From Confusion to Confidence: Navigating Today’s Social Security Changes with Marcia Mantell

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w four cy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and light, as well as a focus on health and wellment. Now, let's join your host, Banita Bell Anderson, as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:02 Hey, welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast and I am so happy you're here today. This is so important, especially for. Those baby boomers out there and people who are getting close to thinking about needing this topic that is social security. And today I have someone with me who helps make social Security fun. Her name is Marcia Mantel, and I'd like to invite her to the podcast stage. Hello Benita, Hello, Well, she is a nationally known keynote speaker, an author, a retirement.

1:43 Planning guru, and a baby boomer like me, and her career has focused on helping people approach retirement with a clear head. When I met Marsha, she and I were like sistans. We're like on the same plane because I've also taught social security for years, so Marsha makes She has a real passion for making these details about social security and medicare understandable. And she has a real practical experience working directly with financial institutions as well, and right she has an approachable teaching style. She continues to make a difference for individuals facing these ohso important lifetime decisions. And we have got some stuff coming up this year that I knew I needed to do something special about that at the beginning of the year.

2:41 So with that, is. There anything you'd like to add to that little intro, Marsia, Well, it was. So kind of you to give me those kudos. Thank you. The only other thing I'd mentioned is I'm married to this wonderful man Dan. We've been married for forty two years, and there's a possibility we could kill him today, Benita as we talk about social security, and he knows that I do that from time to time. So yes, we'll be safe. But i'd like to even know about Dan. Well, we may. Be discussing some uncomfortable facts. We may, but people. Need to know and a lot of and I know you'd like.

3:23 I have tried to convince people to wait until seventy Most people don't. They take social. Security right at the outset at age sixty two, and they lock in some real unfortunate penalties for themselves. So now how I describe it too, it is a penalty. Yeah. So when people say, you know, social Security has changed, what are they usually reacting to. Are they talking about rules or are they talking about headlines or misinformation or maybe some real policy. I don't think there's been any real policy. Shit shit, You and I are on the same page as that too, that Congress is going to do something.

4:05 What do you think people are reacting to? Yeah, they're really reacting to the headlines, and there has been in twenty so we just turned to the new year. We're in twenty twenty six, but twenty twenty five had some of the most belligerent, egregious, scary, yeah, terrible headlines about the demise of Social Security. Yeah, you know, things started out really rough when the Doge team came in and started mucking around in the system, which created a tremendous amount of angst. So anyone in their early sixties was really concerned, Like, we finally got to almost the finish line, right, and it's like, oh my god, it's going away. Oh my goodness, everything is being upended. My benefits are going to disappear just when I need to enter.

4:58 And the older folks were breaking out as well because they've already been receiving benefits for twenty twenty five, thirty years. What am I going to do when I don't have Social Security? It's not going anywhere. No, I mean, let's just we're Yeah, it's not right. It's the elephant in the room, and it's so hard to trust and just take it on faith that it's not going anywhere. It's a gigantic law. I mean, this law has been around since nineteen thirty five. The laws just don't disappear off the books, and Congress would have to act to shut it down, and we'd have no revenue going in because there'd be no workers in America.

5:43 I mean, like all these things that just want armageddon, Marcia, it could. Be with that maybe, but we're not having armageddon either, as you know. So yes, well, last time I checked, I think I think I was fighting sixty six million people. There's at least there's got to be more now, but at least sixty six million people on Social Security. So it's like there's a ton of people that are depending on this. And getting bigger than numbers every day. That is about the right number. It's about six the fifty six million retirees, ten million on disability SSDI. So yeah, it is the underpinning, or except for the top point one percent, it is the underpinning of everyone's income and retirement. And without it, I mean, you'll either burn through your savings in a couple of years and be destitute, or you know, you're not going to make it at all because you have no savings. Well, that's not what we do here in America.

6:47 You know, the program was created to make sure our seniors are seniors who worked all those years, stayed above the poverty level. You're not going to be rich, you know, you're not getting rich on social Security, but you'll be able to eat and put a roof over it. And this is kind of like a foundation, it really, but that's what I see. It's a foundation. And then people have their retirement, whatever they've saved for retirement, and then they might have a little pension so that yeah, or they might do some. Part time work. I describe it as a layer cake. I do so love to eat cake. So the bottom layer of the layer cake is social Security, and then you might have a pension on top of that, and then you might have some four h one K four three B savings, you might work part time, you might have rental income, you know, so all the other layers come after. But if you don't have a strong foundation, we've all watched those cake making shows on TV. You know, the cake crumbles, So no different here, right, Well, what do you think the biggest pain points are for people that.

7:51 Keep them up at night when they're thinking about when and how to claim? You know, they're hearing everybody. Say, oh, just take it at sixty two. They do hear those pain points. Yeah, I find as I talked to a lot of financial advisors as well as consumers. The biggest pain point is they really are fearful that the program won't be here any longer, and so they don't understand the construction of the program. So that's the first thing to know is this program is not funded by the federal government. This program is funded by you and me and all the workers. That's our fight at taxes pay. They sort of forward pay our obligation to our seniors, my mom and dad and all the older folks who are receiving Social Security and we're earning chits in the bank so that our kids come along and they pay in through FIKA, so that we'll get our share and our earned benefits. Where it's a little scarier is the Social Securities Trustees report that came out last June. They did project and I don't know if you have the slide. I have a slide with a little grandfather on there. If we want to put that up. The trustees, who are really the smartest people about Social Security out there, are perfect. They did report that oh nope, the one you had with that rampam Nope, one more yep. That one. They did project that the Social Security Reserve account, the savings account of the extra

9:23 money that's been banked in Social Security to pay for the boomers retirements. We're using that money to pay benefits, and that is starting to be used and will go dry. But we still have all these payroll taxes coming in. So where people are confused is they think the whole program is going to go away, and so they need to claim early. And this is what keeps them up at night. They really are concerned and they think if they so long as they're already in, then no one can cut their benefits. Wrong. There's the fallacy. It doesn't matter whether you're already claiming, already been claiming for thirty years, or if you're you know, sixty and getting ready to move into retirement in a few years. If the savings account portion of the trust fund empties and goes to zero, there is no more extra money to pay the benefit.

10:18 So it's only payroll taxes They pay in about seventy seven percent of the income needs for retirees, so everybody gets a cut and there is no grandfathering. I hear that. Even my dad talked about that at Christmas. He said, oh, I'm fine with Social Security. I'm grandfathered in. I said, no, Dad, you are a grandfather, but you're not grandfathered into anything. Because that's been a pain question. Yeah, I thought, well, maybe I'm okay, but my fifty year old kids won't be. No. No, it's everybody, every person. So you know Congress knows this. They tend to wait until the very last second, until the crisis is literally at the door, and then all of a sudden, we'll have amendments, we'll have changes, we'll have improvements, and all will be well with the world again. But yeah, it's all yeah, it's almost at the door.

11:16 And I know that the Terms report has usually said if Congress would act sooner rather than later, then it wouldn't be such so painful. But they won't. It's not how the game works in Washington. So we all just have to get comfortable with that, even though it is uncomfortable. So I say, that's the most distressing pain point for folks. The other one I run into a lot and we can go to the taxation slide. This is about, yes, that one all the timeline. Okay, this is the situation with Social Security benefits. Once you start receiving them, you are outraged that you are being tax on your benefits. Well, yes you are, not everyone, but lots of people are being taxed. And there's some history to it. I mean, it's just not willy nilly that Congress decided to do this. We saw this bankruptcy issue back in the early nineteen eighties and Congress had to fix the reserve account, fix the funding, make sure that the baby boomers were going to have benefits. So in nineteen eighty three, after the Reserve Account drained down to zero, because we've already seen this movie, Congress stepped in with the nineteen eighty three amendments as an important year.

12:39 That's the year day they let it go to zero. They did, Yeah, it was depleted. So they put in a one year borrowing arrangement between the trust funds, which is the only way. We can't just put money into the kitty. The law does not allow that. The only money allowed into Social Securities Trust Fund are all taxes, interest on the Reserve Fund and now as of nineteen eighty three, taxation of benefits. So this was a strategy. Back in the Reagan administration, they said, look, we've got to build up the coffers here, and so they did things like they extended our full retirement age from sixty five now to sixty seven with all those little incremental steps.

13:25 And I'm pretty sure that's going to go to seventy. Don't you think it's going to go to seventy. No, there's no way, no way, And because it will completely undermine any what called them the real workers, the workers who slung a hammer and who are in the service sector on their feet, you know, ten hours a day. These folks can barely make it to sixty two. So if we extend the full retirement age all the way to seventy, that's fine for us people who sit on our butts all day. It is not fine for the other half of workers in America who are on their feet all day. So they would have instead of a thirty percent penalty, they would have a forty forty five percent.

14:09 It can't happen, you know, it's just and it doesn't do much to shore up this the savings account or the funding of the program. Interestingly, it does very little. What's going to make a change is if we do things like have higher income people pay on a larger portion of their income. That's the single biggest driver of the change, So you know, there are things that can be done and increase the payroll tax for everybody a little bit. I mean, we can do smaller things across multiple solutions. Let's say that one, right, So back in nineteen eighty three, Yep, all of a sudden, there's going to be a benefit taxation, a taxation on benefits up to fifty percent of your benefits, not a fifty percent tax.

14:57 That's what people get the compute, right, If you get ten thousand dollars a year, five thousand of. That would come into you in farm of your taxable income. Exactly, and then you just pay your ordinary tax rate on that five thousand dollars. But you see the numbers here. So what Congress said in the law was, well, who, we only want to charge the higher income folks in retirement. Back in nineteen eighty three, high income was twenty five thousand dollars for an individual and thirty two thousand for a couple, a married filing jointly couple. Well that's not high income today, but those are still the limits. What Congress did not do was we call it index for inflation.

15:44 They did not say every year we're going to increase those thresholds. So what's happened is more and more and more recipients of people who have their four oh one ks and Social Security they get stuff paying this tax. And then in nineteen ninety three, since this worked pretty well for Social Security, we also yeah, so for the even wealthier people, higher income people, let's add another layer of tax. Up to eighty five percent of their dollars would be taxed as income. So it's these two laws, and these two amendments to Social Security made taxation a thing, and everybody hates it, but it keeps the program more solvent than it would be otherwise. So I wanted to make sure that we knew that piece, because now we can go to the other slide. Okay, because this year twenty twenty five, when Congress passed HR one, you know, the new Budget Bill, there was a provision in there that addressed deductions for seniors, for those sixty five and older. Fortunately, the administration positioned it as a elimination of ten marks on your social scurity. Not true, not true, completely unrelated to Social Security, but very good news for lots of seniors. So,

17:17 you know, anyone who turned sixty five in twenty twenty five, or is older than that. If you have modest to medium income, you're going to get an additional six thousand dollars deduction on your taxes. You do not have to be taking Social Security. This has nothing one hand has nothing to do with the other. In this case, it's just a bonus deduction. If you're sixty five and older and it's available for four years, you can be only four years. Only four right now. You know, you can use the standard deduction or itemize, doesn't matter how you want to file. And the key was though it phases out.

18:02 The only people who will get the six thousand dollars full bonus are those single filers who have income under seventy five thousand dollars right and married filing jointly if their income is under one hundred and fifty thousand. Now, this is going to cover a lot of seniors. Don't get me wrong. It's great, but there's a phase out, so it isn't for every senior. It has nothing to do with whether you're claiming Social Security or not. But I'm happy to see that there's an additional, you know, bonus deduction for our oldest Americans. It's good news, just unrelated to Social Security. Yeah.

18:43 So, so just to make clear, are these changes that impact people already receiving benefits different than people who haven't claimed yet. Maybe they're getting ready to claim in a couple of months. That there's there's it doesn't matter. It's an age for this particular bonus deduction. It's an age driver. So if you turned sixty five in twenty twenty five, anytime, anytime, any time, anytime, yep, then you are eligible for consideration, is the way I put it. So you're in the right age. I loved the language. Thank you. Yes, yes, I mean you.

19:23 Do meet the the age requirement, but you might not meet the income requirement, especially if you're still working. It's like read the fine print, Martian. That's exactly it. Yes, so you might get some you might get three thousand dollars, you know, bonus money, bonus right up to. So you could so like maybe maybe it'll be one or you know. Yeah, so okay, So that's also important to understand. Yes, and the tax forms I've seen the the twenty twenty five ten it is relatively it was a draft form of the tax return of the tax form. You know, if you use turbo tax or quicken tax or tax actor, you know something online, this will be built in, you'll answer some questions and if you are doing it a long form on paper, I think it's pretty clear how this works. But it's a completely new section or on a different schedule for where you're going to get the calculation of your personal deduction for seniors and how much you'll get.

20:31 Okay, so let's okay. So now, so I that this was something that I really wanted to make sure we we we covered. If you have any questions, there's going to be in you know where to get a hold of me, and there's going to be an information sheet about Marsha. So uh but yes, if you have a CPA, they should be apt to speed on this now. And if you're using one of the tax online texts programs, and that should be helpful. Let's go back now to claiming strategies. Let's let's take those slides down. Thank you, And so what's your plain English explanation of the trade off between claiming early claiming at full retirement age and claiming at age and delaying to age seventy?

21:32 So I always start with claiming at full retirement age. So your full retirement age benefit is your anchor. That's where all the calculations for how much money you're going to get from your work history, that's where it all sits. That's your anchor. So if you wait until full retirement. Age, which was between like sixty six and six months now and sixty seven or for most people who haven't yet claimed, your full retirement age is your optimal benefit. That is your best calculated benefit. It's the target you're aiming for. If you decide to claim before full retirement age, it is a penalty. That's exactly the word I use it. Yeah, penalizing yourself. It is a penalty because you cannot recover the hit to your income. And if you claim at sixty two but full retirement age of sixty seven, that is a thirty percent penalty. Yeah, Like where are you going to make that money up?

22:34 And the thing that blows me away is that it makes such a difference when you get into your seventies and get into your eighties and it's like, oh my gosh. I always try to, you know, impress on people, figure out some other way. You'll sometimes no, sometimes you cannot write. There's no getting around just going ahead. And taking it. But if there's some way to keep. On working a little bit longer, doing something so that you wait. Yes, it is so important because you do get old. You know, if we're all lucky, we're going to age to be a ripe old age in retirement. You know, my parents are in their mid eighties. My in laws just died in the last year. My mother in law was one hundred and a half, my father in law was one hundred and two. We live a long time now, you know, so you really need that long view. And where's the money going to come from when you're eighty six and ninety and ninety five?

23:33 You know, what do you think is that a likely scenario of what's the situation when claiming early before you know, claiming early makes sense? Do you think it's when you're sick, when you know now, when you think you're going to be sick someday, when you actually have a cancer diagnosis, when you have a really serious chronic illness and are not expected to live very long enirement. Then yeah, but here's what's not Oh, I should claim early because I could die early. You know, my mom is still alive. But those people who, oh, my parents died early. My father, you know, died of a heart attack. My mother had this thing or that thing, and they died early. So it's likely I'm going to die early, so I better claim Now that is not a good strategy because perfect example in my family, it's my mother. Her father died very young, early fifties, her mom died in her early seventies. My mother's eighty six, on her way to one hundred. Yeah, you know, so rather than thinking about what the last generation did in their era of less medical advancements, less medical knowledge, less you know, clean access to clean water and clean air and such, better food, now think about the possibility that you will go another thirty years. Yeah. It's like, oh, and most people do know someone who's well into their nineties in their family, so just when they make that connection,

25:06 it's like, oh right, Aunt Sally is ninety nine. Yeah yeah, so yeah, Lee way out there. And that helps you see the impact of the decisions, because then you get bonus money. If you can wait up until seventy, you don't have to go all the way till seventy, you know, start at your anchor again, your full retirement aage amount, and then even one year delivers an additional eight percent in their income. Right, Well, what do you think? You know? So what we're talking about is like there's what we call break even points where somebody starts early, they and when?

25:47 When is it that those two lines where they started early and they waited until they are their full retirement age? What are the most overlooked break even consideration that people should run before choosing to start date? So I don't most people I know don't think about, Oh, it's going to be you know, like if I would have waited, I'm going to have more money starting with like. When I'm seventy eight or something like that. Yep, it's I call eighty. Everybody's math is slightly different, but it always comes out to about age eighty. And you ask the question, are the odds good that I will live till eighty? Well that's where if you already have a cancer diagnosis that's not so curable, your odds are not good that you're going to live till eighty.

26:37 So you would be one of those candidates who would claim a right right, but if you don't have that, you can probably wait. Well, because let beyond eighty. Yeah, I want to bring this up too, like how should listeners think about Social Security as longevity insurance. That's another idea. Let's talk about think of this as longevity insurance rather than just a monthly paycheck. I completely agree. And it's insurance for when you can no longer work, when no one will hire you any longer, or when you're just fed up, when you're old. You know, it's okay to be old. I think it's so interesting.

27:23 I just saw my mother this morning and I said, you know, we Americans do not treat our older people. Well, I think it's so awesome. If you get to live till ninety or ninety five, like you talk about bonus years. Wow, And I'm sure it's heck not going to be working then, you know. So it is insurance for those years that you're still going to be here and make the best of these years from seventy to ninety five or longer. Yeah, must really enjoy it. Let's talk a little bit about CUP and what claiming mistakes do you see most often with married couples who are trying to coordinate benefits.

28:11 Oh, there are so many. The number one thing that I see is that this will be a little more technical, but that the spouse that the lower earner spouse, who's going to get a spousal top up so she'll get I'm gonna say she so if I'm the lower earner spouse and dance the higher earner. It's the stereotype, and it's usually the way you can follow along in the scenario and then just for your personal situation, all right, So if she's the lower earner, they the couple, usually both of them think that she can claim. We think, how does it go. She can claim her benefit early which is true her, and claim her spousal benefit at the same time she cannot. She can claim the spousal portion that she's going to get, the extra bonus money that she'll get, the top up money that she'll get until he claims. So then it's a scramble because oh well, then he the higher earner, says, oh, then I need to claim so that she can get a spousal top up. No, she can claim her own portion of her own benefit that she earned on her own work record. Wait until you're seventy. She'll get the spousal top up and he gets the maximum that right, then protect her if he dies first.

29:37 You know, I yeah, I gotta tell you, one of the things that I in all of the classes that I've taught is telling the guys in the room that the most loving thing they can do is wait. Wait, because because typically if her benefit is smaller than his, then it only it makes sense to have his be as large as it could possibly be. Yes, And you know, if there are a couple of scenarios I've run where just the way the couple their age difference, their income gap difference, where it didn't quite work that way, but almost. I mean it's eighty five percent of the time it works out that way. And when another piece that everyone makes a mistake, everyone, not just married couples. They don't realize that the number you see on your statement. People are pretty good about looking at their statements now. The number they see that they think is their benefit amount is not the amount that's going to land in their checking account because Medicare Part B premiums are automatically pulled from the Social Security cash flow.

30:53 Pretty significent amount. Yes, almost ten percent year over year, Yeah, up to two two nine per person per month, and that's only going to continue to go up. And Part B premiums rise much more rapidly than general inflation. So you're going to get bigger and bigger Part B premiums, So you want as big a starting point as possible. And if you're the surviving spouse and your higher earner, the higher earner died first and left you with a smaller benefit than there should have been, and your Part B premiums are so big, you're getting into a real cash flow crunch here. Well, and then and then not only is the Part B premium taken out, but you also should probably.

31:41 Be taking taxes out. You're saying, so you've got, oh, look at this bigger amount, and then you know you've got to take Medicare premiums out, and you really should take taxes out. And that's going to cut it down. It really does. And I think the other really surprised part For married couples, they I don't know where these misconceptions start, but they think that if the higher earner dies, that she's going to get keep her benefit and get half of his, or some of them think you just keep both benefits. Oh no, no, I mean this is one person, one benefit. It's the one that's higher, which benefit is higher, and the other one goes that's right, and that cuts household income by one third to one half depending on their amounts they're receiving each individual. So that's a shock to the system when you didn't and it's immediate, I mean there is. I will say social Security operations, they are really efficient. As soon as they go death notice goes to Social Security. Bam, his account is shut off, hers is shut off, and she starts getting the very next month.

32:56 Let's talk about another fun subject, Marcia. Let's talk about working while you're claiming before full retirement age. How does that complicate the decision and what trap should people avoid? Yeah, that sinks the anchor. You know, going back to your your full retirement age benefit is your anchor amount if you claim at any point before that age, so sixty seven for me. Then and you're still working and you make more than hobby money, it's about twenty four thousand dollars. You make more than twenty four thousand dollars in a year, you will not get all of your Social Security benefit. It's already been reduced because you're claiming early, and now you're not going to get it. Eating yourself on the head with a hammer, yeah, or hitting a brick wall, right right, Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and people are again so frustrated because it is funny when you talked to individuals and they come to you like, I have got a strategy that's going to work. Oh my, what might you think you're going to be doing? And it's always this one like I'm gonna, you know, claim at sixty two or sixty three. Usually it's a man who has come up with this. Much as I love the men, this is not a strategy, and I'm going to keep working and I'm going to claim, but I'm investing that money. Excellent. How much do you earn, sir, well,

34:30 two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year. How much do you think you're going to get from Social Security? I'm okay with the with the you know penalty, like, yeah, you're getting nothing. So there's that. Yeah, And I mean, look, I know these rules are complex and convoluted, but no, people think they can double dip when we know double dipping is not a thing. It's no, no, you know, it's it's hard to explain that, but I try to, you know, have a little bit of humor. It's like, oh, did you hear that from your uncle Charlie or your neighbor across the fence, right right, you know, because it's just it's just not this is not how the world works. So let's I want to, you know, have a little comment here about Medicare.

35:14 So what do you think the most common confusion you see between social Security claiming and Medicare enrollment timing? There seems to be you know, people get that all messed up too. They do, and there are a lot of areas where one can get tripped up. Here. Let me first say that there is no way in America today anyone age sixty five and older can have any month of an insurance gap. You've got to have your health insurance in place. So understanding these rules and these the knitting together of the Social Security laws, they bring in Medicare. The Medicare Act is part of the Social Security Act, same law together.

36:01 So what people don't know? What was it? You said? Thirty seven hundred pages. Yeah, isn't that fun? And that's not an afurrowl on you know, that's from a couple of years ago. So yeah, it's probably up over forty five hundred pages now, this law. But it's massive and it is easy to make a mistake. So the biggest mistake I see is the people who claim early. They may still be working, or they're covered on their spouse's health insurance at work, they all of a sudden, unbeknownst to them, two months before they turn sixty five, they get a packet that says, welcome to Medicare. Right, I didn't sign up for Medicare. It's like, why, yes, you did. When you claim early, you have automatically also triggered Medicare to start when you reach age sixty five.

36:55 It's an automatic thing. It's a gift. But that then unravels a lot of piece parts or you have to take action. You could only delay Part B, so now you have to keep your Part A, but it's a premium free part of Medicare, so you're not paying for it. But that in turn can prevent you from contributing to a health savings account any longer. So there's a whole ripple effect here, right. I actually saw something the other day Marsha that I thought was really funny. There was an article that came from SOB Security that talked about they've done all these analysis of how long people wait on the phone when they're calling SOB Security and the time has gone dramatically down, they're really really proud of that. Well that's great, but that you know, And another thing I'll say about calling SOB Security and trying to make sure you're doing all these things right if you're not talking to somebody like us, is that.

37:58 That you have to know what those dates are for you. And a lot of times when you call SOB Security, and I won't say maybe this has gotten better, but sometimes when you would call one person and the reason I love the name of my podcast, ask good questions because if you had asked one question of one person who gets on the phone with you, sometimes you might get a different answer from somebody else who then you call back and you know, so, yeah, so. This is this is like we're talking about your whole life. So you've got to get it right, you really do. And I mean, and I'm also somewhat forgiving of Social Securities agents because this stuff is so complicated and they have to do way more than the retirement side. I mean, they're dealing with disability on one call and then they turn and it's a retirement call, and then it's you know, a surviving child situation right with all of the map. So, and it's like the IRS. You know, if you call one eight hundred IRS, you're also going to get multiple answers to the same question. So we all as consumers have to be a little bit more, a little tighter with the language we use. We have to use more technical language, which is hard. That meant you had to do your research ahead of time. But the other thing I'll say, I saw that same article about Social Security saying, well, our phone volumes, I mean they are just snapping right along. Yeah, you know why they didn't mention this. But after you're

39:28 on hold for not very long, they immediately dump you into an auto system that says press one if you want us to call you back. So you're not actually sitting on the phone because you can't anymore. You get moved into the queue. They will in fact call you back, but it might be four hours later. Yeah, so I remember what you were going to ask them, right, write down your questions, you know, have your statement with you. Have your You need to know things like how big is your employer? And I know that sounds stupid, but if you work for a huge company, you know it's like, well, I work for GM or Xerox or whatever. It's a huge company. You're fine. It's the people whose husbands usually are working for a small local company. It's like, does the company have twenty or more employees? And they're not actually sure. Well, that is the huge difference between whether you've got to get into Medicare Parts A and B before turning sixty five right to integrate with your sixty fifth birthday month, or can you delay part B. It's all on the size of the employer. So some things that we don't think of, you know, if you're working for a big company as a big deal. When you're working on the smaller end, it's a huge deal. Yeah, So these are things.

40:55 Like Marshall, I've just decided that I think that all we're going to do is agitate people today. But I don't think I think we're empowering them with information, because. Yes, we're empowered. I know the kinds of questions and really write them down. Yeah, that's that's the thing. And I'll tell you. The Social Security website is really good about telling you when you're getting ready to enroll, like this is the stuff we might ask you about. They tell you it's right there. Now do we do it home before we pick up the call a phone? No, we don't, So I think that's what we could leave. People would always call back. Yeah, so we knew that this.

41:38 Was going to go really fast, and we knew that that. You know, there's there's a lot more that we could talk about. We'll have to do it another time. I would like to have a just women talk about that subject because there's a lot we can say there. But today if a listener had I mean, people are starting to think about getting their text and stuff for twenty twenty five. What could they do this week that they could get more confident? Like maybe three steps that you would recommend that they do documents together, Questions to ask, decisions to postpone until they have the facts. Maybe maybe I would also do things like I had a really good OH pulled down before you even get started on assembling your documents. Download or go to your local library or senior center and get a copy of the ten forty SR. If you're a senior. SR stands for Senior. It's the ten forty but in bigger font so we can actually read the darn thing tax recharge.

42:42 Just the ten forty so that you can look at it when it's empty to see what is going to count as income to the front page. And then start to understand the deductions, because the standard deductions are bigger every year. If you are over sixty five over or if you're blind, you get even more of a deduction. And then play around with that six thousand dollars bonus deduction. You know will you be eligible for some or all of it? So that's step one. Get the ten forty and look at it. Step two, I agree with you. Start to gather your documents. I actually have a spreadsheet. You know, we only do this TEX stuff once a year, so I have a spreadsheet where I know what's the first thing to come in, the W twos, then the ten ninety nine I iNTS, the ten ninety nine DIBs, you know, all this of your charitable contribution receipts. Dump it all in a shoe box. I mean, just to have Laura have a single place or a folder that you are just gathering this stuff as it's coming in.

43:45 So that's the second thing is gather the documents. And the third thing is I would pull down your latest so if you're not yet claiming social Security after January thirty first, when the W twos have been submitted about two weeks later, so February fifteenth, go into your mind social Security account and download and look at your latest social Security statement and take a look at it. Did they get the income right coming in from twenty twenty five? You know, is anything looking unusual so that you could take an action if you need to? So those are the That's where I would start for tax season. Awesome, Well, we have got to say goodbye for today.

44:29 This one's so fast. You're right, So, Marcia, thank you so much. There will be I've got a little place where I put information from my guests and so on my website. You'll be able to go and check out information about Marcia and her company. And so with that, I just like to say thank you so much for joining the Ask Good Questions podcast today and we'll see you next time. Today episode is over. But we did Ask Good Questions again, didn't You don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. Joined Benina Bellam, We're saying next week for more conversations with experts on finances, retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness, and more. Until then, remember to ask good questions.