Good News for Social Security in 2022

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This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Finishing Wealth, brought to you by CardinalGuide.com, with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil, best-selling author and financial planner helping families finish well for over 40 years. On Finishing Wealth, we'll examine both biblical and practical knowledge to assist families in finishing wealth, including discussions on managing social security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes. Now let's get started with Finishing Wealth. Finishing Wealth is a general discussion and education of the issues facing retirees.

CardinalGuide.com, Cardinal Advisors, and Hans Scheil, CFP, sell insurance. This show does not offer investment products or investment advice. Oh, we've got good news for you today. In fact, the name of our show today on Finishing Wealth is Good News for 2022 in Social Security. And so Social Security good news is something we don't hear every day, is it Hans?

No. And in fact, I think that it's going to be the only article out there, the only show or title where you can put those four words together, Social Security and good news, because unfortunately, all we hear is bad news, doom and gloom. Right. And so with that, we do have a really, really some outstanding news.

I think everybody's going to be pleased to hear for 2022. But also within the show, we're going to get into the trust fund report. And interestingly, you're going to go, what does good news have to do with lying?

Well, maybe this will help you. So we talk about, in Psalm 119 is King David's prayer that a lot of people consider the ultimate prayer of spiritual warfare. And in verse 29, he says something very interesting to me, he says, Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me thy law graciously. And so what we don't realize, I think sometimes is that the way of lying, the person that we lie to the most, unfortunately, is ourself. And so what we do is we pick up a piece of what we consider to be bad news or scary news. And then as we, you know, you know, begin to lie to ourself about what that means, then obviously, the enemy is more than willing, since he now has a foothold, because now you're in his realm, because anything that's not the truth is clearly his ground, and he has a right to get in there and amplify that message. And so, interestingly, David realizes this is more than his pay grade. I mean, King David is saying, you got to help me with this, God, because it's so easy to grab hold of something and begin to lie to myself on how it's going to devastate me.

And so when it comes to this idea of Social Security, there's a whole lot of those in there. But I think it's really a neat prayer that we can all think about. Is God removed from us the way of lying and grant us thy law, which is the truth, right?

Because the law is the truth, it is Jesus. And so since Jesus is going to help us out with the truth, here we go. So getting into a little truth when it comes to the Social Security, I guess we could head out, start out with the good news, right, Hans? H- Yeah, I mean, it just, we can open up with next year, 2022, everyone's Social Security check is going to go up by almost 6%. It's 5.9% COLA increase next year. And that's a lot.

Darrell Bock Oh, my goodness, they haven't done that, what, since the 80s or something like that, from what I understand? H- 1983, they had a 7.4% hike. And as you'll recall, we were coming off of 1970s inflation. And, you know, I was 25 in 1983. And just starting my financial planner career.

So I've been studying this stuff a long time. And, you know, the last 10 years, we've averaged 1.65% increases. There was one year 2015, I believe we had no increase because inflation has been so low for so many years, that people had come to accept 1%.

They always are always in the press and for seniors, and we need to make it more or whatever. And it's all political, but it's based upon inflation. And so inflation is up. That's not good, that we've got this inflation that has gone up so much.

And I think that's related to the pandemic and shortages and that sort of thing. And hopefully that that's not, we're not going to be getting 6% every year. But let's go ahead and celebrate that as a check that we're those of us that are on social security are about to go on social security, almost a 6% increase. Yeah, it's that is really good news.

Right. And yeah, but the scary end of that is like, oh, no, they're gonna run out of money. Yeah, well, and that's what the show is really about, is I just threw the raise in there, because it's in the news. So the show is about looking at this trust fund report that normally comes out in May or June, because of the change of administrations, COVID, or whatever, it didn't come out till the very end of September, beginning of October. And so for about a month, really a couple of weeks, actually, you just read all these headlines, and they're just fed into people that, oh, it's going to go, it's going to go bust. So security's going to go bust, and it's going to be used to that we thought 2035. And then last year, we lowered that to 2034. And then this year, for the 2020 report, we're going to say 2033. It's like it's closing in on us from both ends. And there's the facts support the theory that that could happen.

And that would be if nothing is done about the situation. And what I'd like to give people are some alternative facts just to get this thing going. So this is the this is the voice of reason. And, you know, I, I read the trust fund reports 276 pages long. And I wouldn't recommend it. I mean, it's not something and I don't read every word in there.

But I just get a general sense of the thing. These are the accounts. These are the CPAs within the federal government.

That's by law. They've got to account for every nickel in the whole social security system. And the real good news is we added $7.4 billion to the trust fund during 2020.

And we actually did more than that. It's like $10.9 billion we added, if you add in the disability income trust fund. So the whole thing put together, it's almost $11 billion was added to the trust fund. Yeah, and I, you know, when I started doing the show with you, that was Greek to me, I'm going to tell you, because I had no idea what the trust fund meant.

And I know I had no idea of the significance of what you just said. So the cool thing is, over the last three years, I've been learning, you know, like, oh, my goodness, that here's this money that's been piling and piling and piling and piling since the beginning of Social Security. And we're not talking about billions of dollars here, right? Hans, we're talking about trillions of dollars that have gone into this fund, when, in other words, when they didn't, when they took more income into Social Security than they took out, this keeps building and building and building and building. And since, you know, this, this fund, since I've been familiar with the last three years, every year, they say, Well, next year, you know, we're going to be taking it out for the first time, you know, get ready, because it's going to be on its way down.

But honestly, now that I've been hearing this song for three years, I'm like, what? And once again, you know, rather than it being an arrears from my standpoint, being a business person and run plenty of businesses in my life, you know, when you continue to put money in over, you know, the in the trust fund, this thing's doing okay. And it did it in a year where, you know, obviously, there was a great deal of unemployment, and all sorts of other things with COVID. But once again, you know, the the trust fund got bigger. Well, it did. And what I would say is that most of the people reporting on this, and drawing all these conclusions, they don't understand this, they don't understand as much as you do now, after you've had three years of reading this report every year.

And I only started reading it, because I said, Oh, this is kind of interesting. I mean, and the reserves because they don't pay social security benefits out of the reserves. If we took the year of 2020, which was supposed to be awful for this thing, because of COVID. And we had a lot of people out of work. So we had reduced payroll tax contributions. So they say, more people take an early retirement and starting their social security just because they got no other choice.

We had all these terrible things that we're going to happen to. And when you read in the trust fund report, it's not inflated headlines, it's just numbers and commentary. And I can just tell you during the whole year 2020, they paid out in benefits Social Security did to retirees $961 billion. And that's the amount to retirees. Now it's is a lot of money, but it's everybody in America that's collecting the social security check.

And actually, they didn't pay out that amount. It's 952 billion because I'm looking at the total cost, but they also they get charged to this trust fund or expenses $3.7 billion to administer social security. So Social Security pays its own way. So the point I want to make is where they get that money from is not the trust fund to get the money from the $856 billion that came in in payroll taxes that all of us are paying from doing our jobs and our employers are paying. And then they paid in, they collected $73 billion in interest off of the $3 trillion, almost $3 trillion that's in the trust fund. And then they collected $39 billion of income taxes from well-to-do Social Security. So people that have high incomes have to pay taxes on their Social Security, and they put $39 billion of that tax revenue or all of it back into the Social Security system. So they use the revenue to pay the benefits and pay the expenses. And the whole thing matched up that they were $7.4 billion to the good on the retirees and on the disability income people, which is people getting it before 66 or so.

It's $3.5 billion that they added to that trust fund. So unfortunately, yeah, we got to go to a break. You know, I guess you could be saying, how does this affect me?

Well, there's so many different ways. It affects you, it affects your family. We're going to get into all that as we do have all this good news for you today on Social Security, which is a critical part of how we finish well. So we'll be right back with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil. Again, we want to remind you that he's got the YouTube channel where they're going to do a whole report where you can see the board and look at these numbers up front and personal if you want to. And that is, it's Cardinal Advisors, right?

That's on YouTube. Of course, cardinalguide.com is who brings you this show. And the website is cardinalguide.com.

So when we come back, a whole lot more on the good news of Social Security. Hans and I would love to take our show on the road to your church, Sunday School, Christian, or civic group. Here's a chance for you to advance the kingdom through financial resources by leveraging Hans' expertise in qualified charitable contributions, veterans aid and attendance, IRAs, Social Security, Medicare, and long-term care. Just go to cardinalguide.com and contact Hans to schedule a live recording of Finishing Well at your church, Sunday School, Christian, or civic group. Contact Hans at cardinalguide.com.

That's cardinalguide.com. Welcome back to Finishing Well with good news for Social Security 2022. As we talked about the great news that we're getting, what is it, 5.9% increase, everybody is, and there are Social Security checks for 2022.

Yeah, that's great news. But as we left, we talked about how secure we are. And we talked about how important just the facts are, what's actually gone on with it so far. The question that I have, obviously, is how does it help me financially, this information? Well, I mean, when people come walking into their financial advisor or their financial planner, or they come walking into my office, a pretty high percentage of them start debating with me instantly, like, why should we even go over Social Security?

It's not going to be there. Or I'm doing Social Security planning, which is the foundation of retirement planning. And we're going to start with the Social Security. And if you are lacking in faith that that money's really going to be there, then it's going to cause you to make poor decisions for yourself, and it's going to rob you of your peace. When you get done putting together a financial plan, you have a certain amount of peace that you can say, well, I'm going to be all right, no matter how long I live. And, you know, we all have that faith that God is going to take care of us, and God's going to be there for us. But there's many people that have that faith. But yet they are really nervous about, like, what their 80s and 90s are going to look like if they make it there financially. And this is a big part of it. So Simpson is running rampant, and they've been fed lies. Yeah, and the part that jumps out at me is even if you're 20 years old, and they're taking out Social Security, those people like my daughter or whatever, they seem to really be offended that they're having to pay this for something they know is not going to be there, and their peace is being robbed.

Right? It's nonsense. I want to acknowledge, we have a lot of people who are like, it's nonsense. I want to acknowledge, we've got to do some work here on Social Security. We've already done some work in the 80s, where they revamped this whole thing. That's why we have $3 trillion today. And we're not bankrupt now, because we did some things 30-some years ago that aren't even fully implemented yet.

They're about two or three years away. So we've got some work to do. But this thing is in really good shape. You know, in my opinion, you just look at the numbers. You know, and I'm a financial planner, and I am trained to do this. I've read the whole report.

And last year, between the two trust funds, the disability and the retirement, we added almost $11 billion to the trust fund after we paid all the bills. Why this matters to you is I just think that most people have reached a level of cynicism. And I think this 20-year-old, I mean, I've got a son who's 23 and just started his first job. He's making a real nice salary. He's an engineer. And he has the same cynicism, like, oh, that's not going to be there.

Well, yes, it is. And it's actually his generation that are going to be the people that are going to make the changes that's going to solid it up for them. It's going to be there. I need people to trust in that. And then if you really think that I'm, you know, going down the wrong road here, I'm telling you something you don't hear anywhere else or I'm wrong, give me a call. What I want to do with you is talk about your Social Security and what you can count on. And we're going to use that as a basis. So you can count on that. And we're going to try to make good decisions as to when you started, if you have a spouse, when your spouse starts it, how much your check's going to be. And then when the first one of you dies, one of those checks is going to go away and the survivor is going to be left with the bigger check. But still, we're going to use that as a basis for everything we do.

And if you don't believe in that, then it just kind of makes haphazard decisions and everything else. Yeah, actually, as I was getting ready for the show, Hans, I went back to Social Security, you know, which actually I kind of like to do that these days. Socialsecurity.gov. And the way they have the website these days is you can print out the whole report if you want, but they're actually on the front page is this little graph. And you can sit there with this little dot and move it along to where you think you want to start your Social Security. And it spits out numbers like, you know, really, really handy and gives you certain pieces of information. You know, as we go looking at this, you know, that's a really, really helpful resource and something that really is one of the things you tell people to do first, right? Go on there, see what your statement says.

Shows how much you paid in, how much you can expect if you started in different ages. And what I want you to do is I want you to just believe that. I'm just telling you. Now, you believe it as much as you believe anything else coming in, and maybe your paycheck's going to come in from your company if you continue to work there. And the company continues to thrive.

It's not like they don't go out and put out predictions. Well, this company will be bankrupt if they continue to run it the same way they're running it in 2033. I mean, I don't want you sitting around worrying about this stuff. This is really not your concern.

I'd really rather you look at that statement and say, this is my piece of it. This is what I can count on. And it's probably not enough. So then we've got to get money from something else when we're too old to work. And we're going to get that from your investments and we're going to get that from your investments and money you've saved on the side and plan taxes and all that kind of thing. Faith in this is just important to me. Yeah. But it's good news, really, when we look at that report and we think, well, based on historical evidence that I've seen the last three years is that I'm with you on that, although I wouldn't have been with you prior to me starting this show.

So I've come over from the dark side. Listen, I'm looking at my own situation, too, that if I can delay till 70, I'm going to have over four grand a month just on my Social Security check. And then my wife's is going to be about 1800. So we're going to have almost six grand a month just from Social Security. My plan is to pay zero tax on that because my other income that I'm going to be living off of on top of that, I'm also going to pay zero tax on that because I've got most of it converted over to a Roth. And so I'm just going to make withdrawals as necessary and have a tax-free retirement. And, you know, if I didn't have faith in Social Security, my retirement plan would look a lot different than it does right now.

So we can talk this to the end. The other part that just jumps right out at me, because, again, if you watch this over the years, is I really didn't realize that they were going to give you this cost of living increase or that it would certainly be of this size. And so for all of us, you know, right now you're looking at four thousand and thinking, well, if if things continue to change, they adjust for that, too. Well, yeah, and I would say that the projections that you and I are looking at right now and have been looking at were based more on the one point six five percent average over the last ten years predicted COLAs.

So you just watch when we run our own statements in January or February, we'll do another show, you and I, and we'll run our statements just like we have every year. And that number is going to be higher because I'm guessing that it's going to reflect it's going to be six percent higher, which really is close to it. Yeah, that was part of the reason I went and looked actually today. I don't think it's in there yet. It isn't. It isn't.

But I was like, oh, ka-ching. Let me see what this thing's going to say. But also, you know, there at the website, it really is handy because, you know, they show you, OK, what's my spousal benefit if I pass away? And they walk you right through that stuff a lot easier than it was two years ago.

Yeah, they've made an easier statement. So I'd encourage anybody that's listening, if you don't have an account at SSA.gov, go in and make one. It's a My Social Security account. And they're going to ask you some questions that you're probably not going to like, like, you know, of these four places that you had a loan, which one did you really have a loan at? The other ones are just made up or these are the kind of cars you had financed.

Check all the ones that are accurate. I mean, they do things off your credit report to make sure it's really Robbie Delmar that's checking into that thing. But you only have to do that once.

Once you get in there, you get a username and an ID, you can go back to it. And if you come in to see me, this is something I'm going to send you to do. We're working over the phone or we're doing a Zoom or whatever is after you decide to hire me, I'm going to send you to run your Social Security report for you and your spouse. And you have separate accounts because we're just going to start with that.

We're going to look at so this is what we can what we got to start with. And then this is how much money we have, or we're going to have. And this is what we're going to do with it to make it all work out well for the rest of your retirement. Yeah, and that's, you know, the thing that actually literally breaks my heart, and I have two or three people that are actually quite close to me, one of them actually in my family, who their reasoning was, Social Security is going to run out. So I'm going to go ahead and start filing when I'm 62 and thus lock myself into this lower amount based on misinformation that really is just it breaks my heart because they can never change that once they go thinking, well, it's gone broke, I better get my money out of it.

That's a horrible decision. Unless they just desperately need the money at that point. It's smarter to wait. If you can figure out a way to do that, and then arriving at exactly the right age, it's somewhere between 62 and 70. But for most people, it's not 62.

And I run into a lot of people come in to see me at 65. They've already been taking it for three years for exactly that same reason. I said, well, it's gonna run out anyhow, I'm gonna get a bird in the hands better than two in the bush. And, okay, you know, and by the way, if you've done that in the last year, if you've started it, and it's been less than 12 months, we can actually do it doable. So I've done a couple of those this year, for people that started it before they really had the information that I gave them.

And then we, we paid it all back, and we're waiting to take it. But you actually have software. So for people that call in, or, or, you know, come in that can help them pick the ideal time for them, their spouse is a big part of it, right?

Your age, their age, everybody's health, it all fits into the equation. Well, we got Tom running the software. So that's a big, we said, I know how this stuff works with tendencies. And we sit down with everybody. And then we talk to the people, because your wishes are going to be prevalent. But yeah, we're going to run all the scenarios and show you how much it's going to cost you to take it early, is really what it amounts to. And then if we're going to delay it, then we got to figure out what you're going to live off of, which is probably withdrawals from some of your money that you haven't saved.

I can't believe our time has gone so quickly. It's one of those subjects, we certainly need to put some time and consideration in, you know, God has provided this unbelievable, you know, from my perspective, you know, nobody in many, many, many generations has had anything like social security that we've enjoyed, you know, since the 30s in this country. And so being good stewards of that requires good information and remove from us the way of lying and grant us the truth graciously. And part of the way you can get the truth, obviously, is to, you know, get Hans's book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living Retirement. He shows you how to do all these things with your social security in that book.

You can get that at cardinalguide.com or watch his video where he goes right through the report number by number there at Cardinal Advisors on YouTube. And again, we're just grateful that you listen today. Thanks, Hans. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Finishing Well is a general discussion and education of the issues facing retirees. CardinalGuide.com, Cardinal Advisors, and Hans Schile CFP sell insurance.

This show does not offer investment products or investment advice. We hope you enjoyed Finishing Well, brought to you by CardinalGuide.com. Visit CardinalGuide.com for free downloads of this show or previous shows on topics such as social security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes, as well as Hans' best-selling book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, and the workbook. Once again, for dozens of free resources, past shows, or to get Hans' book, go to cardinalguide.com.

If you have a question, comment, or suggestion for future shows, click on the Finishing Well radio show on the website and send us a word. Once again, that's cardinalguide.com. CardinalGuide.com.

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