Intro of Host Bonita Bell-Andersen - Social Security Basics workshop, Part 1

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 explicit implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's 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 fourcy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your hosts, Vanita bell Anderson, as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:01 Hello, and welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast, where we start with asking good questions about money and health and whatever else is top of mind. My name is Benita bell Anderson, your financial advisor host, and today is our first ever podcast. We are kicking it off today. First, I will be doing an introduction about myself, and then we will be going through interesting tidbits about social security, basically a mini workshop, if you will, as that is something I have been teaching workshops on for years. Today will be part one. There is so much to go through with this, and so this will be a topic that is obviously best for people who are in this stage of life. Next week we will be doing part two well, where we figure out how to coordinate social Security with our other retirement assets that we have. But today we will be going through a lot of the basics and so that you understand just what in the heck you're dealing with with this government benefit program that we all know about. So all right, so if we can go ahead and start the slides. So again, I'm so excited to be starting this, and so let me ask you or tell you a little bit about myself.

2:27 I've been a financial advisor for about twenty five years. I have been teaching at local community colleges for many years. I'm also an author. My latest book is called Money, Mindset and the Suddenly Single, The Ultimate Guide for Divorcees and Widows. This is actually out on Amazon right now. I'm a proud team member of Tencap Wealth Coaching and have done a lot of community service through the years with local nonprofits. I'm married to a tired pharmacist. A'm mother to three amazing daughters and sons in laws. I'm mother in law to four amazing sons and their wives, and I am grandma to twenty three little ones. How in the heck did that happen. I'm a big sports fan of Gonzaga basketball because I hail from Spokane, Washington.

3:23 I'm also a washing State University alum, so I'm all about Cougar's football and all South Seahawks football. You can tell I'm a washing State girl. I am into the newest craze out there called pickleball, and I'm an avid scuba diver. Don't get to go to do that nearly enough, so I basically became a snowbird about It's been about five years ago. I do have an office up in Washington State and an office in southern Utah, but basically everything is remote now, so it works really well. So my husband, who has been very supportive of all these crazy things that I've done, is a dad, a grandpa, a wife supporter. He had lost his first wife to cancer, and I have gone through a divorce. So he's been exploring new avenues and retirement, including pickleball and hiking and family history research and volunteering. He's the one waving at you in that lower right hand corner. All of our families long distances many of you might be able to relate to. So we are mobile, going where they are quite a bit. And if I have to work, and when I do work, it's a lot of times from my laptop and my cell phone. So here's a quick picture.

4:41 Now we're going to be talking about so security today. You know what, I'm not so concerned about you and me. I'm concerned about all these little ones. I'm concerned about the kids that are in their mid forties and wondering what's going to happen, but especially these little ones that have maybe fifty sixty years years from now, what's going to be happening there. We're going to be talking about a lot of that. So, because optimizing your social security is what I call this, knowing what you can do so that you know what you should do. So this discussion is going to take part over the course of two weeks. Today's part one and We will finish up this discussion next week with how to integrate Social Security with the rest of your retirement savings. And of course you know when you have when you're dealing with a financial advisor, there is a disclosure. This is an in educational program, is non intended to sell investments or insurance products.

5:46 It's not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Always consult and consult with whatever advisor you work with to make sure that you're doing what's right for your situation. It's also not endoorsed or approved by the Social Security Administration or any other federal or state government agency, so there's no offers here. What I will be doing is inviting you to do a zoom call with us at the end of the program so that you can get your questions answered about your particular situation. My firm that I'm affiliated with is called ten Cap Wealth Coaching. It's a registered investment advisory firm that's an SEC nationally licensed firm, and we have a phenomenal team that does a myriad of things and so it is a very I'm very very happy and please to be associated with that. So today is an over the pre tops. If you will look at social security issues. We want to encourage questions, but ask for you to reserve that content and unique to your situation for your complementary strategy session on Zoom and the scheduling link will be at the end of today.

7:08 All right. There is a PDF that I will also give you, which is called the Social Security fact Sheet, and so that will be coming to you when you schedule that appointment. All right. So here's the question on everybody's mind. Doesn't it just make sense to just take the benefit at age sixty two and be done with it and get paid for a longer amount of time than waiting until age seventy Well, are you thinking you're maybe going to live past age seventy nine? You know, more and more and more people are going into their nineties. But fifty percent of the population has filed by age sixty two. That's you know what. In a lot of cases, it's because people don't have any of their income. It's kind of sad. Well, by FRA, which means full retirement age, approximately ninety five percent have filed. There's only about one percent of the population that delay until age seventy. But I'm going to talk to you about why you should do that. So this is what happened about almost ten years ago. Congress, by the way, has the ability to make changes to Social Security whenever they want, and you can bet there's going to be more changes coming up.

8:31 But they did quite a few changes that had to do with some things that people had been used to for a long time called file and suspend, retroactive, lump sum, restricted application. That all changed and now pretty much everything is based off of your own benefit that you get at full retirement age. So what in the heck is that, Well, it's when the formula has figured out what your benefit is going to be at your full retirement age, which is for most people on this podcast, you are going to be aged sixty seven. There's a possibility that some you know you basically you look at your Social Security Estimated Benefits statement and you'll find out when your full retirement age is. But if you do anything, and I'm going to be repeating this, anything you do before your full retirement age, you're going to get penalized. And if you wait beyond your full retirement age, you're going to receive a bonus some things called delayed credits. All right, So let's just quickly look at where we've been. Nineteen thirty five was when Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed it into law, but it didn't take long before taxes were being taken out.

10:01 And nineteen forty was when there were regular monthly benefit payments began, fifty six when they started disability, but it was until nineteen seventy two that they actually started doing cost of living increases. So there are four hundred and fifty four million numbers that have been issued, criminy. That's a lot of numbers. The amount of taxes collected is about thirteen point eight trillion, and the amount of benefits paid has been about eleven point three tip trillion. That's going up. There's a lot of baby boomers that are retiring. So back in nineteen forty, two hundred and twenty two thousand, four hundred and eighty eight people were receiving social security less than one percent of the population, but now sixty six million people and that's going up. We've got lots of baby boomers that are retiring right now, so that's about twenty two percent of the total pop population. Back in nineteen forty, the typical benefit was about twenty two dollars and seventy one cents. Now the average monthly benefit is eighteen sixty two. So you could see there's been quite a few changes over the years. So just remember that Congress can and will make a lot of changes, and there's got to be some changes coming up. Back in nineteen forty, the average life expectancy was sixty four.

11:31 Now it's in the mid eighties, with many, many, many more living into their nineties because of the the things we have going on with the medical science and everything. But I'm going to go over this. See the little box there that talks about how payroll taxes are going down and if Congress doesn't do anything, there is only going to be enough money to pay seventy nine percent of scheduled benefits. Talk about what in the heck does that mean? So again, so that you have context on what's going on with this government program. In nineteen forty, there was one hundred and fifty nine workers to every one person receiving soial security. Twenty ten, it dropped to two point now nine now it's two to one, really just about And the year that they're expecting benefits to go down is twenty thirty four. So This is something that's been on the table for a long time, and Congress has been kicking it down and down and down.

12:39 But how long do you need to plan for retirement? If you're a healthy male, you have a twenty five percent chance of living beyond ninety two. Healthy females at sixty five, well, twenty five percent chance of living past ninety four. But if you are a couple you're both healthy at age sixty five, there's a twenty five percent chance of at least one of you living beyond ninety seven, and at least a ten percent chance of one of you living beyond one hundred. And we see that with all of the birthdays happening for people that are reaching one hundred years old. This is scary too. This came out several years ago, but this was an article in Time magazine about a baby living to be Could a baby live to be one hundred and forty two? Well, the authors of the article thought so. And that's a scary thought for a lot of baby boomers and people that are retiring because they're going, do I have enough money?

13:45 You know, how's that going to How's that going to work out? But this is what social Security's legal name is Old Age Survivor and Disability Insurance is basically an insurance program put on by the government. Now, Idam A. Thuller was the very first one that ever received of benefit. Now I'm telling you that because she received her first benefit in nineteen fifty. But talking about people that live on item may passed away in nineteen seventy five at the age of one hundred. So this thing with people living a long time and needing income for a long time after they retire from working is a serious issue something to be considered. All right, let's turn to qualifying for this benefit. It's tied to your work record. There's a maximum of four credits every year. One credit is worth one thousand, seven hundred and thirty dollars, which means four credits in one year is six nine hundred and twenty.

14:49 It is only earned income, that means no income from rentals and things like that. To qualify for Social Security, you need to have a minimum of forty credits, which basically means ten years of work. Right. Okay, let's talk about spouses because that is a big topic. Now, if you are in the same age bracket that I am, you probably remember these people. This is Ward in June Cleaver. The show was called Leave It to Beaver, and we're going to use them as an example family. Okay, Ward earned credits while he was working and June stayed home with the Wally and the beav. So we're going to take them through several different scenarios on with having to do with SOB security. So basically, what a spousal benefit means with SOB security is that a non working spouse who may have benefits and may not, but let's say she has a lot less than her husband, she is entitled to fifty percent of his higher benefit. So in all cases, I don't care how you're looking at this.

16:10 If you do any of this before your age, your full retirement age, you are going to be your benefit is going to be reduced. And so like at age sixty two, their benefit is reduced by as much as thirty percent. That is locked in and it stays that way for the rest of your life. So I'm going to make an argument for waiting until seventy so you maximize your Social Security all right, So, but with spousal benefits, that spousal benefit is based on the higher earning spouse, they're fifty percent of their benefit, which doesn't increase after full retirement age. So the spousal benefit is always based on the full retirement age of the higher earning spousey.

17:01 So then let's take this example with June. So let's say Ward is that his FRI or full retirement age, he retires and he claims his benefit. Let's say it's just make it two thousand a month. So what is June's spousal benefit fifty percent? Right, one thousand. So let's say her own benefit at full retirement age is eight hundred. Well, what they're doing now is they're doing what they call a spousal add on. So they would add on to June's benefit that she would take if she take took it at her full retirement age, a two hundred dollars spousal add on, so she would get up to one thousand dollars. And so that is the most common way that spousal benefits are done. If she does anything before her full retirement age, there's going to be a reduction. Okay.

18:00 So here's the thing to remember. After full time and age, a spouse has the option to choose their own benefit or file for their spousal benefit. Okay, Now, remember whatever I'm saying is generalities. You will need to talk to Social Security to get the skinny on your particular situation. So, but between a husband and a wife, one or the other has to file for benefits in order for the other to be eligible to receive spousal benefits. Okay, you don't have to file until you're actually ready to take your Social Security. You don't have to file when you reach age sixty seven. You can wait until you're seventy if you want to, and Social Security is not going to come knocking on your door saying, hey, you haven't filed yet. So, however, what I say is a lovely gift to your spouse if you're if the you know, amusing generality is here. But if the husband is older and he has he has a larger benefit. It's the lovely gift to the spouse if he waits to optimize and take his Social Security at age seventy and have the largest Social Security check that he can have, because if he dies before her, that larger benefit will go to her. And so that is why I say that

19:31 is a huge gift to the spouse. If the spouse is going to live beyond them. Well, let's say that June. Let's back to June. Let's say she does wait until full retirement age and she gets that two hundred dollars spouse of benefit. All right. Now, if she waits until age seventy, her own benefit is going to be larger, and so that's you know, that would be to her benefit to now I get it. Sometimes people can't wait. But if you can wait until seventy, because cost of living increases are going to be based on the higher number, and that is all, you know, going to factor into how much you're going to have when you're eighty and how much you're going to have when you're ninety. Well, what about divorce spouses. A lot of the same things apply, but in the case of a divorce spouse, they have to be currently unmarried. They have to be at least sixty two. But remembered, don't take it at sixty two.

20:35 It's going to be reduced if you do. They had to have been married at least ten years and the x spouse needs to be at least sixty two, all right, So those are all things to remember. So if you in order to maximize your benefits. You might be qualified to take a divorce spouse benefit from age sixty seven to seventy, and then start your own benefit at age seventy. I'm not saying that this is exactly going to happen in your situation. You have to go talk to Social Security, but just make sure you're asking him the right questions.

21:18 Don't let them talk you into starting your benefit early, because that lower benefit that you get penalized on is going to be locked in for the rest of your life. So let's just say we're back to warden June. Let's say they divorced after the beaver was caught shoplifting at JC Penny. Can you believe it? Well, she's sixty two, she's currently unmarried, they were married for at least twenty years, and Ward is sixty five, but he's delaying his benefits until he's aged seventy, So believe it or not, she can go into the Social Security office with a copy of their marriage certifigured and the divorce papers and he doesn't even have to know that is the truth. They might not necessarily even contact him. So what about widows?

22:14 What about people that have lost a spouse? These are that. By the way, these are the things that I am addressing in my book, which is called Money Mindset and the Suddenly Single for those that have gone through a divorce, those that are dealing with having lost a spouse, and those are all things that I find are critical for people who are going through that change in life. So if someone has lost a spouse, that spouse can switch to her husband's higher benefit at his death and vice versa. There's no gender thing here, it's just whoever's benefit is higher.

22:58 The survivor benefit is going to be based on the high earning spouse's benefits. So if the wife was a higher earner and died, then she's going to keep her own benefit. If her husband's benefit was lower. That benefits can include any delayed credits because they waited, and also those cost of living increases. So a widowed spouse can claim benefits as early as age sixty or fifty if they're disabled. But please, please please don't do that because you're going to be penalized. It gets locked in, and like I said, that locked in penalty stays with you throughout your life. So if a widow was married at least ten years and their spouse dies, whether they were still married or divorced at the time of the death, they may be entitled to a survivor benefit. So if the survivor remarries before age sixty, there is a survivor benefit unless that marriage ends. Okay, So here's another story that I made up. Let's say Ward passed away and June read Mary's at age fifty five to Ted, Ward's golfing buddy. So she goes in to claim benefits at age sixty based on Ward, but was disallowed because of her marriage to Ted. So believe it or not, she could promptly divorce Ted and claim her benefits on Ward.

24:31 And let's say that she now happily lives on a golf course with the beef who owns the course. So there's crazy things that can happen, and there's a myriad way of these things, the way these things come across, so it's totally you know, individual situations. So here's the thing about widows. They can qualify for benefits based on their own work credits, and if they do that, they they want to receive survivor benefits from age sixty to sixty nine and then take advantage of delaying credits on their own benefit at age seventy. So remember again I'm becoming a broken record here. All there's reductions to benefits on all of these ways that happen if you take it before your full retirement age. Okay, just remember that, So no talking about working until you reach full retirement age.

25:30 Working is going to reduce your benefit. Do not take Social Security while you're still working before your full retirement age. So once you reach full retirement age, your benefits are recalculated so you receive the full benefit. However, you're going to you know, you're going to pay taxes on your Social Security as well as your work income. And because of having that soile Security, you may be bumping yourself up into another tax bracket. So just remember those types of things. Here's an example. So let's say before your full retirement age, so Security is going to deduct one dollar benefits for every two dollars you earn above twenty two thousand, three hundred and twenty dollars in twenty twenty four.

26:21 Now remember these numbers were are going to go up slightly in twenty twenty five. But Ward, who's sixty two, decides to work part time at that golf course that the beave owns, and he earned twenty four thousand and five twenty, Well, you deduct the income allowed of twenty two thy three twenty and that leaves twenty two hundred, of which so Security and the irs are going to say, you need to give us back eleven hundred dollars, or basically fifty percent of the twenty two hundred that he was over on income that's allowed. So I'm just saying, don't get yourself into this. No, No, you are messing with not only your taxation that you could bump up, but you've also penalized yourself by taking the income way earlier than you should have. So in the year, so let's say Ward reach full retirement age and filed and in that year, so Security would detect a dollar and benefits for every three dollars he earned above the fifty nine, five and twenty maximum in twenty twenty four. That higher maximum is only in the year that you turn your full retirement age. So let's have an example. So a Ward took a casino job and his salary was sixty

27:52 eight thousand and seven forty, and then you take away that income allowed, which is fifty nine to five twenty, about nine two and twenty dollars total earning subject to the reduction. Well, that means that one in three, So that means that the irs would become an after use and we need three thousand and seventy three dollars back. So let's say his birthdays in July. There isn't any limit on your earnings starting with the month you reach full retirement age. Okay, so just remember that. But the biggest thing that the biggest warning I have is your taxable income will be the combination of your earned income and your SOI Security benefits, and that you know it could bump you into a higher tax bracket. Speaking of that, there's a thing called maximum taxable earnings, which is something that is self employed income regular wages that are covered by Social Security that when you have a page you see SOID Security and medicare come out of your paycheck.

29:05 The the amount of taxable earnings that that is based on this year is one one hundred and sixty eight thousand, six hundred. That goes up a little bit. You can see in this chart that there it's gone up a little bit every year. Now, this might be something that Congress would change. Maybe they'll make the maximum taxable earnings two hundred and fifty thousand, and people will continue putting into Medicare and soil security. I think that's one thing they're going to be looking at. So how do you find your sold security benefit? Well, you can go to Social Security dot gov. I just do it quick and I do SSA dot gov and you can get there and you can go and look at your estimated benefits.

29:53 You can create an account. That's where you can go and look at exactly what's going on with you. So just remember that taking benefits before full retirement age is a really common and a very expensive mistake. What we do is we will input all your information into this analyzer and we will show you kind of what the break even point is for what when's the best time for you to take Social Security. So let's say that the beave was born in nineteen sixty and his full retirement age is sixty seven. Let's say that his benefits at his full retirement age are twenty five hundred a month. Well, if he took it at age sixty two, he'd have a penalty. It would be about eighteen seventy five and his wife's spouse benefit is age seventy five. So you basically can look at this calculation of when is the best time for you to receive your benefit. I'm going to tell you that whenever I've done this calculation for people, it's somewhere between age seventy eight and eighty ish that it's better to have waited. So if you think you have a fairly good chance of living into older age,

31:25 then it's a really wise thing to do is to wait. Okay, here's an example of an actual client. If she was actually a retired pharmacist. If she would have taken her benefit at age sixty two, it would have been sixteen thirty a month. If she would have claimed that her full retamine age of sixty six and two months, it would have been twenty one seventy two. But she waited, She listened to me, and she took her benefit at age seventy and received twenty eight hundred and forty nine dollars a month, which is seventy five percent more benefits than age sixty two. Now again, I get it, sometimes people can't wait. But if you can, please consider this, because this is super super super important. A little note on cost of living increases. This typically happens every year.

32:23 There were some years where there was zero cost a living increase, but it is designed to keep up with inflation kind of. We won't get into politics here, but the average increase is about three point two eight percent. What's happening this next year will be two point five percent, and the Treasury illustrates two point seven percent for long term planning purposes on the savings account that's there. Well, taxation of benefits is something that everybody's wondering about. You have something called provisional income. It's your adjusted grossen come, half of your Social Security benefits and any tax exempt interest that you may have. Okay, so most people are going to be paying taxes on eighty five percent of their Social Security benefit. But that's better than one hundred percent of what you take out of your ERA. And I'm going to show you why you want to maximize your your Social Security benefit. We also have something that is called a windfall elimination provision. Okay, if you receive a pension with the government, you may have your SOI Security benefit reduced because of this other program that you have with the government. But the longer you work in the SOID security cover job the reductions less. All Right, So let's say Ward worked as an analyst quote unquote for the CIA for twenty years, retired from the government,

33:57 and then spend thirty years at a local bookstore where he was paying into the soci security system. He would receive a federal pension as well as full solid security benefits. Right, so let's just have a few comments. Remember this is just my opinion, but let's talk about the future of what you know. You're hearing a little bit about this. Solid security is not like a four to oh one K or an IRA. It's a government run insurance program where current wagejoarners support those that are receiving benefits. That's what this is. So there's a trustees report that happens every fall typically, and Medicare and Social Security is accounted for a lot of the federal budget. Now they have what I call like a government savings account that holds about two point seven trillion dollars their total ext fenditures started having to dip into that trust fund in twenty ten, and the deficit is being covered by interest income from Treasury securities. Maybe this will help you with things to see in the news. Well after twenty twenty, the Treasury started to redeem trust fund assets to pay for expenditures over the tax income and interest income. They predict the total depletion of the trust fund somewhere between twenty thirty

35:29 three to twenty thirty five. So SOBI Security administration is begging Congress to do something about this and this whole thing with tax income being able to cover about seventy nine percent of schedule benefits. We don't know if that means everyone who's receiving SOBI Security or just those that are have not started so Security yet, but here's the typical message to the public from SOBI Security. Neither Medicare or so Security can sustain projected long run programs in full under currently scheduled financing, and legislative changes are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers. If lawmakers take action sooner rather than later, more options and more time will be available to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare Earlier. Action will also help elected officials minimize adverse impacts on vulnerable populations, including lower income workers and people already dependent on program benefits.

36:51 This message really has not changed, and so Congress has been kicking this down the road and kicking it down the road. Well, it's it's got to get fixed. So those reforms, there's probably the last I heard there was like thirteen or fourteen reform packages on the table with Congress. Reforms may include raising payroll taxes on high income workers, which is what we talked about, raising the retirement age. We discussed that revising the formulas for future benefits. That's something that we haven't really talked about, but that they could just revise the formula on how they figured this whole thing out. My opinion is that it will be solvent for many generations to come. It's not going away.

37:39 Remember there's sixty six million people on it right now, so you know it's it just has to get fixed. So here's how to optimize your benefits. Delay claiming until later. Use your irray and four oh one K assets. Because if you delay, your solid security gains are guaranteed eight percent per year and delayed credits plus the cost of living increase then a couple of years. Sobi security benefits with whatever else you have saved, So wait to tap in, maybe claim a spousal benefit. Don't claim while you're working, Maybe claim an expouse's spousal benefit. You want to be looking forward to cost of living increases, so wait, there may be a survivor benefit. If you've lost a spouse, you are going to have a benefit. If you work longer, you'll put into the system longer, You'll save longer, so you may consider working longer. And the tax benefit is if you have a larger soial security benefit and a smaller need to take out of IRAI says, that's going to be a benefit. All right, here's an example on optimizing income. Let's say your iras could be spending down more rapidly. If you don't, tax isn't going to be due on any withdrawal IRA withdrawals and more of your

39:11 Social Security benefits may become pat taxable. Let's take the example of Bob who has a higher benefit, and Mary, and what happens if they take their Social Security benefit, you know, at an earlier age versus later. If you take it earlier, you get more, but they're smaller. If you delay, you're going to have a larger benefit. But use the information you know about your health and family history and optimize those things that you're looking at. So Bob is going to start receiving benefits at you know he could at an earlier age. And I'm going to get to my little graph here and I show you if they file earlier, they have to they take less out of social security, which is the twenty five thousand.

40:07 The social security of the spouse is the gray, and the income needed out of the IRA is larger if they have a larger see how it optimized scenario be if you have a larger social security benefit, larger spouse of benefit, you don't have to take as much out of your IRA. This is an income need of one hundred thousand a year. They have assets of seven hundred and fifty thousand retirement assets, and so this is a quick way, and of course is no This is just an example. Possible to spin down your IRA assets too much if you take out more than you have to.

40:52 So for me, this is one of the biggest reasons to wait and do social security later, because you don't have to take as much out of your own retirement assets. And so another way to look at this is if you have less social security, if you have more social security that you are you're getting taxed at eighty five percent of your assets rather than one hundred percent of your IRA. So I'm showing you this really quickly, but it's just a way to kind of open your mind to what are some of the reasons why I would want to do this. You have a potential of losing more in your IRA, you have a potential of pain too much in taxes, and so that would all could potentially be because your social Security benefits weren't optimized. So it's just it's something to think about. It's something to look at. What is it that will make sense for me?

41:58 So what about optimizing the rest of your income? That's going to be the subject of part two of this discussion next week because there's so much. Today we went through all these different things about the basics and social security. Next week we will be talking about how to what to consider, issues and factors to consider when retiring, How to coordinate social security with the rest of your retirement assets like pensions and iras. What is the number one fear most retirees have a brief review of starting medicare?

42:41 What does it mean with accumulation phase and distribution phase of life? How do emotions play in when retiring and what are the rules for investing, what are the optimal ways to think about coordinating assets? And five steps for planning your retirement income streams. So we will be looking forward to continuing this discussion in part two of this class. Thank you so much for attending today, and that again will be next Wednesday, December eighteenth, six pm Eastern. If there's any questions you can you can email me at Bonita at tencap dot com. Thank you so much.

43:35 Today's episode is over, but we did ask good questions again, didn't We 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 Venina Bellen. 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.