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The best birthday present for Social Security: increase its benefits
The Hill ^ | 08/14/2023 | NANCY ALTMAN

Posted on 08/14/2023 9:23:38 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27

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To: Sequoyah101

Why not add full benefits for all illegals and their families even if still back in the source country. Drug dealers, sex traffickers, and all other criminals included. Not to leave out terrorists, Chinese nationals, and everybody and anybody in the world. There that should do it.


21 posted on 08/14/2023 9:44:16 AM PDT by Sam Clements
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To: ChicagoConservative27

What really needs to be done is to logically phase out social security and replace it with a workable and self-funded, not robbable real pension plan and also eliminate the fleecing of America by Wall Street 401K program.

Many workable pension plans exist around the world. Ours is not one of them. Reform is too late for most of the Boomers though. They are going to have to embrace the suck and hope someone can take care of them as they die.


22 posted on 08/14/2023 9:44:46 AM PDT by Sequoyah101 (Procrastination is just a form of defiance.)
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To: Sequoyah101

And from the About Page at that website it says

Mission

The mission of Social Security Works is to,

Protect and improve the economic security of disadvantaged and at-risk populations

Safeguard the economic security of those dependent, now or in the future, on Social Security

Maintain Social Security as a vehicle of social justice


23 posted on 08/14/2023 9:46:44 AM PDT by Dartoid
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To: glorgau

yours:
If someone is retiring with only ss, then that is either tremendously bad luck over decades or decades of poor decisions.

mine:
Sociable Insecurity was never intended or designed to be a retiree’s sole source of income. President Roosevelt sold it as a Supplement to your own preparations for your own retirement (savings, investments, any private pensions, etc.)


24 posted on 08/14/2023 9:47:18 AM PDT by faithhopecharity (“Politicians are not born. They're excreted.” Marcus Tillius Cicero (106 to 43 BCE))
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To: Sequoyah101

100% agree with you


25 posted on 08/14/2023 9:47:27 AM PDT by Dartoid
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To: JonPreston

Our SS taxes are spent by govt for current budget
Chile invests SS tax in stock market. Chile retirees are very happy.


26 posted on 08/14/2023 9:47:53 AM PDT by entropy12 (Career politicians like DeSantis build wealth. Trump sacrificed his wealth to serve people.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Even those with just the average ss benefit or less than the average ss benefit, life choices helped determine that. Could there have been a better truer investment for what they paid into ss? Yes, sure. But even then, some of their life choices would determine the outcomes of that.

Most often it is the compounding factor of time - earnings compounded over time, is what builds any retirement benefit, or retirment nest egg.


27 posted on 08/14/2023 9:47:59 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: Wuli
My advice is to budget, save, and invest. Put enough in the Roth 401K to get the company match (if they have one). Max out Roth IRA contributions (or IRA contributions if you make too much income for Roth IRA's). And if you have money leftover in your budget add more to your Roth 401K at work.

Learn how to invest on your own with diversification across many mutual funds across many asset classes. Learn the age withdrawal and transfer and conversion rules to implement without paying penalties for the tax breaks. Make it so that by the time you retire, your total balance is at least 25 times your annual budget (so that a 4% withdrawal strategy can meet your needs and wants). Make it more than that if some or all of your investments are in tax-deferred accounts. After all of that, you, not SS, get to decide what age you retire. And if SS is still around it'll be icing on the cake.

28 posted on 08/14/2023 9:49:35 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Supposed to increase by a whopping 3% next year. But what is given is easily taken: Medicare is supposed to go way up to compensate for last year and this year increases.

If you live on SS, you will remain poor and have to struggle in your retirement years, before being buried in a paupers grave.


29 posted on 08/14/2023 9:49:57 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: ChicagoConservative27
On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law. Eighty-eight years later, our Social Security system is among the most successful and popular government programs in history.

By signing Social Security we gave the Government a perverse financial incentive to ensure collectors do not live past 65. Unintended Consequence? Or planned consequence?
30 posted on 08/14/2023 9:50:13 AM PDT by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: Dartoid

one of her incessant mantras is to “make the rich pay more”

While I think it is outrageous for the 1% to control as much as they do I do not see fleecing them as the solution to problems.

I do think that money unprofitably employed is just wrong.


31 posted on 08/14/2023 9:51:47 AM PDT by Sequoyah101 (Procrastination is just a form of defiance.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

The 401k plan created by Reagan was far more successful.
The Uniparty has worked very hard to cripple it since it was created.


32 posted on 08/14/2023 9:51:58 AM PDT by Zathras
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Pretend we’re in the 70s. Let’s take 50% of my SS monthly contribution and put it into a stock market that has risen from approx 700 in the 70s to 35,000 today. The other 50% would remain in the traditional SS program. Which 50% would do better?


33 posted on 08/14/2023 9:54:20 AM PDT by Chauncey Gardiner (Vivamus stultus ignarus mori )
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To: Tell It Right

“My advice is to budget, save, and invest.” The first two everyone can do, but the last one is not universally possible for 100% of folks.

“Put enough in the Roth 401K to get the company match (if they have one).”

Again, fine but only if the 401K style is how retirement savings are met in the company you work for, but not relevant when your company has a different retirement plan you and your employer contribute to.


34 posted on 08/14/2023 9:58:58 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Just go traipsing though the endless money orchard picking armsful of cash to pay beneficiaries.

Or something like that.

It’s like she thinks electricity originates in the “hole.”


35 posted on 08/14/2023 10:03:40 AM PDT by fwdude (.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

So It starts - I noticed Potenkim Joe is nominating the left-wing former governor of MD O’Malley that never saw a tax he did not like to head the SS administration.

Without little doubt, there will be a push to increase SS benefits right before the elections to suck in struggling seniors under the build-back better nonsense gaslighting.


36 posted on 08/14/2023 10:04:31 AM PDT by Fzob (“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential)
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To: Tell It Right
“Make it so that by the time you retire, your total balance is at least 25 times your annual budget (so that a 4% withdrawal strategy can meet your needs and wants).”

Your entire post is sound it seems to me.

The problem is inflation. Our government leaders are printing and giving away hundreds of billions of dollars like they were spare kittens.

When gasoline goes from $2.00 to $3.60 in a couple of years that is not six percent annual inflation; it is not nine percent either.

And that is why $1,000 will not buy even 100 complete hamburger meals anymore.

I have no idea how much money a middle class person will need during a 30-year retirement; and neither does the president of the United States.

37 posted on 08/14/2023 10:07:18 AM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: Tell It Right

“Learn how to invest on your own with diversification across many mutual funds across many asset classes. Learn the age withdrawal and transfer and conversion rules to implement without paying penalties for the tax breaks. Make it so that by the time you retire, your total balance is at least 25 times your annual budget (so that a 4% withdrawal strategy can meet your needs and wants). Make it more than that if some or all of your investments are in tax-deferred accounts. After all of that, you, not SS, get to decide what age you retire. And if SS is still around it’ll be icing on the cake.”

The majority of folks do not have the wherewithal understanding and knowledge of the investment world to do that and therefore for most folks managing all that is best done with their funds available for it turned over to qualified investment advisors/managers.

One of my siblings understand how unqualified he was to do all that himself, turned his retirement investing over to an investment management company and has done extremely well by it - better than average every year for many years now.

Advice - know your own limitations and pay experts/professionals to do what you are not expert in.


38 posted on 08/14/2023 10:07:22 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: Wuli
“My advice is to budget, save, and invest.” The first two everyone can do, but the last one is not universally possible for 100% of folks.

I disagree. If your employer doesn't have a 401K (or 403B or 457), then invest elsewhere. My step 2 for investing is a Roth IRA -- which you get outside of work.

...but not relevant when your company has a different retirement plan you and your employer contribute to.

What employers do that anymore? Besides government employers. Again, if someone is getting a pension don't depend on it, just like SS. Save and invest as though the pension doesn't exist, when you later get the pension count it as gravy on top. That way you, not the employer, call the shots.

39 posted on 08/14/2023 10:08:08 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Raise Social Security Benefits-
More SS taxes come into Goobermint-
Goobermiont swipes it all and writes IOUs -

Rinse-Repeat

It’s not your money. It’s just another TAX.
The payout is for Goobermint to decide for whom, and how much, at it’s sole discretion.

If you can’t stand in front of it with a gun and protect it, it never really was yours anyway.


40 posted on 08/14/2023 10:13:41 AM PDT by Macoozie (Handcuffs and Orange Jumpsuits)
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