Want a challenge? Try convincing a retiree to hold off on collecting social security benefits!!! This was my adventure, that I recently went on, with John and Kathy.

John was a hard-working man. His wife, Kathy, was more than 10 years younger than he. Unfortunately he was the primary provider and was being pushed into an early retirement at the age of 63. The couple had a modest pension and was counting on social security to supplement their income. Unfortunately, the couple had severely under saved for retirement, so it seemed that taking social security early was the only option to meet their monthly expenses.

Using the SIPS Retirement Planning System, we were able to confirm their fears. They had definitely under saved to meet their retirement goals. Together we built a scenario where each of them would start taking social security benefits as soon as they could. We found that, based on their target income, they would run out of money within 12 years. This was obviously a devastating scenario for both John and Kathy.

We continued to run scenario after scenario, using the system, highlighting different investment tools for his pension. Each scenario would extend their retirement money, but it still didn’t solve the problem of prematurely running out of savings and investments.

To add fuel to the fire, because Kathy was younger, the couple was extremely worried about John passing away before Kathy. If this had occurred, she would be left in a very tight financial situation.

We continued to play with the numbers placing the money in guaranteed products with bonuses and optimized social security benefits until later in life. At first, John couldn’t understand how they would be able to get by without their social security benefits; however, with the use of the SIPS Retirement Planning System, the Social Security Optimization solution became crystal clear. John and Kathy understood and were confident in knowing the couple would be able to successfully hit their target income and not run out of money.