The Darkness at the End of the Social Security Tunnel

Here’s a fun read. The Board of Trustees for the Social Security and Medicare programs in the United States just released their annual report.  You can read it yourself here.

You don’t have to go very far into it to get their conclusions.  2020 will be the first year that the cost of Social Security exceeds the income the fund receives from those payroll and employer taxes you lose every paycheck.

By 2034, the fund will be empty.  At that point, there will need to be at least a 20% cut in benefits across the board.  How that will get applied to your retirement is anyone’s guess. It probably isn’t a crazy idea that someone in Washington will suggest that everyone else’s taxes go up (and the taxable portion of your social security will increase if you want to earn more than subsistence). What a fight that will be. I do have to mention, because I have to, that your withdrawals from 401(k)s and IRAs are TAXABLE.  The amount you pull out can affect the taxability of your social security benefit.

The fate of Social Security is sealed as it is currently devised. It is wedged tightly between the aging population and its own investment portfolio. By law,  it can only be obscenely based in Treasury Bonds.  The same paper that the government uses to finance its endless trillion dollar plus annual deficits.

Do you see the horrendous self-eating snake that this is?  The untouchable “third rail” of politics is pointed right at the people who may mistakenly rely on it to survive.

Bottom line, your financial future should not be bet on the Wall Street casino, or the USG/Federal Reserve pyramid scheme.  Get your money under control and protected from manipulated market losses and unknown and open-ended tax risk.  Do it our way.