RMD age is 75.  Recall, these just a few years ago, moved from age 70 1/2 to 72, now to age 73 and eventually age 75. No wonder we are all confused!

Bottom line, current earliest required minimum distribution is age 73 until the next scheduled change, if not sooner, in 2033.

RMD Practice Reminder – While you may have many different IRA type of accounts (consolidating is always best, but not always possible) you need only take your mandatory RMD amount in total, no matter the account(s) they come from. Said another way, Uncle Sam does not care which accounts your RMD’s come from, as long as you take the minimum amount needed, as he really wants in taxes on those untaxed funds.

Social Security Mandatory Commencement Date reminder age 70

With 75 being the new 65 it is not surprising that many people are choosing to work longer, happily and healthily adding to society in a peak knowledge chapter, and pushing their Social Security commencement day off accordingly. There are many reasons to start Social Security early, on your full retirement age, or wait until that last possible moment. The current maximum age that you may defer commencement of  Social Security still remains at age 70, well below the new younger thresholds that we hopefully are all feeling. 

The earliest one may take Social Security remains age 62, with a 25% discount to the full retirement age (FRA) benefit amount AND has a maximum earnings level of $21,240 from W-2 or 1099 (working income) not pension, investment or other non working types of income.  

Have a Great “Less Confused Important Age Date Reminders” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

August 2023 Audio Video Review – The Brain Tests the Systems- Social Security Statement/Web View Reminder – Four Downgrades Reviewed – Financial Planning and Capital Market Review – By John Kvale CFA, CFP

Hello and Welcome to our August Financial Planning and Capital Market Update!

If you are too busy to read, feel free to listen as we describe our post and thoughts in friendly podcast audio format as well as Video!

BREAK IN: Donald the Brain WILL BE reviewing the Schwab TDA Merger information only one of 32k folks to be asked!

Newbies –

We like to articulate our thoughts and review on a Monthly basis our Financial Planning Tips, Capital Markets thoughts and current events!

Hope you enjoy!

August 2023 Video


YouTube

Financial Planning Tip(s)

Check that Social Security Statement no Matter your age

While a late delivery, we managed to remind all (including ourselves) why we need to review annually our Social Security statement, here in this post…. along with some new features from the SSA (Social Security Administration) in their updated website!

From the post:

Confirm your credits via your Earning History

Confirm you received credits for your hard earned money is very important, and easy…. here is what the screen shot look like – Below- oh, there are new drop downs for excellent help if your credits are not showing

Capital Market Comments

Not one, not two, not three …. but FOUR Downgrades with one called by ourselves – Tap Tap on the back

In this first post we commented that Fitch put a shot across the bow of the USA Credit Boat with a mild downgrade from AAA to AA+

Not to be outdone, another of the big three credit agencies, Moody’s chimed in as we discussed here

Then back into the pool goes Fitch with ANOTHER downgrade…. here we discussed Fitch’s second downgrade and mentioned we were surprised the One of the Big Three were silent….

BOOM that night of our above post, the other big three S&P Global Markets came to the party…. as we discussed here along with a timely fun YTD Bankruptcy Graph from our bud at Visual Capitalist

These downgrades among a couple of other items, not surprising, led to an upward push on rates… highlights to the far right…. already headed back to norms!

Have a Great Day, Talk to You at the End of September !

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Why you should Check that Social Security Statement – No Matter your age! Confirm you received credit for your payments/Earnings History!

Every year we post a reminder here to double check your Social Security Statement… Our reminder is triggered by the annual email from the SSA (Social Security Administration) reminding US to review our statement…. Well this year our email has come really late, as in years past it was in February…. Hey Better late than never!

Break In – We will let those currently receiving SS know the COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) when it occurs in about two months – after the CPI W for the quarter is calculated – Likely low single digits this year – Ok back to our regularly programming!

New font and back ground color here! yay

Why You Should Check your Social Statement? Confirm your Credits!

Unless you are already drawing Social Security, or unless you have no earnings, you should have a Social Security Account and should check it annually…

Here is the log in – Actual link (not hot linked) for security purposes – https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ Only takes a few minutes to get your account set up!

Confirm your credits via your Earning History

Confirm you received credits for your hard earned money is very important, and easy…. here is what the screen shot look like – Below- oh, there are new drop downs for excellent help if your credits are not showing

In the event you have missing reporting, here is a screenshot of the contact information for the SSA – again once in side your SSA portal, it is fairly intuitive!

Have a Great “Social Security Earnings/Credit Reminder” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

8.7% Social Security COLA, Peripheral Effects, Pension COLA Reminder, SSA Neat Fact Sheet …

Last year we penned the following … in this post

HUGE Social Security COLA … 5.9% to Be Exact, Wow…. COLA Pension Recipients Check Your Benchmark

Looks like that was just the dress rehearsal… here is this years release…

Dall – E

With much talk of Inflation costs this year, the SSA (Social Security Administration) release this week of an 8.7% COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) was not a huge surprise..

Important Items Associated with this Adjustment

Pensions – Folks with Pensions that have COLA adjustments should also watch for a similar increase – Your benchmark and adjustment will likely differ from SSA as they use the CPI-W three month average as noted here in our pre-post last year

Pre-Retirees – Those nearing Social Security, according to this neat fact sheet,

Maximum Social Security Benefit: Worker Retiring at Full Retirement Age goes from $3,345/mo. to $3,627/mo.

New Social Security Tax Base – Those still working, understand this COLA also filters into the SSA base income tax rate, again as mentioned in the press release

“Based on that increase, the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax (taxable maximum) will increase to $160,200 from $147,000.”

Have a Great “COLA Reminder” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Important: Annual Reminder to Take a Few Moments and Review Your Social Security Statement … Just Take 5 Minutes and Quickly Review Most Importantly Your Earnings Record!

if you are already drawing your Social Security, you get a hall pass today … watch for posts coming in two days as this is not applicable to you.

ANYONE who is not drawing Social Security please take a moment to review our annual reminder of your Social Security statement. We have some great new findings and the statement has been completely updated, finally!

In true “practice what you preach”  fashion yesterday morning in less than 5 minutes time a quick review of the Social Security statement was completed. Being 100% certain the filing was made since it was done in-house … but not trusting that the mail could have possibly not been delivered, this annual review is worth every bit of the five minutes it takes!

Here is the link to the newly updated Social Security log in web page…. Please take 5 minutes out of your day to log in and confirm … most importantly … that your earnings have been recorded for at least years 2020 and prior!

Annual Reminder to Review Your Social Security Statement

With a cup of Java in hand and early morning peace and quiet, in less than five minutes time a quick review of the Social Security statement due to an inbound email reminder was completed.

This year’s review was happily surprised at a complete update, (finally) of the statement. The new statement has neat bar graphs cascading from left to right showing early retirement benefits all the way to the full age 70 late retirement benefits, actually have to compliment the Social Security Association for integrating some technology, well done guys!

This year’s login which had a silly username from last year’s loss of password required email confirmation of a passcode, so just a heads up to be prepared for that.

The most important reason to review your annual Social Security statement is to make sure your years Earnings Income have been credited to your account.

In my case not surprisingly year 2021 credits had not been added as of this date … as a reminder January 31st is the deadline for employers to send the W3’s for all employees to the Social Security Administration, which is why it was not a surprise that a mid to early February review garnered no credits as of yet. Prior year credits work confirmed and again most importantly this is what you are looking for to make sure your credits were added to your Social Security statement.

From the Social Security Website:

If the earnings missing from your Social Security record are for the current year or last year, you don’t need to worry. Because these earnings are recent, we may not have recorded them yet. They should appear on a later Statement.

However, earnings could be missing from your record for earlier years for one of the following reasons:

  • Your employer reported your earnings using the wrong name or Social Security number.
  • Your employer reported your earnings incorrectly.
  • You got married or divorced and changed your name, but never reported the change to Social Security.
  • You worked using a Social Security number that didn’t belong to you.

See something that doesn’t match with your records? If there’s a mismatch between your records and the earnings listed, contact us to request a correction.

The contact us link from the Social Security Administration is purposefully hot so feel free to click on that link for contact information should you find your earnings record missing data.

Fancy new features of the Social Security website:

Scrolling just marginally down on the splash page immediately gives you a hot link to your earnings records. Again no matter what your age if you are not taking Social Security and have earnings please confirm that those earnings are being credited.

Scrolling down even further there is a fancy new graph that can be downloaded separately from your statement showing your estimated earnings benefits, cool stuff!

Wanda Worker Sample Benefit Statement

Farther down once again on the splash page is a quick calculator for a spouse or former spouse benefit based on your Social Security estimate, again cool stuff!

A hand clap applaud for the Social Security Administration for finally adding some neat tech functionality that makes the statement so much easier to read and interactive, well done guys!

Yes we can all debate whether Social Security will be there or not, but no matter the end result it’s worth 5 minutes of your time to log in take a look at the new fancy statement and confirm your earnings credits are being added to your records!

By the way this complete post has been done with a new wireless mic that is working like a charm, hat tip to the 14 year old technology son!  Can’t wait to do a video with it, constantly trying to improve!

Have a wonderful “Annual Social Security Earnings Credit Review Reminder” day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Overzealous Spam Filter on New System … HUGE Social Security COLA … 5.9% to Be Exact, Wow…. COLA Pension Recipients Check Your Benchmark… Birthday Week – Jen and Donald Same Day Yesterday, Happy Birthday Guys … Friday Before Busy Virtual Conference Week

Our summer project this year was to replace our server, update our office Wifi with greater speed and security as well as move our email system to a new more secure platform…

All this wonderful security and speed has led to an occasional overzealous spam filter…. we are validating all emails as safe, but the super sonic spam filter still grabs them every once in a while… please re-email us is you do not hear from us in short order… apologies for the accidental Ghosting, we thought we had this all fixed, but two instances in the last two weeks led to this announcement….

Big COLA Increases

Back in late July of this year, we warned here of possible GREAT news for Social Security and COLA Pension Recipients….

On Wednesday (10-13-21) the BLS (Bureau Of Labor Statistics) released the final month of the third quarter CPI-W which gave the average for the third quarter and is used to calculate the COLA (cost of living adjustment) for next year’s (2022) Social Security Benefits….

From this Release :


Fact Sheet SOCIAL SECURITY
Social Security National Press Office Baltimore, MD
2022 SOCIAL SECURITY CHANGES
Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA):
Based on the increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI-W) from the third quarter of 2020 through the third quarter of 2021, Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries will receive a 5.9 percent COLA for 2022.

Pension recipients, check that benchmark … you may have a nice surprise awaiting next year … YAY!

Birthday Week THE SAME EXACT DAY

Always try to do something unique for the office Birthday’s … but some how we ended up with two on the exact same day…. Wow… tough creativity all at once…

Happy Birthday Jen and DC the Brain… You guys are great!

Friday Before Full Week of Seminars and Welcome Learning

Today is a Friday and next week we have a full week of Virtual Seminars and Fantastic learning… Looking forward to it for sure… Will bring you any important details in short order…

Have a Great Weekend, Enjoy your Friday and Weekend!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Social Secuirty COLA – Cost of Living Adjustment – Look Out Above – 5-6% COLA ?? Maybe … WOW … Pension Recipients You May Receive a Similar Increase …

With a few of our industry rags shouting look out above for the Social Security COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) we took a deep dive into the SSA (Social Security Administration) methodology for the adjustment.

Pension Recipients with COLA adjustments you likely will be in the same boat of increases, depending on the index the COLA adjustment is marked against….ok digressing a bit, but wanted to get that thought out !

Social Security COLA Methodology

Basically the SSSA looks at the CPI – W in the third quarter of the year and compares it to the prior year and marks the new COLA Accordingly….

The fuss or cheer, is due to the dramatic increase in the CPI – W …that most recent print is 6.1% WOW!

The CPI – W

“The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) is based on the expenditures of households included in the CPI-U definition that meet two requirements: more than one-half of the household’s income must come from clerical or wage occupations, and at least one of the household’s earners must have been employed for at least 37 weeks during the previous 12 months. The CPI-W population represents about 29 percent of the total U.S. population and is a subset of the CPI-U population!”

From the latest BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) Here

SSA Methodology

Here is the SSA Methodology from their calculation pamphlet last year here https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10526.pdf

To determine the COLA, the average CPI-W for the third calendar quarter of the most recent year a COLA was determined is compared to the average CPI-W for the third calendar quarter of the current year. The resulting percentage increase, if any, represents the percentage that will be used to increase Social Security benefits beginning for December of the current year. SSI benefits increase by the same percentage the following month (January). If the increase in the CPI-W is at least one-tenth of one percent (0.1 percent), there will be a COLA. However, if the CPI-W increases by less than 0.05 percent, or if the CPI-W decreases, there won’t be a COLA.

Have a Great “COLA Adjustment Heads Up” Day!


John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Another Week, Another Private Space Launch…. Our Vote For Best Space Craft Style … Social Security COLA Preview … Friday

Just a week or so ago, we noted here when Richard Branson hit the skies making history with a personal space craft and safely returned to Earth….

Thankfully another launch went without a hitch earlier this week…. again, these things do not always go well and when they go bad, they really go bad big!

With two successful private flights and one more coming soon… we feel ok being a little critical or some may say tacky…

Which Craft Do You Think is Cooler

Link Below each picture is to YouTube full launch of each, Blue Origin (Bezos) and Unity 22 (Branson)

We favor the Second…. should be interesting to compare Elon Musk’s …. which we will do post launch…

Social Security COLA Preview – Coming In Hot

With the drop and rebound of the Economy, much of the Inflation numbers that the Social Security uses to do Cost of Living Adjustments or COLA are also running hot… possibly hotter than we have seen in some time…

More on this next week in greater detail, even some details we have recently discovered…

Ahhhh….but that is next week, today is a Friday… have a good Day and Weekend- Talk Next Week!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Q2 2021 J.K. Financial, Inc. Newsletter … Video Audio Podcast Review – Reminders ! By John Kvale

Welcome to our Video and Audio Podcast Review of our Q2 2021 Newsletter. For those on the road or just unable to grab the time to read, our podcast type review gives you the behind the scenes insight to our thoughts, observations and deep views of the entire Newsletter.

Click the Download button below, for a direct link to an electronic version (an early peek-good ole fashion paper versions are on their way to you shortly) and here for our Newsletter page

Let’s get going! We hope you enjoy!

Q 2 2021 Newsletter

(YouTube)

Social Security Earnings Record Check Reminder

In our lead article of the Q 2 2021 Newsletter, we remind all of the importance of checking your Social Security Record, no matter your thoughts on the longevity of Social Security….

Additionally we walk you through step by step on how to do this and also how to set up your SSA on line account!

Secure Act – Possibly Forgotten But Important Changes

With the passing of the SECURE act, the old age of 70.5 mandatory RMD (Required Minimum Distribution) was pushed to age 72.

Many times, it is not appropriate to wait until this age, depending on the location of some assets. EX Large IRA compared to other non iRA investment, Tax Brackets, One Off income Years

For those where it is appropriate to wait until the latest possible date, you can actually wait until the year AFTER you turn 72 as long at you take the distribution before April 1 of the year AFTER turning 72.

Warning, in almost all cases we discourage this last maximum delayed technique as it ends up forcing two RMD’s in the same tax year of your 73 birthday.

Buffet Valuation Indicator

Warren Buffett, the usually closed lip investor, years ago mentioned his macro Valuation indicator which is shown below.

It has never flashed “Over Valuation” as much as it is now!

Expecting tremendous Earnings Growth to help turn this indicator around and head the other direction!

We hope you enjoy … talk to you in the Summer!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.
A Dallas Texas based fee only
Financial Planning Total Wealth
Management firm.
www.jkfinancialinc.com
www.street-cents.com

Why You Should Check Your Social Security Earnings Credits No Matter Your Age

While many may argue contrary to our fantastic Social Security speaker whom we have had twice now Mr. Tom Clark who assures us that Social Security will always be there, many do not believe this for various reasons. 

No matter your beliefs or age we highly encourage you to check your Social Security Statement and most importantly your Social Security Earnings Record.  

Earnings Benefit Credit Statement

Do not be concerned if just as this example, does not show your 2020 earnings posted as of yet there have been some delays and normally this is not posted at an early time in the year anyway . 

What we want to be concerned about is if there are gaps in our earnings history or a partial credit (change of employers) that should have been credited. there are many reasons that this can occur such as just a lost document in the Mail or an employer was bought out or closed and did not report your hard earned earnings period. 

How Do I Find This Statement? 

In 1999, the Social Security Administration mailed a paper copy to everyone every year. Budget cuts a dozen years later stopped this handy paper copy, leaving all of us to easily forget to double check our statement annually. 

For the record according to the Administration folks at age 60 are supposed to receive a paper copy, but our informal poll shows a low hit ratio. 

Not to worry, it is not that hard set up an account, ESPECIALLY if it is your first time. 

Go to www.ssa.gov and either log into your account or create an account and pull down your statement…

Oh, keep your credentials safe … lost mine and was a huge pain getting logged back into the site!

Have a Great “Social Security Earnings History Check Reminder” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents