Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd. Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner practitioner and senior vice president financial advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered investment advisors. We call it Something More because we'd like to talk not only about those important dollar and cents issues, but also the quality of life issues that make the money matters matter.
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and across the country. Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for being with us for another episode of Something More with Chris Boyd. And I'm here again with Jeff Perry, of course. Both of us are from the AMR team at Wealth Enhancement. Our guest is returning guest Marcia Mantel, our one of our social security experts is a fabulous guest.
You can find more about her at Mantelretirementconsulting .com. And you come back to us from time to time to give us updates and always a wealth of information. So thank you for being here, Marcia. We're glad to see you. Thank you, Chris and Jeff. Thanks for inviting me back. You know, I love to talk to you guys. Writing any new books? I know you're an author many times over. Thank you. Actually, I am updating, if you can believe it, my social security book. Perfect timing.
There have been a few changes over the last year or so. A couple. Well, that's probably a great place to start. But what is the social security book? And people can be on the lookout for it. When do you think it'll be updated? I think by the end of August, and then it should be out by October. Excellent. I'm moving quickly on that book. Yeah, I'm excited about that. I have a new title. I'm quite sure I'm going to be calling it Social Security, Slightly Burned, Not Scorched. That title coming.
All right, perfect. Well, things have been changing. And that's a good place for us to start. We saw before the change in administrations, the Social Security Fairness Act passed with surprising bipartisan support. It was one of these things where it seems like it kind of took us by surprise that, hey, they actually got this done. Oh, it's always had bipartisan support, but it's always died. It never made it across the finish line. Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, it's one of these things where like suddenly they actually did that. You know, there's been a lot of rhetoric for you. Anyway, tell us a little about what that did. Sure. And you're both right. I mean, it was quite a surprise because it hadn't been teed up like this was a big hot thing. And all of a sudden, Social Security Fairness Act passes House, then the Senate in November, December, and then President Biden signs it into law in January.
Not only was that a surprise, but the implementation of this Fairness Act, which I'll get into in a second, it was retroactive all the way back to January of twenty twenty four. So what was this thing, the surprise? It was for those Social Security beneficiaries who have a public pension.
So we're talking about, you know, the teachers in Massachusetts and in other 15, 16 other states who have a pension or firefighters, police, your town workers, your state workers, they all have a public pension. And in nineteen eighty three and prior to that, nineteen seventy seven, there were parts of Social Security laws that said, you know what, if you're getting a public pension, you're going to get that first.
But if you're also entitled to some Social Security, we're going to reduce that so that you don't have either a windfall if you're the worker, the windfall elimination provision, or if you're a spouse that you have a government pension offset. So as soon as those laws passed back in the day, the unions representing these workers sort of took arms up against it and said, hey, wait a minute, that's really not fair because these are workers.
They're not just getting a pension and didn't contribute to Social Security. They have what I call that hybrid career. They worked in the public sector maybe 30 or 35 years, and then they earned their Social Security benefits as well. But the Social Security benefits were really they took a big hit, a big cut if you had both provisions. So raising his hand as yeah, that's me. Oh, it is. Yes. So, you know, you were going to take a big it's not even a haircut, you know, a little trim.
It was a buzz cut. Yeah. So this was, you know, there are different perspectives on it, right? There's part of the industry says, well, now it's not fair because people are now getting two pensions. Well, you get two pensions if you work in the private sector also, but you're paying into both. Well, you're also paying into both in the public sector.
And then, you know, the other side of the coin is it is more fair and people who have truly earned these benefits paid into FICA should be entitled to those benefits. So it was unexpected, kind of exciting. And for me, what it was, was this harbinger of good things to come to shore up Social Security solvency. It's like, oh, look, Congress is working on it. All right. I wouldn't have picked that to start with, but that's all right. They've opened the patient. What do you know?
We've got something. Exactly. Gee, and I looked at it like a gift from President Biden to all his labor buddies on the way out. Well, see, different perspectives, right? I mean, it's where I really appreciate it in particular for surviving spouses, particularly their women. Sure. That's right. And and their benefits, you know, many surviving spouses get zero because they had a pension. They were a teacher. They worked in town hall and they are just the way the math works, getting zero.
So when your husband dies, he had been maybe bringing in two thousand dollars a month or twenty five hundred. That's gone from your household budget. And now these women were left with a whole lot less. So there are parts of fairness. I will applaud these unions, the police and the fire, fire unions in particular. They have lobbied for 40 years to get this done. And I think that's why none of us thought it was going to happen, because it had reached that point before over and over. Right.
Sitting there past one house or the other Senate and just laboring. Right. Pun, but sitting there and you're right. None of the lobbyists were expecting this because I get the newsletters and such. And no one was saying, here we go. It's right there. Right. Kind of given up again and said, we'll refile next year. Exactly. And particularly at this point, right, we already knew there was a new administration coming in. There was already a lot going on. This was not on anybody's radar.
So Jeff and I have talked about this quite a bit and noticed that even though word is getting out there, there still can be people who have kind of tuned out to this because they had the experience where they were told at one time, oh, you're not going to get any benefit or it's not worth it to you to pursue this. Let's try to dispel that myth now.
You know, if you are a public employee or have been a public employee at one time and are on a pension, thought you were not eligible for Social Security or maybe just it wasn't enough to be it was going to get chewed up somehow with the discounts of these different up and government offset.
You know, maybe it's time to revisit that because you may be getting you likely will be getting a bigger benefit because you'll get your full Social Security benefits and it's it's worth the time to go deal with. Please check. Please check. Yes, I could not agree more. And especially for the disposal side, you know, when you did that, when one did the calculation and saw they were going to get zero, they never even filed. So the spouses aren't attached now in the Social Security records.
So Social Security administration would not know that. Oh, you know, Marcia is entitled to this spousal benefit because she's not even in the system. So it doesn't take long to file an application. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? Right. It's like, oh, even if you're seventy five or something, you know, you haven't ever filed in the past now file or widow, especially for the widow. Right. Especially for the especially now if you're in that situation. What happens?
Let's say you're you know, you never filed and does that person receive any of those back benefits or not? You know, I'm not 100 percent sure on that. I know that Social Security looks at each of those cases separately, you know, to see what you would have been entitled to. But if you hadn't already claimed, are they really paying you for? I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so either. I don't think so either. But I'm not 100 percent sure. Better to get started.
Then you don't get the back stuff. Get started. But the usual is if you haven't filed a timely, there is a six month retroactive period. So maybe they'll get a six month bonus. I'll call it a bigger check. But it's the going forward. I mean, it's just it's all good. And because, you know, social Medicare Part B premiums come directly out of your Social Security check, even if it only covers your Part B premiums. Hey, that's money in your pocket, right? Right.
And like you said, for a widow who, you know, may have in many cases been like excluded from their benefits. Again, it's it's not just on your own work experience, which may you may have your own private sector work experience, Social Security contributions. But if you've been married or are married, you could be getting benefits through as a spouse, whether it's to recover the as a widow. Right. And that's one sense or even a spousal benefit.
Even if you didn't work in the public, sorry, private sector, you still might be eligible for Social Security benefits. These are all things that circumstances I'm just trying to elaborate. Go check it out. You check it out. Spouses as well. You know, if you're a qualifying divorce person, so largely you were married for 10 consecutive years or longer, you may well now qualify for a new benefit.
And, you know, like I said, even if it's a small, small amount, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred dollars a month, I'll say yes to that. Why not? Yeah, right. Like, don't miss an opportunity. Yeah. For an hour of your time. Right. To go online and file. Right. Yes. OK, so we have this issue where we've had additional benefits being paid out. Surprisingly small relative to the whole of Social Security, but some consequence. We also had the one big, beautiful bill act that has passed.
This also has some consequences as it relates to Social Security and Medicare. Can you elaborate a little bit on what's changed as it relates to this legislation? Not quite what the president was talking about on the trail. Right. On the campaign trail. And that's caused confusion, too. You know, you make these promises on the trail and then something passes and they associate it to the promise. Yeah, so it is. I think your word, the key word here is confusion.
There is a lot of confusion about this. So let's set some of the records straight here. The first is the taxation. So Social Security benefits are taxable income when you have higher income in retirement. And there's a calculation to determine. Right. Right. You look at how much is taxable income. There's a formula to create combined income. And then some of your Social Security benefits would be taxable if you're above the thresholds and it's up to 85 percent.
So you always get 15 percent that's not taxed anyway. But the big claim or the hope or the promise was that Social Security was no longer going to be taxable income. It was going to come off the front of the 1040. Well, it did not. In fact, it stayed exactly the same. The best we know today, the combined income calculation still stands.
If you are married, filing jointly and you have income, combined income above forty four thousand dollars, up to 85 percent of your Social Security comes on to the front of the 1040. It's taxable income at whatever your tax rate is. Right. Nothing's changed there. Right. So but there's a lot of confusion there because people, oh, my Social Security is no longer taxable. So in lieu of that, the one big, beautiful bill act, BBA or how many B's got to get enough in there? Three, three.
So anyway, there is some effort to offset that income for people under a certain threshold sort of with this in mind. Is this essentially how they came to deal with that? Well, the administration is trying to tie two disparate things together. So what I will say in the big bill, there's some really good. Deductions now available to Americans who are 65 and older, we couldn't care less what you're doing with Social Security, they are unrelated topics, right?
But if you're 65 or older this year, 2025 and for the next three years, twenty five, six, seven and eight. So it's a temporary it's a temporary window. It's a temporary fine. But it's six thousand dollar personal deduction that will be applied to your otherwise taxable income. So if your taxable income is one hundred thousand dollars and you meet the qualifications, you're over 65, 65 or older and you have.
Well, one hundred thousand works if you're married, filing jointly, there's some upper thresholds here. Yeah. And you get six thousand dollars off of your taxable income obligation. That's great news. That is whether you're collecting Social Security or not has nothing to do with nothing. No, but I do think the motivation was, hey, we can't really tie this to Social Security. So here's another way we'll go about it. It is temporary, as you said.
The standard deduction did get raised from fifteen thousand to fifteen thousand seven hundred and fifty. Then you add to this for everyone, for everyone. Then you do this for retirees or people age 65 and older for this window of time. As you said, there is an additional six thousand per person unless you are married, filing jointly and make in excess of one hundred and fifty thousand. It starts to phase out by two hundred and fifty thousand. Some sort of step down, I think.
So that's essentially how it works. Yeah. And then there's some other complications where there's some additional like, I don't know, fifteen hundred dollars or somewhere in there. There's another. There's another 65 and older and blind. There's a different or larger deduction. Yeah. Or blind. Overall, the deduction increased. Yeah. So that's what it is. There's another sixteen hundred dollars. This what I'm looking at says that you're age 65 and older or blind is I don't know if it's and blind.
Oh, I believe or or blind is correct. So if you're 50 and blind, you get an additional deduction on top of the standard deduction. Right. OK, of this thirty two hundred, if you're filing jointly, sixteen hundred if you're individual. Yeah. Anyway, guess what? It's complicated. But there's there's a lot more deduction, standard deduction type opportunities with favorable for everyone. Right. Right. I mean, if you're my kids, you're doing itemized deductions.
Well, the the if you do itemized deductions, that's one lane, except if you're now 65 and older, even if you itemize, I believe you also still get that six thousand dollars because it's called a personal deduction. It doesn't work quite like the standard deduction. So you either do standard or itemized and then you get another below the line, you know, deduction, write off offset, whatever you want to call it. Either way. Either way. Right. Yeah. So, yes, you're right. You're complicated. Right.
And and yet it is good news for individual taxpayers. Again, it's really nothing directly to do with eliminating taxation of Social Security benefits. So keep them separate. But there is a big implication to the Social Security funding and that the chief actuary just published, just sent two letters to two senators yesterday or two days ago. They wanted to know what is the implication? As we know, the big bill today, what is the implication on Social Security?
So what she wrote, Karen Glenn is the chief actuary of Social Security. She's just this amazing woman, I'll tell you. The result is the reserve account will be depleted even sooner than the trustee's report forecasted back a month or two ago. And so we're moving due to the weapon GPO situation. We moved from the end of twenty thirty three. This is for OSI, just your old age and survivors benefit, not the disability, just the retirement.
So we go from Q4 of twenty thirty three, then weapon GPO Fairness Act come in and we move to Q1 of twenty thirty three. Now, with the both the tax rates being lower, we've now made permanent the twenty seventeen tax cut job act. So our overall rates are lower and we have these additional deductions which will lower the tax lane, the revenue lane coming into Social Security.
And now they're estimating that instead of Q1, twenty thirty three for the reserve depletion, it will be Q4, twenty thirty two. So now we're moving into twenty thirty two. And just one more quick thing, they haven't yet even factored in the net negative immigration and the loss of jobs and more early retirements. So payroll tax collection overall. It looks to me like it's going to be less than it has been.
So we have all these lots of small things peppering the Social Security fundedness and it's going to the reserve account will be depleted sooner than projected. We've talked about this before, but it's worth reiterating. Would you elaborate on what that means? It does not mean that Social Security benefits would not be paid. What does it mean? You're exactly right. And thank you for bringing that up.
Not only does it not mean Social Security benefits won't be paid, but it also doesn't mean Social Security is going bankrupt. So there's no bankruptcy related to Social Security. All it means is we have a rainy day fund within the Social Security trust fund. It's a savings account. It was the surpluses over the years that built up over time.
And that surplus bucket of the rainy day fund is now being used to pay out 100 percent of the earned benefits to all of our beneficiaries, everyone who's collecting Social Security. So you're getting a combined payment. You just don't know it. You're getting payroll taxes like paid out to you and to true up to give you 100 percent of your benefit amount. We're dipping into the savings account. Well, by 2032, that savings account will run dry, but payroll taxes continue.
If we have workers, we have payroll taxes. I mean, it's kind of that simple. So right now, the estimate is you would be paid about 78 to 80 percent of your benefit amount. Right. So you still get a check, a deposit every month. The checks are going away and you still get benefits. But if Congress fails to take action, you will get less starting sometime in 2032. And this date and amount is subject to change based on a couple of things. Right. If we have a booming economy, we have more payroll.
We have more payroll tax, essentially the FICA tax that would help that percentage or timeline when it comes to if we have a recession and there's more people laid off and less payroll being paid, these dates and amounts could go sooner and lower. Right. So there's some variation in this that it's not an exact date and time that we can say, oh, that's the date.
However, we know that there's plenty of time to do something about it and that it's very likely that nothing will get done until the last minute. I completely concur. So so should we run out and claim our Social Security? Oh, that is a common question. Clients ask. That's great to know. Get that question. But that's what the American consumer is doing. They are very anxious, afraid that if you're not in, you're not going to get your fair share or, you know, what you're getting is good.
Kind of exactly. Lock it in. And that just could not be further from what's going on here. Might not be the best path for your personal financial circumstances, probably likely to work against your personal financial projections. Absolutely. Assuming a certain life expectancy. Right. Right. I mean, if you're chronically ill today and you're 63, it might be time to claim. But that's not a whole lot of us.
So what the emails I'm getting from consumers, I mean, they are worried and from financial advisors as well saying, you know, what should we tell people? Should you still wait until 70 if that's in your best interest in your retirement income plan? Or should you still wait till full retirement age? Yes and yes are the answers to those questions. Don't claim today thinking that you won't have a benefit. And don't claim today thinking you're grandfathered in. That's what they're thinking.
Yeah. They really are. And they think, well, if I'm getting a thousand dollars a month now, if the reserve account runs dry, I'm grandfathered and I'll still get my thousand dollars a month. Well, guess what? I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but that is not how the law works. And you will not be grandfathered in unless Congress does something to grandfather you in. So if there's a cut, it's an across the board cut.
So I would say it's in most people's best interest to wait as long as you can to full retirement age or somewhere between 67 and 70. Before you claim so that if there is a cut of any sort. It will be less damaging to your cash flow. You'll have a bigger and bigger amount to start with. Yeah. Good point. So don't let all these crazy headlines and all this confusion make it where you're making poor financial decisions or non-ideal financial decisions for your household.
Yeah, that statement applies to everything. Everything. Right. Not just Social Security, but people get wrapped up in making financial moves because of these headlines or these proposals or these new provisions. And it's usually a mistake when you're acting emotionally. It really is. And then you figure it out like five or six years later and then it's too late to do anything. Like you you've sown that field and you're getting what you get then.
And it's never ideal to be old in America with fewer dollars. That's not a winning combination for us. I would have thought in a different moment in time that, you know, when we got to this point, if Congress hadn't come up with a real solution that, you know, that they just write the check and put it on the tab kind of mindset where, well, we'll keep our benefits paid out, but we've just we'll just owe more money with our our debt.
But with our growing debt and deficits annually, that may not be an option. There may be a limit to at some point how much we can we can take, you know, and ultimately I know these are sort of different animals. It's not part of the general budget and all that kind of thing. But, Jeff, do you want to maybe just I know you've got an article that you've been you've developed that is sort of lays out some of the range of possible ways in which Congress could address this.
Would you want to just sort of touch on what are some of the range of possible possibilities as relates to this? Sure, sure. I was inspired to write the article after the one big, beautiful bill actually dealt with some Medicaid reform, you know, Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, whatever of these entitlement programs. I didn't want to use that word. I know, but they are ultimately. Well, I don't know. That's another reason for them as that is what I'm saying. Right.
I don't like the word because in Social Security, for example, you have paid in the promise, you know, so you're not entitled to that. I'm messing with you, I'm messing with you. Yes, you are entitled to it. You are entitled to it. I'm just messing with you. I was trying not to create this conversation by not using the word. I have failed. I was anyhow, any of these programs are thought to be the third rail of politics. Right.
You know, if you if a political candidate mentions Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid reform, they're targeted with political ads saying a candidate. Chris Boyd wants to take away your Social Security. It's a very powerful and divisive issue. So you remember the pictures of wheeling granny over the cliff? Endless. Right. Yeah. So the third rail. So we'll use that. I think people know you don't touch the third rail on the subway because it zaps you and you could die.
So I was I was inspired to write this article that perhaps, you know, we're out to twenty thirty two now. Perhaps there is a political opportunity. You know, President Trump is not running for reelection, I think is another thing we won't talk about. And he was politically brave enough and Congress was to deal with the Medicaid reform, whether you like it or not. They dealt with it. And it's controversial.
So, you know, when you're not running for reelection is a great time to deal with things that are not subject to the next election. Yeah. So that's the reason I decided to work on this article is that there are solutions, you know, the solutions that we've talked about, the solutions that I've thought of, I've heard of, and there's other solutions that are out there. So I thought I'd put it out there. Is this an opportunity before before 1231, 2031 or whatever the date is to deal with this now?
It's like any any financial issue you have, any financial planning, any financial problem, the more of a runway you have to deal with it, the more your options are available to you. So, you know, I'll start with one that Marcia touched on is that that's immigration reform. You know, this is this is a big issue that the president wants to deal with. And I think there's an appetite wherever you are along the spectrum of this debate.
But immigration reform, including a provision that allows illegal immigrants, if you will, or to make them legal workers and paying into the Social Security system is a is a simple way. To deal with two issues, Social Security revenue and our immigration problem and our workers that we need on the, you know, that's been highlighted what's happening to the farms and hospitality, that maybe there's an opportunity to get this done and have a win, win, win overall.
So that's that's one of the things that I think is worthy of consideration for Congress. I don't know if Marcia has thought about this. You highlighted it in one of your comments. So yes, what are we on the same page with this? We are we are on the same page. There's tremendous amount of work that needs to be done on immigration policy. Right. And it does have a an effect on Social Security on payroll taxes. I mean, it really is quite simple at the core.
FICA taxes need to be paid when you have workers, they pay into Social Security so all of us old folks can get our checks. Right. We need to fix that. And frankly, we need a lot more workers. And the Brookings Institution just released a new report, I want to say on Monday, about their forecast for this year's immigration net negative and next year net negative. Well, that does not help fuel the tank here of FICA taxes, but it is comprehensive reform.
And it sounded like at the end of last year, maybe two years ago now, the Senate at least had a bipartisan immigration reform bill. And then it was put on the back burner. Well, even in the context of one of the president's campaign promises was deportation and such.
Even in the context of that effort, which is very clearly one of his primary goals, he has paused that effort in certain industries because of the pushback from the business community and recognition that, you know, we can't get food to our table unless we have workers. And we can't get the nursing homes to have workers and the home health care, talking about, you know, tying in with Medicaid. That's right. That's right.
Yeah. So hopefully there's an appetite to solve the worker problem, which is an economic issue to keep our economy rolling and to take a good step towards solving the number of people paying into the Social Security system. We didn't talk about why we have the deficit, but, you know, obviously it's talked about a lot.
One of the reasons that we have this pending deficit and we're using the rainy day fund is the demographic shift of the number of people who are living longer and the baby boomers who are entering Social Security. And the fewer workers, you know, look around. How many children do your friends have and your family have? We have a diminishing population, a shrinking population growth, but we still have these baby boomers entering and into Social Security. So we need more people paying in.
And it seems like a simple solution to me. Yeah. And the demographic element. I mean, baby boomers won't be in the system forever. It's not. Sorry. But there is a temporary nature to that bubble. But your point, Jeff, is still a valid one that we don't make as many babies as we used to. And therefore, there is a declining there's a risk of a declining population.
One of the virtues of the United States has historically been that immigration has helped us manage that challenge where we've had population growth through immigration. So but and that can solve this reality that we we derive payments from employees largely. Absolutely. And it's if you're on the this is this cross. I'm optimistic because this crosses the political spectrum. You can be on the right, right.
You know, the right political side of this and say, you know, you want immigration laws enforced. You want legal workers. Well, this deals with this issue as well. So I do think there's also the arithmetic of this, that, you know, there's a reality that you will likely have some combination of. Either more taxation, right, or reduced benefits. I mean, it's a simple arithmetic equation. At some point, there's you've got to have either or both, you know, either or or both. Right.
That. So whether that's in the form of lifting that cap on the FICA tax, whether it's oh, you've got a window where it comes back in later on. On very high income earners, whether it's means testing on benefits, whether it's raising the retirement age for all of these might be on the table. And all of them seem like they'd be viable elements of a resolution because we do live longer than we did in 19. What when did this all start? Thirty five. Thirty five.
That, you know, as a reality and even 1985 or whatever it was when they did the last reform of this. So as a reality, these are all variables that, you know, how you come up with what is fair and equitable becomes challenging to consider. But as a reality, it's a necessity. If we want to continue this as a program that we consider as a society important to fund, whatever that means, we're going to have to put more revenue toward it. That's taxes in this case, revenue, euphemism. Right.
And then or we're going to need to decrease when you get to start or how much you get, you know, in one form or another. That's right. And I think we need to take that idea and be more creative with it. And what I mean by that is today, Social Security has been a one size fits all. The rules are the rules. The law is the law. And it's all based on your wages that you contributed or paid FICA tax on.
And then there's this PIA formula, right, that has these different thresholds upon which your calculated benefit is the same for everyone. Well, except Weapon GPO. But now that's been fixed, too. So we don't have to have only one PIA formula. We can have, or frankly, one retirement date. We have to really consider the American worker. There's us. We sit in a chair all day. We can work until 70, might not want to, but we could with no physical damage. We're not lifting rocks or something.
We are not lifting rocks. We are not. I just drove from the Boston area to Minnesota to visit my kids a couple of weeks ago. You drive through the heartland and every single freaking mile of highway is under construction. And it was 99 degrees and super humid out in the Midwest. And these guys are slinging hammers and running this huge equipment and moving rocks. You can't do that when you're 70. First of all, it's not safe for all the other workers or the drivers. Your body can't do it.
So let's have different structures of retirement. These are not new ideas. The police for years had, and may even now have, in public safety, you have to retire by 55. Or there were other physical jobs where you had an earlier retirement date. We don't need to penalize our service workers and our construction workers. Let them have one lane of calculated benefit and retire at 62. That's interesting.
And then those of us who are the white collar sitting on our butts all day, well, maybe we are the ones who got age 70 is our full retirement age now. We can be more creative with the math. Labor unions do this. States do it. And pension systems, as you said. So it's not out of the ordinary. It's just not applied to social security. Right. Right. And that's what I think we need to do. Because again, these headlines are relatively terrifying.
The most important people we can protect right now are our 20 and 30 year olds. But they have already written off by and large that social security will even be there for them. That's true. But we haven't then said, okay, children, because these are my children's ages. If you're not thinking you're going to have a foundation, you need to be saving 25 % of your income from day one. Are you doing that? Well, of course they're not.
So they've given up on the one hand, thinking that they will have a future benefit, but they're not taking appropriate actions to fix it either. So it's bad policy. It's bad thinking. And we need to help them move forward. Let alone all of us boomers who, by the way, we're going to stick around for a good long time, Chris. I got at least 35 years on my runway here. Excellent. I'm not complaining about it. I'm just saying. Yeah, you go. Well, that's good.
So that's a creative suggestion as a way to solve it. But there is that political reality that it is the hot potato that if anyone proposes something, they're taking away your benefits kind of mindset, you know, that there's this kind of notion. So I think we've got to get to a point where people are scared enough to recognize this is in need of immediate action. Over the last couple of decades, we've had sufficient runway where there's always been. It's not a problem today, right?
That there's not been this sense of urgency around this. I'm not sure what drives that sense of urgency. I do think whether it's this issue, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the overall budget of the United States government, we are going to be facing more of these realities that we are on a path that we need to address something different. And there's a limit to how much you can do all at once when it comes to a variety of these challenges we face.
But I mean, I'm convinced that over the next decade, this is going to be an increasingly prioritized topic. That is to say, our fiscal planning as a society, that this is going to be a huge priority over the next decade because we are running into these kinds of issues that necessitate that it be dealt with. But I worry it's not going to be until 2032 or whatever it might be. Yeah, 2032, if we're lucky. It's also the impact on industry.
And I think this is where the industries now need to get in the game in a much more aggressive way. So we'll take the nursing homes first. They're in the game now because they're going to lose revenue in a big way, not be able to take care of the elderly and those with disabilities. So they're going to really be yelling and screaming. The hospital systems will do the same because the emergency rooms are going to be blowing out the doors with people waiting for care.
But our industry, financial services also needs to get in the game because if there is a reduction in benefits of any sort for Social Security and couple it with an increase in Medicare Part B premiums, which are forecast to rise 11% between this year and next year. So from $185 per person per month standard premium to $206 and change. You know, that's a stunning number, right? Yeah. We're getting squeezed and the inflation, the COLA won't be all that big. No way. We're squeezing the consumer.
But the result for our industry is going to be, well, if I can't afford to pay for my basics from my anticipated pool of resources, Social Security, maybe pension and say 4% of my portfolio, well, now I'm drawing down five or I'm drawing down six or I'm drawing down seven. And that, as you know, is a recipe for failure, both for our industry, because we're going to burn through assets too quickly on the book and for real people. So it's everything is getting squeezed.
Like there's just brick walls on all sides right now. So I completely agree with you that this is going to be one of the top, if not the top topic for the next several years. Well, let's hope they have some political courage to deal with it sooner than later. Yeah. Yeah. Those numbers are scary, Marsha. The way you painted that picture. So I agree. Let's hope it is compelling and prioritized and we can see some political courage from. And some industry push where we haven't always pushed.
Fair enough. Good point. Yeah. Takes all parties. Want to wrap things up and mention that if you're enjoying learning some of these things that Marsha is pointing out, you have a newsletter and our listeners may benefit from signing up, subscribing. Do you want to share how to do that? Sure. Thank you. Yes. It's boomerretirementbriefs.com. It's a blog format, longer form stories, examples and such. So you can just hop online to boomerretirementbriefs
.com and you can sign up or just poke around all the articles that are in there. Hey, for the listeners who didn't catch it, I'll put it in the show notes, the link, so you can just go right to the show notes and click. Thanks, Jeff. Sure. Marsha, always a wealth of information. So valuable. Thank you for making the time. Come back and see us again. We're definitely going to need to talk about more. When the new book's out, make sure you reach out and come back. Thank you. I will.
Thank you so much. I hope you found this as valuable as we have. Until next time, everybody keeps striving for something more. Thank you for listening to Something More with Chris Boyd. Call us for help, whether it's for financial planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Whatever's on your mind, visit us at somethingmorewithchrisboyd .com or call us toll-free at 866 -771-8901.
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