Optimizing Social Security — and Life Beyond It

You are listening to Boomers Today with your host Frank Samson. Oh, welcome to Boomers Today. I’m your host, Frank Samson. Of course, each week we bring you importing and very useful information on issues facing baby boomers, their parents and other loved ones.

And as I do on every one of our shows, every one of our podcasts, I thank all of you, and I thank all of you because our listeners keep growing every single day. The numbers keep growing, and we don’t even promote. It’s because of all of you sharing the show individual podcasts with friends and family. Many of you listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or you just ask Alexer Suri to take you to Boomers Today.

And of course you can always go to our website at Boomers Today dot com. But I can tell you I do know why you’re sharing, uh these our podcasts and the whole show with friends and family, because we’ve got tremendous guests, very educational and not going to disappoint you. Today we have with us Russ Geyser and Mike Hayflick, who help couples transform social security from a risky guess into a strategic asset. They co authored the number one best selling Break Beyond Break Even, the Essential Guide to Social Security Optimization and Lead Reform and Income Headquarters of America, where they build math backed income plans that coordinate benefits, taxes, and portfolios.

Together, they teach national workshops and consult one one to one focusing on survivor protection, tax efficiency, and sequence sequencing, risk and retirement. Ross Springs an MBA, the CFP mark and the c ss CS expertise. Mike Holt an MBA, the c SSCs and the CLTC credentials. A lot of credentials there.

With these guys and as educated thousands through workshops and the radio. Their approach is simple and rigorous. Lower the lifetime cost of retirement, safeguard the widow or widower, and turn anxiety into clarity. So whow, I’m going to take a breath here and welcome, but welcome both of you, Russ and Mike.

Thank you for joining us on boom We today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Frank, Yeah, thanks for the invitation.

Frank, Yeah, no, it’s great. Great to have you. Great to have you. So, uh so, let me let me ask you.

I thought I just you know, start out the name of the book beyond break even. Maybe you could just give us an overview of you know, are you referring to break even financially, are you talking about break even emotionally personally? What’s kind of the what’s the thought there and what you’re trying to get across. In the title. Yeah, the thought, Frank was it actually kind of dropped out after doing lots and lots of conversation and reflection, the actual title of the book sort of fell out of all of that.

And the notion of break even analysis when it comes to social security claiming is simply this. People get a letter that says you’re invited to take Social Security benefits, and that’s usually a few months before you turn age sixty two, and that’s the typical age people can consider taking a Social Security benefit a monthly income and inevitably, and I mean this has even happened with people Russ and I have known for years and we’ve worked with. The notion is well, it’s really enticing to think I’d get something from the government instead of giving the government money as you always have over your income years. But the question is.

If I do take at age sixty two, it’ll be a smaller amount. In fact, it’ll be the most permanently reduced amount I could choose. What if what if I waited until age sixty six to claim my benefit? The question then is will I get the same amount of money out of the trust fund where the money comes from if I take at sixty two versus sixty six, And the math of it is that yes you would, but you would have to reach age seventy eight years old for you to then say I broke even The choice between sixty two and sixty six means at age seventy eight I got the same amount out of the trust fund. Clearly, this asks people to imagine their own longevity, which I think is a very dispiriting way to head into retirement, try and figure out when you might die.

And I think it’s ultimately way too simplistic to just base such a monumental or found choice on simply when you think you’ll die. And that this whole Security administration agrees with this because in two thousand, around two thousand and eight, they stopped telling their agents to use the breake even analysis because it goes far beyond that when it comes to making a decision and when an individual or a couple should be claiming and filing for their benefits. So we’re we’re we started down this path to help people make informed decisions, not emotional ones, especially when it comes to money. Money is so emotional.

Yeah, I gotta believe it’s truly. There’s no right or wrong answer to when to start taking it. You got to learn more about that individual. No, that’s the type of advice that I’m sure you give to families as well, for sure.

Yeah, So how have I’d like to just kind of get it. I’m going to just tell it like it is, all right. I hate the word. I hate the word retirement, right right, Okay, I don’t like the word.

Not that I don’t believe in people cutting back, taking it easy and all that, but I’m a I can’t. I haven’t come up with the word. Maybe you guys can help me, But it almost like four tirement, you know, maybe you know you still have to have a plan. Uh you know, I think I have seen too often and I’m sure you have to people go into retirement and totally cut back and say I’m just going to play, going more golf or whatever, and they become unhappy in a short period of time.

So you know, I just like to get that out and then we could get maybe more into some of the other things I know that we want to speak about on social Security. But what are your what are your thoughts there, and what have you seen changing in the years that you’ve been doing. This My initial thought when I especially when I consult with people, because to them, the can I retire is the first question? Really to me, that’s do I have the freedom to make the decision to stop my full time job? That’s what that translates to. But I tell people all the time, you’re not retiring from something.

You’re retiring to something, and it’s that purpose. And a lot of times, you know, to your point, it could be empty for people if they think retirement is just simply about lounging and laying back. That gets really bored. I’m a big believer in a purpose driven life, whatever that looks like to that individual or that couple.

So oftentimes I’m helping to ensure that they have that right understanding what the expenses are in relation to that, and how how to build a plan around that right. So it’s yeah, you have to retire to something to your point. And I guess I’d go further and say, you know you’ve contributed, right, You’ve contributed all your life to whether it’s an organization, a company, maybe you’ve been self employed, and you’ve contributed by helping people, whether it’s in service or providing a product. You cannot stop doing that once you stop working full time.

As Russ said, you have to have something else to contribute to because it’s in your DNA at that point, it’s fulfilling even though you’re making a living doing it. That’s of course happening, but you have to to continue to contribute in some way, shape or form. And then I think it’s you don’t want to have any confusion as you head into those years, because confusion can kind of paralyze you. If you’re not sure what to do, you often might not do anything.

And so you stop working and you had no idea what you were going to do from say nine to five or eight to six or whatever, and you do nothing because you’re not compelled to do anything. And I think you have to get through all a lot of that first, and then you know, get guidance. You know, I think people like all of us, we all help people with really significant transitions in their lives, and that shouldn’t be something people are worried about. You should just seek the help you need to make, you know, to make clarity out of it.

So yeah, I think contributions, you know, retiring into something absolutely, we always we always work through those things with air. You got to have a client, you know. I’ve been kind of a serio entrepreneur myself, and you know, written business plans and all that, but in retirement you have to have a plan too, probably a written plans a good one as well. But so.

Kind of a uh, just a follow up to that kind of going back to maybe we were talking about before. I know that you discussed it in your book, and I know we’re going to talk a little bit more about your book and a little bit. But from a tax standpoint, is there a way to design retirement limiting the amount of tax you could be paying to the government. I mean, listen, we all need to pay tax, need to keep the government going and all that, but obviously you want to try to keep it legally as low as possible.

Okay, So tell me your thoughts there. Yeah, I think the answer is yes, the short answer, But like with anything in our field, in our industry, financial planning, it depends on the situation, the wealth where it saved, all those types of things, and so depending on the type of asset. I mean, most cases, people have saved their retirement plans, their four to one ks, a bunch of money, and if they’re not spending a lot of money, that could quietly grow to a point where then they have to take out so much later and we call that at tax time bomb. So it’s really highlighting blind spots that folks might not know they have right with the retirement income plan and helping them avoid that or unwind that.

And that really the more time you have, just like compound interest, the more time you have to unwind those things that earlier you meet with someone and have a plan around that. Usually the more the more choices you have to be able to smooth out your tax liability over time. Yeah, and a big part of this, Frank and for all the listeners, it often comes down to your accumulation years which you might be listening and you might be in your thirties, forties, fifties or whatever. It’s now that you can affect what you will have when you do stop again not using that word that you didn’t like that our word.

If you stop working, if you stop working full time, what will you have? What will the nest egg be? Because along the way you have choices. You just have to utilize the right choices as far as how you save what you save into. Of course, we’re all compelled to use employer plans because sometimes private employers might even say we’ll even give you more a company matching dollar amount. But that doesn’t mean you have to do far more than just to get a certain match.

You might choose to do other kind of investing where you don’t get immediate tax relief in the year you do it. And that’s the other point I wanted to make. Russ and I look at this from the standpoint of decades. A plan is decades.

It isn’t just year after year, how can we save more money, you know, how can we keep more from going to the irs this year? It’s how can we look at your overall tax ability now into your own futures, maybe as a surviving spouse, and then frank even to your legacy kids or grandkids. Right, So we really want to look at this holistically so that people can make the right choices given the priorities that they have. And to Mike’s point is really quick everyone in investing has heard the word more than likely diversification. You got to be diversified.

Well, I teach something to people to clients called tax diversification. You want to be tax diversified as well. And we don’t have to go down the rabbit hole on that, but yeah, there are ways to help. To sum up, we often say, it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep.

So you can keep trying to try and make a lot, make millions, but it’s what you ultimately keep that we care about. Yeah, you know, I’d like to get into a little bit about what we do as a company and how it relates to what you do to help people. All right. I mean I could tell you that statistic show and when somebody reaches seventy they got about a seventy five chance that they’re going to need some sort of long term care, all right, whether that’s care at home, whether that’s care and assisted living, whether that’s care and memory care.

There’s going to be a car, you know they’re going to need. Maybe family can take care of them, but you know, sometimes situations occur where it’s too difficult on the family. Sure, so, uh, you know, so much planning goes into how long are you going to live? We know we’re gonna die. I mean that’s a one hundred percent chance.

Okay, unless you guys know something I don’t know, right, all right, But but as far as I don’t do people that you deal with or how do you bring that into the formula here, like, we don’t know if you’re going to need long there’s a pretty good shot you will, but we don’t know, and that’s pretty expensive. A lot of people are under the perception that medicare, medicaid whatever one of the government. Uh uh, you know, vehicles pay for it, and they don’t. All right, obviously long term care insurance could.

But then you know, there’s different opinions whether you should get long term care insurance or incorporate it in some hybrid policy with life. And that’s a whole other subject. That’s a whole other subject matter. But just give me your thoughts on that, and how do you how do you advise people on something that’s a maybe? Yeah, Well, first it’s all about that educating, and we educate every single person about long term care the costs, the risks, whatever the case might be.

At least in New York State, where we see most of our clients, although we help clients nationally, the average cost of a nursing home full long term care monthly is eighteen thousand dollars a month, and so the average length is stay. You know, I’ve seen numbers. It’s around three years in a lot of cases. And so that’s where I start.

If some mom or dad needs nursing home care. I think more statistically speaking, women are more likely to go in a nursing home because there’s no one left to take care of them since they outlive everybody. But here’s the cost. Are you self insured against this? Do you have enough wealth to where it’s not going to be a problem for you to be able to just pay for it? And if the answer is no, then we start talking about what’s at risk? You know, how does that look? How can you fend against it through insurance? Typically long term care hybrid life insuranceans we don’t have to get down that rabbit hole, but there’s insurance to cover that, and that’s usually the earlier we talked about that.

You know, around age sixty is kind of that sweet spot where it’s not so expensive, but it’s also you know, you’re not paying into it for so many years prior. It’s kind of that sweet spot. But just knowing how the impact on your family, your health, your legacy when you pull in all your other financial goals and having that conversation and then knowing how to protect if they go against the insurance. How does funding the nursing home work.

How does medicaid come in state by state? How do you protect assets from the government maybe coming after those assets if you do go into a nursing home and you spent everything down and Medicaid is paying, Like, what are the risks? What are the blind spots? And then where do they feel like they want to how do they want to protect from there? Lay out the options, let them make the decision, and help guide them in your right one. Yeah, and it’s interesting you mentioned the term nursing home. You know. A lot of people, you know, we’re educating a lot of people on that, and nursing homes are in today’s world, they’re called skilled nursing facilities and sometimes those are for long term care for medical need and sometimes it’s just you know, in and out for rehab and a lot of people go for rehab.

They’re going into a skilled nursing facility, right and but still the trend, the trend is two more assisted living versus nursing. That’s the trend actually. Aging in place too. Yeah, well agent place at home or agent place and an assisted living location.

I don’t know if you guys have been seeing some of them, but they’re something are pretty amazing. Yeah, so, uh and generally speaking varies on the state, but generally speaking that’s those are private pay so there’s not going to be any you know, any dollars coming in. So that costs that you mentioned is is is a true cost for nursing, but it’s probably less you know that they’ll need, but still a great deal of money. You know that they’ll need the most, right right.

But I just as soon as somebody hears nursing home and I’m not going there, Well, nobody wants to go there unless medically they’re going to need to go there. But they may want to go may want to go to a lower level where they don’t have to take care of the house and they got caregivers to take care of them if they need it. Anyway, I just want to, you know, clarify that that it doesn’t is in a shock to people that you’re right on your you’re right on your numbers. But that’s at the very very high end.

Can I say something just to your point on that. A lot of my conversations with people, and I’m sure Mike as well, a lot of people are they think nursing home right, but yeah, there are levels to that. But then they also don’t really understand that if you have the means to pay for or rather than hiding all your assets in like an irrevocable trust or something, it can be good to pay because you’re going to get a good place, a place you’re gonna want to live. If you just qualify for benefits from the state, you’re often losing out on options, right.

So there’s a lot of that that goes that’s involved with it too, no doubt. I also see this like in our job, what we try to do is say, listen, you know, let’s say you’re a married couple, happy and healthy. Things seem okay right now, so let’s go through a timeline and let’s go through some of those more uncomfortable what ifs. What if Sally Jim Jim falls ill, you cannot take care of him anymore at home alone? What is the next alternative? And we kind of go through those what ifs? And then what if you know, God forbid, Jim dies at an earlier age than what you both anticipated.

You know, some something came and it took his life. What now? What what are you faced with? And then beyond ali, what happens when you are gone? Where will all of your assets go? Like we try to go through all of that. You don’t have to keep dwelling on it, but you have to address it. These are the realities.

As you said, Frank, you will die. It’s one hundred percent that you will. We also we also in our book, I know we’ve we’ve written that eighty percent of men I married and eighty percent of women die single. And again that you’re stad about, you know, if you’ve gotten to age seventy, you know what we say is if a woman is widowed after age sixty five, it’s highly likely, I think, what fifty, that they’ll also live another fifteen years and that means fifteen years or more alone.

And so there’s just so many things that make you. Use they’re happier, many likely that is the case. Likely that is the case. No, it’s just it’s really important to plan for what you do know and maybe for those those things that you know will happen at some point.

Right, great, So, Rust and Mike, we’re going to take a real quick break, I promise, all right, just to recognize a sponsor and we come back. I want to give you guys the opportunity to talk a little bit more about your wonderful book and all the great things that you do. So I’ll be back with you in just about thirty thirty seconds. Okay, A ready.

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So we are back with Russ Geyser and Mike Kyflick help who have helped transform, helped to transform social security from our risky guests into a strategic asset. So whoever wants to take this, tell us more about your book and all the great things you guys do. Sure I’ll start, I’ll let Russ enter Jacta. We wrote the book Beyond break Even, the Essential Guide to Social Security Optimization, because we saw in person, in doing many many workshops every year, so many people wonder and so many people confused by the decision making that whether to claim social security or not brings and the book’s title Beyond break Even, of course, then relates to the idea that it isn’t just a simplistic break even analysis that you should be thinking of.

It’s this, It’s how much wealth have I accumulated to the point of not working full time, how will I then use that wealth? And we want to use the least amount of your wealth in your retirement years. So it really comes down to lowering the cost of retirement. But we know that you can do a really fine job of that, and it can be very profound. The difference in the claiming decisions.

Claiming either earlier or later and having more guaranteed inflation adjusted income from Social Security is far better than relying too much on your own wealth in the kind of the mid to later years of your retirement. Yeah, okay, good, So Beyond break Beyond break Even. You can actually find Beyond break Even book dot com. You can get a free pdf, flip book version and audio version that Russ and I personally recorded, and of course you can find the book online at off Amazon if you’d like.

Great, great good. So I know this is it’s not the end of this discussion right here. So I know that you know, we certainly promote the fact when somebody is dealing with long term care issues and their family members and needs not to do this alone and they should rely on a company like like like ours, But same goes with planning. They shouldn’t do this alone.

So so maybe Mike, you know, you could either one of you if you want to address kind of what you do, maybe explain you know that maybe the average person doesn’t even quite understand what you guys do day to day and it’s so important, So why don’t you I’m sure that. Yeah. So Mike and I are the co founders of the Retirement Income Headquarters of America. That’s Income Plan HQ dot com one eight eight eight two eight zero plan p l A N.

We help people all across the US. Basically, we’re retirement income planning experts. We’re fully licensed uh financial planners. Like you said in your intro, I’m a certified financial planner.

I’m also certified in sol security claiming strategies, as is Mic and he’s certified in long term care. And so so we worked together. We founded our firm because of the need that we found with people not understanding or utilizing soul security in the in the right way, especially as pensions had kind of fallen away. And so we really have a five step process when it comes to working with people.

If anyone needs help or doesn’t know where to start, our process, we call it a retirement income stress test. We’re complementary fully until the decision comes if you want to partner with us or not. And the first step is really discovery, so we meet with people, we make sure we’re the right fit for you. You learn about our firm, we learn more about you as well, gather data.

There’s a homework process, and then after that discovery meeting, we get to work us or one of them, the advisors on our team, doing the analysis, preparing recommendations, and. Then delivering those at that next meeting. That delivery process where we go through the recommendations, we go through the tax plan, we go through the estate plan, the sole security optimization, all of those different things, especially the ones that are highlighted in Whoever. We’re meetings with goals, values, objectives, and then from their clients decide if they want to partner with us.

Through retirement, we really develop a long term relationship with clients. We manage assets, so Mike and I together manage just over five hundred million in assets clients of ours. That’s a feed based relationship. We also are fully independent, so we have full access to annuity products, fixed annuities, fixed life insurance, the long term care insurance, pretty much the whole board, and if it’s appropriate for a client it can help their plan.

We’re going to educate them on how it works and let them make the right decision for them, and then you know, we move forward from there if they want to partner with us or part ways at that point, after that complimentary process is over. If they do partner with us, By the way, it doesn’t end there. We don’t just develop a plan and set people off on their own. We really continue to sort of build the relationship and we’re side by side with people then in their journey.

So every six months is pretty typical that we would touch base, do a nice review of everything about them. And the other thing I think is what we do is we build retirement income plans. That’s different than a financial plan. People that have had financial plans built are often only focused on the accumulation years, meaning I’m putting money away.

I’m trying to build and build and build and grow and grow. And some of the terms that financial advisors will use then Frank, it’s things like, let’s talk about the investments, let’s talk about the returns that you’re getting. Let’s talk about adding more money to markets. They call this thing called dollar cost averaging in right, when the markets are good or bad, you’re always putting new money in well.

At retirement, people have to remember that this is no longer particularly about accumulation. It’s about distribution. We say it’s the save it years versus the spend it years. The spend it years are far more perilous because we don’t know what the markets will do and we’re not adding to the markets.

In fact, we coined a phrase called dollar cost ravaging. If you are in the end of full time working years and you’re using your wealth, one of the worst things that can happen is the markets are horrible and you keep taking from your wealth. And that’s again you’re ravaging through your own wealth at such a pace that you could go broke. And that’s clearly not what we want you to do.

So we plan for retirement with an income plan that also does include precisely when people ought to take Social Security benefits. Yeah, well, what’s the risks people take by trying to just do this alone if they don’t have that the type of analogy you guys have. I think it’s not knowing, not knowing what you don’t know, or maybe you know AI can be a good tool of even if you meet with us, putting everything we’re recommending into that. But AI has its biases.

It’s also hallucinates, it has errors, but it also doesn’t know what you’re trying to achieve, the values you have, your goals. It doesn’t know how to ask you the right questions. It may give you all the details, but then it doesn’t take you to implementation. So it’s not knowing the things you don’t know are probably your biggest risks, and then not really having a full understanding of the distribution phase risks and not projecting out far enough when it comes to like Mike said, taxation, we’re looking at a lifetime, we’re looking at legacy.

We’re not just looking year. To year to year and not getting caught up like not seeing the forest through the trees, so to speak. So putting all that together and then just having someone to help you understand, Okay, what should I invest in? How are the markets doing? Where should I be distributing from? Should I do WROTH conversions? Should I use long term care insurance? What carriers should I use? We like to tell people we’re product agnostics, so we can shop those things at all the major carriers to find something that’s right for you and you can make it the best decision for you. So we help implement I think that’s really important and help shine light on things that they may not know, or educate on things they might have heard.

Right. You see commercials all the time, buy gold, buy that, but you have to buy gold the dollars crashing, and it’s quelling fears. It’s helping them understand what is going on, are they going to be okay? And the risk management throughout the rest of their life and then bringing in that next generation as well. So hopefully that answered the question.

Well, no, no, you absolutely did so. Unfortunately we’re running out of time here, so thank you so much. But just before we have to sign off, just share again your website or phone number whatever you’d like. Yeah.

Sure, for the book Beyond break Even book dot com, you can get a free copy there can also take you directly the Amazon link. And then Retirement Income Headquarters of America Income Plan HQ dot com one eight eight eight two eight zero Plan p l A N to get ahold of us for a complimentary consultation. US guys are Mike Kfhley. Thank you so much, for joining us on Boomers Today.

It was a wealth of information, no pun intended, So thank you, thank you so much, and thank you everybody. Please please be saved and we’ll talk. You’ve been listening to Boomers Today with Frank Sampson. To learn more about today’s show, visit Boomerstoday radio dot com and join us next time for another edition of Boomers Today.