Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security

Learn the secrets to maximizing your Social Security benefits and earn up to thousands of dollars more each year with expert advice that you can’t get anywhere else.

Want to know how to navigate the forbidding maze of Social Security and emerge with the highest possible benefits? You could try reading all 2,728 rules of the Social Security system (and the thousands of explanations of these rules), but Kotlikoff, Moeller, and Solman explain Social Security benefits in an easy to understand and user-friendly style. What you don’t know can seriously hurt you: wrong decisions about which Social Security benefits to apply for cost some individual retirees tens of thousands of dollars in lost income every year.

How many retirees or those nearing retirement know about such Social Security options as file and suspend (apply for benefits and then don’t take them)? Or start stop start (start benefits, stop them, then re-start them)? Or—just as important—when and how to use these techniques? Get What’s Yours covers the most frequent benefit scenarios faced by married retired couples, by divorced retirees, by widows and widowers, among others. It explains what to do if you’re a retired parent of dependent children, disabled, or an eligible beneficiary who continues to work, and how to plan wisely before retirement. It addresses the tax consequences of your choices, as well as the financial implications for other investments.

Many personal finance books briefly address Social Security, but none offers the thorough, authoritative, yet conversational analysis found here. You’ve paid all your working life for these benefits. Now, get what’s yours.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Getting Paul Nearly $50,000 in Extra Benefits over Tennis
Chapter 2. Life’s Biggest Danger Isn’t Dying, It’s Living
Chapter 3. Social Security—from A to Zzzzzzzz
Chapter 4. Three General Rules to Maximize Your Lifetime Benefits
Chapter 5. Strategies to Follow the Three Rules
Chapter 6. Be Careful Taking Social Security’s Advice
Chapter 7. The Benefits of Not Retiring
Chapter 8. Playing Social Security’s Marital Status Game
Chapter 9. Married with Benefits
Chapter 10. Gay Couples Get to Claim What’s Theirs
Chapter 11. Divorced? Dark Clouds and Silver Linings
Chapter 12. Widowed? Why Social Security Is a Major Women’s Issue
Chapter 13. Never Married or Divorced Too Soon
Chapter 14. Hidden Benefits for the Disabled
Chapter 15. Government Pensions and Windfall Penalties
Chapter 16. 50 Good-News Secrets to Higher Lifetime Benefits
Chapter 17. 25 Bad-News Gotchas That Can Reduce Your Benefits Forever
Chapter 18. Whither Social Security?