Financial wellness can be yours in 2013

Social Secu­rity Column

By Erin Thompson

Social Secu­rity Pub­lic Affairs Specialist

Jan­u­ary is Finan­cial Well­ness Month a great time to think about your own finan­cial future. It also hap­pens to be at this time that many peo­ple make res­o­lu­tions for the New Year. Why not com­bine the two and make your own finan­cial well­ness a res­o­lu­tion for 2013? Here are our sug­gested res­o­lu­tions for your finan­cial wellness.

Start your finan­cial plan with your Social Secu­rity State­ment. online State­men­tis sim­ple, easy to use, and pro­vides esti­mates you should con­sider in plan­ning for your retire­ment. It pro­vides esti­mates for dis­abil­ity and sur­vivors ben­e­fits, mak­ing the State­men­tan impor­tant finan­cial plan­ning tool.

Your State­ment allows you to review and ensure that your earn­ings are accu­rately posted to your Social Secu­rity record. This fea­ture is impor­tant because Social Secu­rity ben­e­fits are based on aver­age earn­ings over your life­time. If the infor­ma­tion is incor­rect, or you have earn­ings miss­ing from your record, you may not receive all the ben­e­fits to which you are enti­tled in the future. www.socialsecurity.gov/mystatement.

Work the num­bers. Once you get your online State­ment, you can use the other free resources pro­vided by Social Secu­rity. Use our Retire­ment Esti­ma­tor, where you can get a per­son­al­ized, instant esti­mate of your future retire­ment ben­e­fits using dif­fer­ent retire­ment ages and sce­nar­ios. Visit the Retire­ment Esti­ma­tor at www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator.

Once you are in the know, choose to save. The ear­lier you begin your finan­cial plan­ning, the bet­ter off you will be. Social Secu­rity replaces about 40 per­cent of the aver­age worker’s pre-retirement earnings.

Most finan­cial advi­sors say that you will need 70 per­cent or more of pre-retirement earn­ings to live com­fort­ably. You also will need other sav­ings, invest­ments, pen­sions or retire­ment accounts to make sure you have enough money to live com­fort­ably when you retire. Visit the Ball­park Esti­ma­tor for tips to help you save. www.choosetosave.org/ballpark.

Do some light read­ing. Learn more about Social Secu­rity, the ben­e­fit pro­grams, and what they mean to you and your fam­ily, by brows­ing through our online library of publications.

In par­tic­u­lar, our pub­li­ca­tion enti­tled “When To Start Receiv­ing Retire­ment Ben­e­fits” pro­vides help­ful infor­ma­tion regard­ing the things you should con­sider when mak­ing a deci­sion on when to col­lect retire­ment benefits.

Many of our pub­li­ca­tions also are avail­able in audio for­mat and other for­mats. Our library at www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs is always open.

Help some­one you love. Some­times we get the most sat­is­fac­tion out of help­ing some­one else. If you have a grand­par­ent, par­ent, rel­a­tive, or friend who could ben­e­fit from Social Secu­rity, share our web­site and the fea­tures of our online ser­vices with them.

You can even help a loved one apply for Social Secu­rity ben­e­fits in as lit­tle as 15 min­utes or for Extra Help­with Medicare pre­scrip­tion drug costs.

Whether you for­ward a pub­li­ca­tion or sit down to help some­one apply for Social Secu­rity, the place to go is www.socialsecurity.gov. There are a num­ber of ways you can cel­e­brate Finan­cial Well­ness Month, so start off the New Year by look­ing out for your own finan­cial well­ness at www.socialsecurity.gov.

Posted by kpotts on Jan 21 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.