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Episode #590 Process Over Panic - Social Security
Part of taking command of your life is controlling the things that you can. Another part is managing the things that you can't.
-Shane Parrish
Roger: Welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just. Wait a second here. Turn that music down. I want to say this slowly today. I want to make sure we remember the point of this show. This show is dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement.
Holding on for dear life, hoping that you'll be okay and that you'll get a good hand from the outside world, is not a great way to live a life that's scary. This show is dedicated to helping you have the confidence to lean in and create a great life, regardless of what's happening in the world. That's what rocking retirement is by focusing on, things that you can control and managing the things that you can't. That's all I care about. I want to make sure it's clear up front. I have no interest in getting political, and I say that because last show we mentioned a few political things in order to help people redirect energy towards their process in rocking retirement. I got a lot of feedback, and that feedback ranged from I can't believe you mentioned politics. Everything's awesome. Why did you do that? To I can't believe you're not leaning in and taking a stand. This is the time to do it, and you're a coward if you don't. Then the more in between, you navigated this this realm in a productive way to get us back focused on process. Bravo.
Now, I try to respond to every email I get, but I just want to make the point. I don't want to get political because that is beside the point when it comes to the process of creating a great retirement plan. So, you can have confidence. It's just not part of it. We have got to focus on things we can control and manage the things that we can't. Some examples of that, like uncontrollable things we can't control. We can't control the markets, but we can control our allocation and the costs and the taxes related to investing. We can't control the economy, but we can control our balance sheet and making sure we have buffers there to react in a productive way. Now, we can't control the weather. It's raining here in Colorado. But we can control having some resiliency by having different types of clothes for different types of weather. We can't control disease. Just had a friend share some really sad news related to disease in their family. Came out of the blue we can't control that, but we can control our healthy habits, a healthy protocol with doctors for early protection. We can't control inflation, but we can control product choices and how we consume it to manage it. That is the distinction that we have to continue to make. That's what we're going to focus on this month is process.
Today we're going to talk about Social Security. Where do we have control and what don't we have control over and how do we navigate that? And then we're going to go non-financial and investing. We got some amazing guests on. And then all this is going to culminate on June 5th with an online event I would invite you to attend where we're going to focus on what does a good process looks like, what are the things that I should focus my efforts on so we can have these guardrails so we can make better decisions. You can sign up for that and learn more at, livewithroger.com. Now we're going to talk about Social Security today because there's a lot of things going on there in the moment.
But before we do that, let's get to rocking retirement in the wild.
ROCKIN’ RETIREMENT IN THE WILD
Roger: I decided to pull this up front. When we have these stories, I want to share them up front because it's always important to celebrate and we should always do that first.
So, the other day I was reading in the morning as I normally do, and I read a sentence that I really highlighted and I put an asterisk next to it. I'll build a note card out of it eventually. The sentence was, “more dreams die from a lack of confidence than a lack of competence.” In my journey in talking to hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of retirees and pre retirees, I agree with this statement. More dreams die of lack of confidence than of competence.
About an hour later, I received an email from someone in the Rock Retirement Club and listener to the show. I forwarded that email to my team. I'm going to tell you what I said to my team. First, I let them know about the sentence. Then I said, I received this email. This journey goes to the core of what we do. Everything else is just noise.
“Thank you for speaking. In many lives, you are making a difference.”
So that's what I said to the team and I shared the email that this person shared. I don't want to say who they are because I didn't ask permission. So, I'm just going to summarize their email. The email they sent me was as follows.
“He made it. Roger, he made it. See below.
Thanks to all the help from the Rock Retirement Club, this day came much sooner than we expected. I never would have had the courage to tell him to pull the plug this early without the club. Thank you.”
So that was the email from his spouse who was just able to retire. She shared the email that he sent to his team about his retirement. His email was,
“It's time to begin a new chapter in my life. I am retiring. My last Official day is May 2nd. I have greatly enjoyed the work and the people I have had the pleasure to work with. Please spread the word. I hope to hear from you in the future.”
So, I just want to say bravo to you too. Bravo to you too for having the confidence to lean in knowing that there's so much that you can't control. You're going to create a great life and I can't wait to see what you do with it.
PROCESS OVER PANIC- SOCIAL SECURITY WITH MARCIA MANTELL
We're going to start the month off by focusing on our process when we look at Social Security. The reason we're going to start is that there have been a lot of changes happening and a lot of announcements coming out of the Social Security Administration.
Not that long ago, they repealed the windfall elimination provision, which increased the benefits for many retirees who were previously penalized because of Non-Social Security covered work. That's a big change that gave a benefit to a lot of people that had some Non-Social Security covered work that has taken hold. Then this year, there have been a lot of announcements by the Social Security Administration that we actually had teed up to share related to how you interact with the Social Security Administration, either by phone, online or going into the office. As we've had them tee’d up, many of them have been repealed. A lot of that's in flux. We have to get a handle on that. We're going to have Marcia Mantell, who is an expert in Social Security, talk about the current state of what's going on and she's going to have her opinions and give us a sense.
But let's start off process wise. What is controllable and what is uncontrollable? What do we have to manage and what do we have to make decisions on? Let's start with the controllable.
The number one thing you can control with Social Security is your filing decision when you actually file for your benefits. Generally, you can file at age 62, at the earliest, age 70 at the latest. You have control over this in a planning process when you're building out your feasible plan of record. Our process is to use full retirement age as the default filing method initially and not overthink it too soon. So, when you're building out your feasible plan of record, I would encourage you to just focus on the assumption that you're going to file at your full retirement age. When you have a feasible plan of record and you're working about making it resilient and optimized, then you can look at do I take it early at 62? Do I take it late at 70? If I have a spouse, how does that interact? Do I have an ex-spouse benefit available to me? Do I have a survivor benefit available to me? Do that in the optimization stage, not early in the process. The reason is you're going to go down a rabbit hole unnecessarily. Get to a feasible plan, assume full retirement age, then you can focus on optimizing it later on. That is something you have control over. The next thing you have control over is monitoring your benefits and what income is reported to the Social Security Administration. That's important because your income, as it's reported, is determining your primary insurance amount, which is going to determine your benefit. It's a healthy practice once a year to pull your Social Security statement from SSA.gov and review that to get a sense for what that benefit is going to be and to make sure that the earnings are reported correctly because that can have a material impact on your income or that you receive from Social Security. All right, those are the controllables.
What is uncontrollable? One thing that's uncontrollable from a practical planning standpoint is overthinking Social Security too early. If you're in your 50s or if you know that it's not going to be early and it's going to be full retirement age and you're in your early 60s or so, analyzing Social Security is a waste of energy in my opinion, because it's what I call a green banana. It's something that if we know we're going to at least file at full retirement age, if we're 62, we don't need to analyze that because that banana isn't green until full retirement age. If we're 55, use the default as full retirement age and move on. Don't go down the rabbit hole of analyzing something that you can't make a decision on for a long period of time. That just takes energy and distracts away from things that are more pressing, things you have control over that you have to make decisions on.
Now, I See, this happen all the time, not just with Social Security, but a lot of different things in the retirement planning domain. We have got to log that these decisions will be there, but we don't want to spend too much energy or time because we don't have a lot of energy and we don't have a lot of time. It's all finite. That is uncontrollable. That's why we assume default is for retirement age. And then as you have little conversations, when you get closer to that banana being ripe, you can really dive into the decision frees up a lot of time.
The second thing that you don't have control over is the state of Social Security. Now, go and Google the state of Social Security, you're going to find a lot of articles talking about that it is going to run out of money in 2033 with this change to the windfall elimination. It probably will be a little bit sooner. What does that actually mean? Well, Marcia and I are going to get into that. How often do you need to pay attention to that? I would say, well, once a year. Once a year, Take a day look at the state of Social Security and let that inform your understanding. Anything beyond that, you really don't have any control over it. We don't need to obsess about something unnecessarily that we can't control. Let's stay aware in a systematic way. Another thing that you can do, even though you don't have control over it, something you can manage is to participate in the political system, to let your representatives know that, hey, this is really important. That is something we can do to help manage this, even though we can't control it.
My view of Social Security, for what it's worth, because I do this systematically, is about once a year, I look at what's going on in Congress to try to shore it up. If there's any political will there, I make a judgment call. My judgment call as of now is Social Security is fine. If you're 55 or older or even 50 or older, Social Security is going to be there in some way that's very similar to what it is now. There are a lot of changes, Marcia and I go into it during our conversation that are relatively easy to make as soon as there is the will to make them. So, I don't spend much time worrying about Social Security, and I review it once a year just to check myself to make sure there aren't any significant Changes or blind spots. But that's an example of what we can control and what we can’t control.
Now, let's go do a deep dive on the state of Social Security with Marcia.
INTERVIEW WITH MARCIA
So, to help us understand the current state of Social Security, we're going to talk with Marcia Mantell. Now, Marcia and I have known each other for a number of years. She has the Retirement Management Advisor designation, which I have. She has volunteered for the Investment and Wealth Institute, which is the sponsor of this certification. She and I serve on the curriculum committee in building out the curriculum in order to earn the Retirement Management Advisor. She is an expert on Social Security. She holds the NSSA National Social Security Advisor designation. She loves the policy and reading in detail the actual terms of the Social Security system. She's the person I go to get an update, feel for what, where the state of it is now, what her thinking is and what is on the horizon. So, let's have a chat with Marcia so we can focus on something we can't control, but we can at least manage what the feasibility of the plan is and increase our knowledge there.
Marcia, I'm excited to see you in this domain because usually we're on a committee nerding out on test questions for the RMA. I think of you when I think of Social Security in terms of really understanding the landscape where things might be going and the safety of it, because you really dive into this stuff.
Marcia: Oh, Roger, I do. It's a little nerdy. You're right. I dive in. I dive into the law. I have the law book sitting here in my office. They're about 3,900 pages long, this law that makes up Social Security. I love this episode because it's facts over fear, which is so important today for the vast majority of us. I'd say we have a little fear, in terms of Social Security. But I am not fearful. I'm maybe a little surprised to say that. But it's not a fear component for me. It is watchfulness. You know, I'm more watchful and I've changed some behavior for example, reading all the press releases now that come over from Social Security. They tend to come over almost daily at this point, and you read one and then four or five days later it's the same topic, but the action that was announced has now been reversed. So, we're getting some ping ponging kind of situation with the current administration and the activities going on in Social Security, but it still isn't cause for fear.
I tend to go back to 1983, really, for two reasons, Roger. First of all, I got married in 1983. Still married to that same college sweetheart of mine, Dan. 1983 is also the last time Congress took gigantic action with Social Security because it was going bankrupt back in 1982. What Congress's M.O. is, they wait until the bitter last minute to actually take action to shore up Social Security, which is the foundation of everyone, virtually everyone in America's retirement. They know that. But it's 10 years from now before, you know, the trust fund is supposed to be exhausting the reserve account. They think they have plenty of time. So, we look at those as facts and prior actions. Frankly, it's the anticipation of what they're going to do. They'll wait. I don't want people to be, I mean, you can be concerned, but that concern should turn into action, not fearfulness, that creates decisions that are financially bad.
Roger: The idea of this episode came from a client saying, “we have got to talk. I have no confidence my Social Security will be there. And I want to run a plan without it.”
I can understand the reaction.
Marcia: Yes.
Roger: Reading the bulletin, it sounds like 2000 or, 1983. Between then and now, it's been like on a highway in West Texas. It's flat. Nobody really thinks you're thinking, but you can eat your hamburger and feel relatively safe. Now we're at a moment where we're on a twisty turn road where we can't see around the corner. We have to pay more attention. Put the hamburger down.
Marcia: Right.
Roger: Pay more attention. But it's still a road that has a solid foundation. Right. I think of Winston Churchill. Our system is designed to do things at the last minute.
Marcia: Yes.
Roger: We're doing some of that, or maybe, I don't know now.
So, what changes have happened, if any, as of now?
Marcia: Well, interestingly, there have been some really good changes that started completely out of the clear blue. This is often how Congress works with Social Security, by the way. So back in 2015. I'll take you back just a little bit. Ten years ago, Congress passed the Bipartisan Budget act, which got rid of a couple of strategies we were using the file and suspend, then allowed a restricted application for a spouse a little more nerdy than we need but it came out of the clear blue.
Well, lo and behold, this past November and December 2024, Congress all of a sudden out of the clear blue, said, you know what? WEP and GPO really aren't fair. So, let's pass a standalone law, the Social Security Fairness act. For the 3 million public workers who receive a public pension and therefore have their Social Security benefits greatly reduced in many cases, let's get rid of that. For 3 million people, not only did they get a pay raise from Social Security starting in March, but it also was retroactive to January 2024. When does that ever happen? So, we started the year on a really high note.
Roger: Let's take a sidebar on that. WEP and GPO, for those of you that aren't familiar, are related to, and Marcia will correct me, which is wonderful, if I'm wrong, related to teachers and other public servants that may not have paid into the Social Security system as much as much. It was a way of. Of compensating for, basically lowering the benefit as a result of this scheme. This is a really good sidebar because I remember when that happened, and it benefits a lot of people. But I remember some people, wait, this isn't fair. I paid into the system forever, Right? That is maybe a reasonable position. It could be debatable depending on who you are. I think this is an important distinction that we're all having a lot of trouble with right now is in the political sphere. This is all something that's up for debate, and we should talk to our representatives, as you were going to suggest, and participate in the political system.
But when you put your retirement planning hat on, it doesn’t matter, because your focus is on how I navigate what is. I just wanted to point that out because that's a good example of we can put them together and they need to stay separate if you want to make good decisions for yourself.
Marcia: Right. Unless you're one of the teachers, the firefighters, the people who run your town government, your state government, unless you have that, I'll call it bonus money, it doesn't affect you.
However, what it signaled to me and those of us nerdy people who watch this stuff, you know, Congress is starting to take action. Instead of waiting all the way to 2033, when it's projected that that reserve account will. The savings account side of Social Security will run dry, they're paying attention. They're starting to address some bits that are unfair or broken for some people. That followed on very quickly in March, February and March, where in the House and the Senate, there are four different proposals rolling around to improve the Social Security tax. Can we remove it entirely? Can we change the thresholds?
Roger: So, again, are we talking about the tax on the benefit or the actual tax?
Marcia: On the benefit, yeah. So, should Social Security be taxed as income in retirement? Right now, it is, right? It goes right on the front of your 1040. But people don't like that.
Roger: But that was a change where it became essentially means testing, right?
Marcia: That is correct. That is. But what didn't happen back in 1983 when they did implement this, they never put an indexing factor on the threshold, on the income thresholds. So, they're really low by today's standards, which means many more of us have to pay income tax on our Social Security benefit. So, there are different proposals already floating around Congress. I think there are four of them right now offered by different parties, both in the House and the Senate. And again, it's good news that Congress is paying attention, that some things in Social Security need to be fixed. It's on their radar. We don't usually see that. Usually, not only do we not have to pay so much attention to it, but neither is Congress because it works. Now they're looking at improving certain pieces to the trust fund and to the implementation of the program. I try to keep that in focus.
Roger: So, let's step back a little bit from the present. We hear this number 2033 trust fund. what does that mean?
Marcia: Excellent question. It is greatly misunderstood, isn't it? What most Americans hear, thanks to the way the media covers this 2033 date, is that Social Security will be bankrupt. When something is bankrupt, there is no more money. Kind of that simple. That is not what this is what it is. Social Security is funded by all of us when we work, by paying our FICA taxes, right? Your employer is required to put your share and their share into the Social Security trust fund. It goes into the checking account side of the Social Security trust fund. So, then it turns around, and as my dad likes to say, thank you for paying for my Social Security to the three of us kids and then our FICA taxes go in. They get paid out to current retirees. When there's a leftover amount of surplus, it goes into the reserve account or the savings account or the rainy day fund. That's the only piece we're talking about that the rainy Day fund is being used to pay current beneficiaries today because we don't have enough income from FICA to pay the retirees.
Roger: So, less money coming in. So, we're touching the reserve and in 2033 the reserve part is gone.
Marcia: It's gone, but all the FICA taxes continue. We're all still working in 2033. Or those who are working are paying in earning their benefits for their retirement. But what it could affect is, and the concern is, and again, the fear mongering that goes on. That's a word I use in the articles I write, by the way. Stop the fear mongering. They, the media, whomever is telling regular wonderful people that, well, if the reserve fund goes bust, then you're going to have a 20% decrease in your monthly Social Security checks.
Roger: Right. Because they say there is a deficit, so they can't spend.
Marcia: There isn't.
Roger: Right.
Marcia: You can only send out that amount that's coming in. I mean, this law is very specific. It doesn't have loose, edges or wiggly edges or wavy edges. It's a box. It's a steel box. The money that's in is all that's available to go out.
Roger: Okay.
Marcia: So, Congress needs to act. They need to find another way to either get some money and funnel some money in or do all the other things they've talked about for the last 20 years.
Roger: So, theoretically if they don’t act, will benefits be cut?
Marcia: Well, theoretically and mathematically, yes. Someone asked me the other day, but wouldn't they grandfather in anyone who's already getting benefits? Well, that's not how the law works, so. Not unless Congress says we're going to grandfather in everyone receiving. But we're going to now affect either younger retirees or people who are 50 at that time. It'd be a future problem. Bottom line, nothing happens in a vacuum. You can't just stop paying people their 20% that they're due. This is a paid in calculated benefit entitled by your work history. So, to think that the Congress is going to be so foolish as to let the old people of America go hungry. It just is not how it works.
Roger: When I hear Congress has to act at some level, and then I hear that we eliminated the weapon, the GPO. Positive, positive in the moment, but that exacerbates that number because now we have.
Marcia: More money going, only a little, little bit.
Roger: And maybe we forget the scale of what the system is.
Marcia: That we do. Okay, it sounds big that it moved the reserve fund depletion by six months. But that is all that it did.
Roger: Okay.
Marcia: Even with all these retroactive benefits and the ongoing increase in benefits, it didn't move the needle much.
Roger: Then we're talking about not, or indexing the taxation of it, which would exacerbate the issue that one does. Right.
Marcia: That changes things by two years if we eliminate the taxation of benefits. So yeah, there is a cause and effect. Absolutely. This is all math.
Roger: I'm trying to navigate this and right now, obviously, there's a lot of acute fear because lots of things are being talked about. You talked about how sometimes we do updates on guidance that the Social Security Administration does. It's like we have to stop doing that because they keep reversing themselves. There's a lot of tugging, push and pull. It seems like there's some political will to think and address this.
Roger: That's a good thing, I would think. It's going to be messy because everybody's throwing up possibilities, and that's part of what the system is. It's messy. How easy is it to create a sustainable Social Security system? You know, we're talking about 2033. You know, sustainable for all time is sort of silly talk, I think, in terms of being able to. What are they trying to do?
Marcia: 75 years is the magic number, trying to get it to last longer.
Roger: What practical changes would make that possible?
Marcia: Well, interestingly, there are a ton of ideas. All small changes, A little bit here, a little bit there.
For example, the one we always hear about is increasing the retirement age. I can't stand that idea. Not that anyone's asking me, but that is the wrong thing to do in America. So, let's put that one aside though. There's a possibility, and that's because we did that back in 1983 with the 83 amendments that made all of us younger boomers have to go to age 67 rather than 65 for our benefits. But they're more important and small things. You could increase slightly the FICA payroll tax. A lot of this is around means testing change the PIA formula. PIA is the primary insurance amount. It's your benefit amount that your calculation tells you you're going to get $2,000 a month when you reach full retirement age or whatever your number. We can change that formula so that instead of your highest 35 years of earnings, we need your highest 40 years of earnings. That will change the game. We can remove the taxable wage base. This is where all the really high income wealthy income people don't pay in nearly as much as us mere mortals. Where we pay up to 100% of our income is FICA based taxed. What's the taxable wage base this year?
Roger: I was going to look it up as we were talking. Yeah. The idea of that is that your benefit gets capped. So that was the logic of it. But yeah, if you are above a certain amount, that goes away.
Marcia: That's right. So, we can eliminate that or quickly move it to $400,000. Anyone earning $400,000 or more, they're capped for Social Security inbound dollars.
Roger: $176,100.
Marcia: Oh, thank you. Thank you. So, there are lots of things that can change and not harm our children. My kids are in their 30s now and they are not so sure Social Security will be there. I tell them it will be. It might look different and they might have to pay a little bit more in it, but this is a program that is set to provide, and it's never changed the goal of Social Security. It helps all of us when we retire, have a minimal amount of income, roof over our head. Not a fancy roof, not a mansion, a basic roof and food on the table. That's all it was designed to do. It's met that obligation every year for 90 years. That’s pretty good.
Roger: With a lot of these changes, the impact in the moment to an individual is relatively minor.
Marcia: Yes. Especially when you're younger and you've got 30, 35, 40 years to go before you're even eligible for the program.
Roger: This is where I've always come to is like, well, these are significant changes, but the impact in the moment to an individual is tiny, maybe annoying. Like if they did away with the earnings cap. Okay, I make more than that amount. I'm blessed to do that. I'm going to have a tax increase.
Marcia: Right.
Roger: But it's not going to change my life. It's going to be annoying.
Marcia: No, it is not.
Roger: I might whine about it, but it's not going to change my life. I haven't looked at it in a while, the percentage of people that rely on Social Security as their primary funding of their life and retirement, it's over 50%.
Marcia: It becomes 90% of women who are widowed or single, we're talking about people in their 90s today. They didn't have the opportunity to save. There was no 401k. It wasn't invented. It's over half, though, who use Social Security as their primary source of income.
Roger: So as a core, it is a safety net. Social Security, which is what it's always meant to be, and it still is.
Marcia: It still is.
Roger: A lot of the adjustments we could frame as means testing in a way, but that is what the system is in a way. It is the minimum safety net.
Marcia: I think that's really important to remember. The minimum. This was never meant to replace your income. This program, Social Security, it was never meant for you to do nothing on your own to save for your retirement years. Now, it's gotten harder and trickier over the decades, since the 1930s, as we are living so much longer. The 401ks weren't invented until the late 70s, and they rolled out about 1982. So even the boomers, who are 10 years older than me, they had 10 years where it didn't exist so, you couldn't have saved. The IRAs rolled out in 1974. They were favorable but had very low contribution rates. $500. Then it went to $1500. Women couldn't even save if they were stay at home moms. Don't get me started on that roller coaster.
We didn't have this current structure, but we've always had this safety net. Safety net. That's all it was meant to be. So, you still have to do your share to save or have life insurance or if you had a pension, to make sure you're not doing a single life. If you're married, to do your pension over single life, it needs to be over joint life. You know, there are facts and strategic moves on the financial front that we all need to be smarter about, and Social Security claiming is one of them. Will it still be here? Yes.
Roger: Yeah.
Marcia: So, where's it going?
Roger: We don't quite know. Here's the core question. This is why I had you on the show, other than you're just a great lady. thank you. In our work together on the Investment Wealth Institute Army Committee and our countless discussions around Social Security, I've sat in your presentations. You think about this a lot. You don't just think about it. You research it a lot. You're my canary.
Marcia: Canary in the coal mine.
Roger: You're my canary because you pay attention to this. At the end of the day, if you are 55 and older and you're working through building your retirement plan of record and manage and trying to navigate, should you be concerned? We all should be concerned, I'm concerned about everything all the time. But should we make a material change related to what we anticipate our Social Security benefit to be?
Marcia: An excellent question. Here's my answer to you. I do think about this. I sometimes lose sleep over this. I had to figure out what I can say or do or write about that might help someone get to sleep at night? It's four words. Well, five with an and. It's “wait, wait, wait and watch”. What I literally mean by that is wait to retire. Do not retire at 55. I mean, if you're super wealthy, maybe, but you know. Don't retire at 60 because you're tired. I know I'm. Believe me, I'm tired. You're fine. Keep working. So, work longer. Wait to tap your personal assets. Don't start at 59 and a half just because you can. Wait to claim Social Security at least until full retirement age. Do not jump in at 62, even if you're 62 today. Just to give the audience some perspective here, I will be 64 in July. My husband will be 65 in December. We are that person, right? We're going, oh, should we have done this? Should we claim? Our plan is not to claim. Should we make a change? Watch. But right now, the answer is no.
For those who don't watch Social Security every day, don't watch it every day. Same as you. Don't look at your account value every day with the tariff hoopla going on. Like, that's not a plan, that's a panic, let's not go there. Even so we have to watch a little bit more. We have to be a little bit more mindful. But do you wholesale change your plans? No. Could you run them with the 20% possible cut coming in 2033? I think that's a wise idea because what you're going to find is you're not going to have the retirement you thought you were going to have, and that will help you stay the course.
Roger: I think also, be agile. There's a lot of fixes that will likely come when they’re forced to come, and hopefully the political will right now is there. I think the other thing we talked about offline is this is one reason to talk to your representatives.
Marcia: Yeah, that's something I've never done before, ever. I know who my congressperson is. I know my senators. I have never in my entire 63 years felt the need to ever talk to my representatives. Now, were they doing fine? Not necessarily, but it didn't matter. Now I feel that it's important that my voice is heard. So, I do have their phone numbers with me. I do call them. Well, not quite once a week. I was doing it in February and March.
Roger: Once a week.
Marcia: Well, really what they're looking for is the constituents being concerned about anything, and if so, what? The reason you call is because it's much faster for the staffers to log in. They don't quote you or anything. They just track it for metrics. We had 99 calls on Social Security today. You know, we had 5,000 calls on Social Security this week. They can report that to the representatives because that's how they keep tabs on how aggressively we need to fight or bring something up in the House or the Senate. I never felt the need to be politically active before, but now I feel it's very important that my voice is heard. This is how we do it in America. We pick up the phone.
Roger: I have confidence that it will be fixed.
Marcia: I do, too. I really do. I have been telling people who have written in or called me who were on track to wait until 70 or full retirement age to stay on track. If something wildly happens, we'll let you know.
Roger: We will have links to your blog and the articles on thestreet.com for people that want to keep track of your thinking on this. Thanks for hanging out, Marshall.
Marcia: That'd be great. Oh, thanks, Roger. Great to see you.
Roger: You too Marcia.
TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT
On your marks, get set, and we're off to take a little baby step we can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life.
In the next seven days, I want you to take a moment and reflect on your retirement planning process and identify one item that you can't control that you're spending too much energy and time on.
First step is awareness. What is one thing that you really can't control? That you're just really going down the rabbit hole on and then what is one thing you can do to stop or moderate that so you have more energy to focus on the things that you can control so you can create a great life.
BONUS
Now it's time for our next installment from missions flown by my grandfather in World War II. Mission number 44. We're getting close to the end here. They flew 50 before they went home.
“September 5th. Ship number 321 sortied 29th. Our respects were made to Budapest, Hungary. The target was a railroad bridge which seemed to be hit fairly good despite heavy and intense flak. P-51s and 38s were escorts. Carried six 1000 pound bombs. Mission was 7 hours and 35 minutes. Altitude 29,000ft.”
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