You may have heard of some changes to Social Security recently, called the Social Security Fairness Act.Â
What is it?Â
Some government workers did not pay into the Social Security system, like teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other state and local government employees. Instead, they paid into a different system.Â
If they worked in another job that DID pay into Social Security, then those benefits would be reduced under the old rule. Congress felt that was not fair.Â
If a married, divorced, or widowed spouse was receiving a pension from a job that did not pay into the Social Security system and if they qualified for a spousal or a survivor benefit based on their spouse’s work record, then that benefit would be reduced by two-thirds of their pension amount. This often reduced the benefits to zero. Congress also thought this was not fair.Â
Why did they have these rules in place in the first place? The Social Security formulas are structured to magnify benefits to lower-wage workers. So if someone did not pay into the system, like a teacher, and then worked another job afterward, their SS benefit would be magnified even though they may have a pension from previous work.Â
If you did work in a job that did NOT pay into Social security, you may want to rerun an analysis to see if you should change your claiming options.Â
If you have questions or would like us to run an analysis, email us at in**@Ri*********.com.Â
As previously mentioned in Finger Financial Fives, we are starting to create high-end YouTube videos on topics you see in the FFF.Â
Our first video will be released Saturday, January 25th. We will send out our weekly FFF Saturday next week, with a link to our new YouTube Channel.
An ask … Would you like to subscribe and watch the whole video?? This will help our channel gain some traction, and…you may learn something 🙂 Note: our first video will be our worst one.Â
We should be releasing a video each week on a different topic. We have already recorded 11 videos. On the lighter side, I went fishing last week. The view was unbelievable. There was zero wind. You could not tell where the ocean stopped and the sky started. See below:
