In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon Stancil and Murs Tariq discuss one of the most important decisions in retirement planning—when to take Social Security. Should you take Social Security early at 62, or should you consider delaying Social Security until age 70 to maximize your Social Security benefits? They break down the myths, the math, and the real-life scenarios that go into making the right Social Security decision as part of a well-rounded retirement financial plan.

Listen in to learn about how Social Security planning fits into your overall financial planning for retirement, and why there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Radon and Murs explain how factors like longevity, income needs, spousal Social Security benefits explained, and your overall retirement checklist all play a role in deciding whether to take Social Security early or wait. If you want to plan for retirement, understand your options, and retire comfortably, this episode will help you move closer to confidently securing your future.

In this episode, find out:

• The pros and cons of taking Social Security early at 62 versus delaying Social Security to age 70
• How to evaluate the Social Security decision based on your personal retirement planning strategies
• Why maximizing benefits isn’t always the best answer for your retirement financial plan
• Key scenarios where delaying Social Security may make sense, including longevity and income planning
• How spousal Social Security benefits and legacy goals impact your decision

Tweetable Quotes:

“The real question isn’t how do I maximize Social Security—it’s how does Social Security best complement my overall retirement plan.” – Murs Tariq

“If the math shows you can have the same or more money by taking Social Security early, many people choose flexibility and peace of mind over waiting.” – Radon Stancil

Resources:

If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement!

To access the course, simply visit POMWealth.net/podcast.

Here’s the full transcript:

I’m sitting here another day. How are you doing today, Murs? Doing pretty good. How are you? 

Pretty good. It’s that time of year where I love it. It’s all the, you know, 

things are blooming. I love it. The flowers are out. So, I’m excited. I love whenever I go on my 

walks and get to see all that kind of stuff. Well, I know we wanted to kind of talk about a couple 

different things, but I’m curious what you’ve been running into here recently when you’re doing 

what we call our financial planning strategy meetings. Yeah, we had a pretty good one yesterday in 

one of these meetings, financial planning strategy, that we try to run at the beginning, first half 

of the year. to kind of set up the whole year and the conversation became uh very focused on social 

security planning and when is the right time and do, we do we take it now uh do we wait till 70 and 

so, you know the family came in with their opinions, but they obviously trust us uh to help them 

think it through and so we spent a good 20 to 30 minutes kind of walking through different types of 

scenarios and i said you know what These are conversations that are happening all the time. And I 

think it could be a great conversation to have here today on the podcast just because it is a big 

concern. You know, you don’t want to mess up that decision on Social Security. So that’s kind of 

where the whole beginning of this episode came from. Yeah. So, I think it would be good then for us 

to kind of like maybe to lay this out or map it out just so people got to have a… clear picture um 

if you’re already in social security then you know you kind of know this but maybe this will be 

one of those things where you go i want to know if i did it the right way or not and if you’re 

thinking about social security then then this will kind of help you maybe think it through so i 

think it’s you know what the question usually comes up when we’re in these meetings is you’re 

sitting with somebody who let’s say is you know 60-ish years old and they’re kind of we’re building 

out the plan and the questions usually come up with hey i can start my social security at 62. I 

could anywhere from between 62 and 70. Now, the reason why we say 70 is that it doesn’t make any 

sense to wait till after 70. I mean; I guess very rare because I get no more increases. 

You know, I’m maxed out on my plan. So, waiting to 70, some people think, 

hey, that’s a really smart thing to do. But I guess. You got to understand if I start at 62, 

I’m going to get less money for the rest of my life from Social Security. And so, the question comes 

out, you know, should I wait until 70 so that I can get a bigger number? And I think it’s important 

to kind of think through how we how we do that. So, I guess maybe if you want to walk through a 

little bit, Murs, just kind of like the setup here of what we’re going to look at to help make 

this decision, what tools we use and how we do that. Yeah. So, you know, I think. Sometimes people, 

especially they’ll go to Google and ask the question of when the right time is to take Social 

Security. And the thing about Google or even ChatGPT today and any other AI tools is that, 

well, they don’t know your financial situation. And so those articles and those AIs, 

they’re speaking to the masses. And if you’re speaking to the masses, well, the max benefit is at 

age 70. So, a lot of times it points your answer towards waiting until age 70. That could make some 

sense, but we believe there’s a good argument to put your own finances, 

your own scenarios into play to help make that decision. And at the end of the day, the question 

that we ask is, well, how does Social Security complement our plan the best? Not how do I maximize 

Social Security as much. It’s more of how does it complement my plan the best? 

And I think we’ll talk more about that. at the end of the day what we’re utilizing is is tools and 

software to help us when we build out a financial plan that creates this roadmap that gives us a 

basis to make comparisons off of so when we have the plan built out, we can run different types of 

scenarios and social security specific we can run hey well what if we take it now what if we take 

it later what are the impacts when it comes to cash flow but also the impact when it comes to the 

uh our accounts and if we take it later, are we drawing more on the accounts earlier? 

And that is that problematic? If we take it earlier, how much do we have to draw to supplement 

Social Security to live the life that we want to live? And so, you know, that’s the type of 

evaluation that we’re looking at. And what I tell people all the time is if you’ve done a good job 

saving and building up that retirement nest egg, all of a sudden. 

Comfort becomes an option and flexibility is built into the plan to where go to the opposite side. 

You’ve done nothing when it comes to saving and you have no assets. So, of course, the answer is 

you got to work as long as you can. And then when you’re finally done able to work, then you have 

to you take it at 70. Right. because there’s no other assets to complement your plan. So, I think 

that’s what’s worth talking about here today, Radon, is, you know, let’s talk about waiting and 

how that’s become a bit of the default. Yeah, I was just sitting here, and I thought we didn’t do 

this in preparation, but I was like, I’m going to ask ChatGPT, when should I take Social Security? 

I like the opening line, though. It says, this is one of the most important financial decisions 

you’ll make, and the right answer depends heavily on your situation. And then it gave a nice 

dissertation, but I think… the default has been if you were to go out and google or do what you 

know talk to somebody who’s just giving maybe there’s been lots of articles written and the default 

has been wait until the last-minute meaning you delay it delay it delay it but i want to give 

context to those articles and give context to what’s being said a lot of times now when i just did 

that chat gpt that’s a little different than what we used to have with google with the articles 

because it’s going to help it does say we need to look at your situation So there’s accuracy in 

that part of the deal. I didn’t read all of what it came out with, but here’s the thing. Articles 

that get written or when I’m talking to a mass audience, I’m usually answering the question for the 

most people in the audience, okay? Now, we have a very different audience here on Secure Your 

Retirement Podcast. And what do I mean by that? Well, for the most part, people that listen to this 

podcast have been good savers. They’ve been able to put money into their 401ks. They’ve got 

brokerage accounts. And so they’ve been able to accumulate money. If I were to be talking, 

if I were talking to, though, folks that have not been good savers, which unfortunately, 

from a population standpoint, is the majority of people today, the majority of people. 

have not been good savers. We get a little skewed sometimes in our world because all we do is work 

with good savers. You don’t really come work with Peace of Mind Wealth Management if you’ve not 

been a good saver. So, our language around Social Security is very different. But if I were talking 

to a mass amount of people who had not been good savers, I am going to say, wait until the last 

minute. Why? Well, because they don’t have anything else saved up. And I know that means that you 

might be working later. I understand that it’s going to be more difficult for you to be able to 

think about retirement. And those are all things that we could debate and talk about on a separate 

podcast. 

scenario, wait to 70 because I need the most money I can get for the rest of my life. 

However, if I have been a good saver and I have other money, well, 

now that whole circumstance changes. And I think that’s just an important thing for us to think 

about. So, there are some scenarios that we’ll talk about here in a minute, but I’ll let you kind of 

hop in here on that particular topic on why it’s been the default or how we want to kind of… 

this out yeah, I think to add to why it’s been the default is a lot of times you’ll hear the 

phrase of well where else can you get a guaranteed growth rate of you know roughly about eight 

percent every year that you wait from 62 to 70 social security grows by eight percent and so and 

it’s basically guaranteed now i think that guarantee feels more up in the air today than it did 10 

years ago, because of where social security is at and the issues with social security but that was 

kind of the framing Where else can you get a guaranteed rate of return like that? So that was to 

push the conversation of it makes perfect sense to wait. Spend your assets and wait and get this 

guaranteed growth rate on your social security. But, you know, I think there are times where it 

does make sense to wait, even with the families that we work with. We see it from time to time. A 

couple of different types of scenarios that come around. Where, you know, we’ve got someone that 

they’ll walk in and they say, you know, my mom and my dad both live to 100. I’ve got longevity in 

my family. I’ve got a crystal-clear bill of health. And I know that this term of breakeven comes 

around when it comes to Social Security planning. I know that I can beat that break-even point of 

if I wait till 70, I have to live until, say, age 87 or something like that to break even. 

on not filing earlier and i know i can beat that math right and so that can make good sense um uh 

at times you know uh there’s other scenarios around spousal planning uh that could make a good 

amount of sense i think we’ll come back to, or you’ve got someone who loves what they do or 

they’re working right and or they’re generating some element of income that’s providing a 

good amount of cash flow so Then those circumstances kind of start to point towards, well, why not 

wait a little bit longer if we’ve got good cash flow, we’ve got good income, or we’re happy doing 

the job we’re doing. We don’t feel like we’re in this work optional type of environment. So why not 

delay Social Security and get the bigger benefit? But I think spousal planning rating is a really 

good one. That is, it doesn’t come up that often, but I think there are times where it makes 

perfect sense to think about this spouse or the surviving spouse when it comes to Social Security. 

Yeah, I think there’s a couple different reasons to wait, but we can hit on that one for the 

spousal planning there for just a minute. So, let’s just paint the picture. 

Let’s say that I’m married and I’ve been the higher income earner. 

And by the way, when I use the word I, you could be either one of the spouses that are the higher 

income earner. But whoever is the higher income earner, let’s say that they also happen to be older 

than the other. So, let’s just for easy math, let’s say there’s a 10-year gap between the two. 

Well, what that tells me is, especially if it’s the male who is the higher age, 

right? They are less likely to live as long as the female part of the relationship. 

So that already is kind of tagged on. And so, what would I do? Well, I might want to wait to 70 so 

that I have a larger benefit. And here’s why. Because my spouse is going to get that amount. 

The way it works is that whenever one person of a couple passes away, the surviving spouse does not 

get both Social Security payments, but they get the higher of the two. So, what I’m doing by waiting 

is I will wait so that I can actually… give her, have her, 

or let’s say whoever the lower income earner was, the bigger benefit because they’re going to get 

it much longer. Now this could play out in a couple different ways. Let’s go to the scenario where, 

let’s say that I was a much higher income earner. I’m working until I’m 65 or 67 or whatever, 

but my spouse goes ahead and maybe they start taking it 62. They start taking their Social Security 

because we’re mentally kind of going down this path that they’re going to inherit my larger amount. 

So, I would wait till 70. That could be a strategy that we would need to think through. I think 

there’s another one though, and I can’t remember, Murs, if we kind of talked about this or not, 

but I guess we did on the tax strategy. And like, if you want to kind of hit on that, because if a 

person’s thinking about a Roth conversion, there’s another reason to wait. 

I’ve got a great example on this. When we had a family come to us and became a new client of ours 

because they you know they hear about what we do financial planning and then tax focus strategy 

meetings and everything like that they had come to us uh this was probably a couple years ago now 

uh and he had already turned on her social security and when we’re going through the 

financial planning process it becomes very clear and evident that one of her major goals is for 

legacy planning and she wants to leave behind tax-free assets One of the most common ways to do 

that is through this thing called a Roth conversion. We talk about it all the time. It’s tricky 

thing to do. You have to pay attention to a lot of things when it comes to taxes and Medicare and 

all of that. But the gist of it is that that is what she wanted to really focus on over the next 

few years. Well, the thing about Social Security is that it is taxable. And so, she had just turned 

on her Social Security. It was adding to her taxable income. While it’s not fully taxable, the 

majority of it is taxable, up to about 85%. And so, what dawned on her as we were going through the 

tax strategy meeting with her is that man, if I just didn’t have this Social Security income, then 

my income would be lower, which allows for me now to do more conversions in the next few years. 

And so, because her priority was legacy, not cash flow, her priority was legacy in Roth conversion 

planning, what we ultimately decided to do, which, you know, it was a pain, it was a headache. So, I 

encourage you to think about tax strategies, think about your goals before you make any decisions 

around Social Security. What we ended up doing is reversing her Social Security, which you can do. 

It’s a tougher process, but you can do it. We reversed her Social Security so that now that income 

comes off of her and we’re able to utilize a lower taxable income to do more Roth conversions for a 

certain period of time. So really, that I think could be a really good reason to delay Social 

Security if we’re proactive about it. If we say, hey, our goal is tax planning, 

tax strategy, Roth conversions, tax-free life inheritance, all this stuff. Well, it could make 

sense to delay and keep our income as low as possible so that we’d have the ability to convert even 

moreover, some coming years. And then you turn it on later and then you get the added benefit of it 

grew while you were doing conversion planning. I think the key takeaway there is that waiting in 

general works best when it fits into the broader plan. And what’s the broader plan? Well, it should 

be goals driven by you. What do you want your retirement to look like and what do you want your 

legacy to look like? And all the pieces then start to fall in between. So, we talked a little bit 

about why waiting could make sense. 

There are reasons as to, and this happens more than not, I think. where waiting doesn’t make sense, 

and let’s go ahead and turn it on, Radon, right? So, what are some of the scenarios that you’ve 

seen that we’ve said, let’s just go ahead and turn it on? All right, so let’s walk down the 

scenario, and I’m going to give you the one which would be the earliest, because sometimes people 

go, well, I should never turn on my Social Security at 62. So, let’s walk down a path. Let’s say 

that I have a family that I’m working with. They are both 62. years old. 

And they have been really good savers. They’ve got a good amount of money over in their 401k IRA. 

I’m going to give you some context. Let’s just say I got a person who’s got a million and a half 

between the couple. a million and a half, $2 million in their 401k IRA. I know sometimes when I say 

that on this show and it gets on YouTube, I get all these comments, who in the world has a million 

and a half to $2 million? And that’s, you know, again, that comes back to the mass who’s listening. 

But for our audience, that’s not uncommon at all to have a million and a half, 2 million between a 

family and 401k IRA money. And then let’s say they’ve got some other brokerage money and let’s go 

ahead and throw it out there. They got another million, million and a half in brokerage savings, 

those kinds of things. And they’re going to retire. And so they go, okay, I now need money to live 

on, right? Because they don’t have income anymore because they’re going to retire. And so the 

question comes in, when should I take Social Security? So, if you run that math and we put it into 

our financial planning software and we show it all the time, and we do one scenario where we’re just 

going to take money from savings and we don’t care; we just don’t worry about where we’re taking 

it. We’re just taking it from savings, brokerage money, savings in the bank. whatever. We’re not 

trying to do conversions. That’s not on the radar of what we’re trying to do right now. And we’re 

going to take that money and we’re going to live on it. And we need whatever the amount of money we 

need. We’re going to take it from savings and we’re going to delay social security to age 70. And 

then we go run all that math out and we go, what do we have left at age 90? Okay, 

so that’s one way to do the calculation. Then we come back and say, okay, well, no, we’re going to 

start Social Security now, so we don’t have to take as much money from our savings, which means 

it’s going to be a lesser amount than if we wait to 70. And then we run all that math out, and then 

we say, how much money do we have left at age 90? We run everything the same. 

We do COLA adjustments on the Social Security. We run the same rate of return. 

We do everything the same, and then we say, what do we have left at age 90? Here’s the interesting 

thing. A lot of times we’re going to have a little bit more money at age 90 because we took social 

security at age 62. I don’t care though. Let’s just say we had the same amount of money at age 90. 

Does it not then make sense to go ahead and take social security in most cases? Because when I do 

that, I’m going to have that, I’m going to have more of my money left or the same. That means I 

don’t know when I’m going to pass away. I go ahead and lock into social security. That’s the way I 

think. That’s the way our clients think. Now here’s the thing. uh for the arguments around this so 

what if i hear you want to type like a pro our software does that and we play the what ifs all the 

time and we say well what is it going to be the worst if the spouse dies early so let’s make the 

spouses die age 70. at a very young age today they die at 70 and we run those numbers out the 

numbers still come out to most of the time being the exact same scenario i’ve got the same or more 

money at age 90. So, we always are saying, hey, if that’s the case, now we don’t make those 

decisions. We just show the math. And then here’s what most people say in that. Most people at that 

say, hey, you know what? If I’m going to have the same or a little bit more, I’m going to go ahead 

and take Social Security. That’s their decision. And we’ve proved it with math. on that. 

So, I think that’s just a good way. I don’t know if there’s much more that we want to talk about on 

this, Murs, but I think we’ve hit the main topics of this idea, and obviously there’s a lot more 

we could discuss. Yeah, I think, you know, to bring it home, when it comes to Social Security 

planning, there is no one-size-fits-all decision here. Just like with investment strategy or 

financial planning, you know, those need to be very individualized and catered towards you, just 

like the Social Security decision should be. So, it’s not wait till 70. It’s evaluated your scenario. 

And if you don’t have someone that can help you do that, you know, we’re happy to help you 

understand what that process looks like with us. And there’s a lot of different factors that go 

into it. Longevity, you know, tax planning, goals-based planning, the numbers and the math in 

itself. And then also there’s this one that’s in the back of everyone’s mind that has had some 

weight here in decision making as well as far as what’s the future of Social Security. The nice 

part is that if you’re listening, very likely you fit into that demographic of the good saver type 

of demographic and just know that you’ve got options. If you haven’t saved, 

like Raiden said earlier, and we don’t have assets to support us, well, then you don’t have much 

option. You got to wait. You got to work, work, work, and then hopefully make it to 70 and then 

draw at 70. But when we have assets, we’ve done a good job of proper planning. 

It becomes tremendous flexibility that allows us to make decisions based off of not just math, 

but also, comfort. And with this whole driver of creating peace of mind and reducing stress in 

retirement. All right. Well, if you have any questions and maybe you would like to see your numbers 

and see how that plays out, feel free to go to our website, pomwealth.net and go to the Contact Us 

page and schedule a call. And we can talk about your specific situation and go, does it make sense 

to take it now? Does it make sense to wait? Also, don’t forget, we do have our book out, 

The Peace of Mind Pathway. You can get that right on the website as well. Or if you contact us, 

we’ll just send you one. How about that? And then it doesn’t cost you anything. So, reach out to us 

if you’d like to get a copy. We hope you have a great week. We’ll talk to you again next Monday