Author: Fin Kim

Social Security Benefits vs Income

What is the max benefit from social security?

The max benefit is $3,345 per month if retiring at full retirement age in 2022.
To get max benefit, you need to average $147K over your 35 highest years (with some indexing for inflation).  I think this is based on income that is taxed by social security.  Anyone know for sure?   In that case a windfall year wouldn't bump up the average much because it only counts the amount taxed by social security.
Our friends over at gobankingrates offer some additional details.
There are a few sites with benefit calculators.  Interesting that they ask for annual salary and not 'average annual salary for 35 highest earning years'.
SSA has a quick calculator as well, https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/index.html
I didn't find it anywhere, but would like to see a graph of benefits vs income.   Looks like they smooth out the benefits curve.  First bracket of income has 90% replacement factor, then 32% and finally 15%.  So, after a certain salary additional income doesn't increase your benefits much.

bitcoin is garbage?

Some very straightforward and direct comments about bitcoin.

Sample:

P. That's why he says bitcoin won't exist in 20 years.

A. I wouldn’t dare to predict when the supply of foolish people will run out. I would not know how to put a date for its end, but it will come. It can’t go on like this forever, because it depends on more people putting money in than taking it out. That will never change.

FP Software

some luminaries on reddit linked a couple of sites

FP Software you can download and run.  Looks pretty comprehensive.
Here is some info from the FAQ:
' Flexible Retirement Planner models the entire retirement plan through both the accumulation and draw-down phases.  Since risk tends to compound over longer periods of time,  It is often more difficult to get a high-probability result than with a traditional planner.  

Instead of entering just one value for the whole retirement period, break it into 2 or three values, entering each one as a separate Other Expense cash flow with a given start and end year.

So rather than viewing the output of the tool as a prediction of what will happen, it’s best to view it as support for making short term decisions about what to do over the next few years.  Use the tool to guide these decisions, but revisit them often and reevaluate them in light of any new information you have.'

Another site with useful resources including calculators

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