Are You Going to Get the Social Security Benefits You First Started Paying For?

My wife started her professional career in 1979, and I in 1980.

I previously wrote an article on Humble Dollar where I tried to research the points covered below by Mark Miller who is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on retirement and aging. In a recent article on Morningstar’s website he warns of the effects of the bill recently signed into law. He writes that if congress does nothing to shore up Social Security the trust fund is projected to be emptied by 2032, one year earlier the previous estimate.

He writes: If we reach that point (barring action by Congress), benefits would be cut across the board by 23%—a reduction that would be catastrophic for lower-income seniors who depend on Social Security for most or all of their income.

It would also be unfair for younger people, who already bear the brunt of the benefit cuts made in the last major reform of Social Security in 1983. That law set in motion a gradual increase in the full retirement age—the age when you can claim 100% of your earned benefit—from 65 to 67 for workers born in 1960 or later. Every one-year increase in the full retirement age is equivalent to a roughly 7% cut in monthly benefits.

My wife and I are facing nearly a 30% cut in our Social Security benefits by the time we claim at 70 in 2028 compared to the benefits we would have qualified for when we first started paying into the system.

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