Your "return" on Social Security is...

[jedi]

Interesting article today on SS.
return-on-your-social-security-taxes: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

Winners include female spouses that do not work since they collect the most either as wife or widow and live longer than husband.

Another winner are the baby boomers & their parents since this group will get more in benefits than any other genernation. But then again the system was designed with them in mind.

Overall winning family is the married couple with only 1 breadwinner in the household.

 

[Leadeye]

I've wondered if there shouldn't be a "buyout" option for SS, where you would get a smaller lump sum rather than the payments and drop out of the program.

 

[kludge]

Overall winning family is the married couple with only 1 breadwinner in the household.

My dad died at 54. My mom did not work most of the years I lived at home. Trust me, there were no winners in the SS game in my house.

I was working my way through college and didn't qualify for any financial aid because my dead dad made too much money, LOL.

 

[trnsplntfrmohio]

I am still contemplating giving up my ss# so I can just avoid all this, save all the money i would be giving to the government and just stash it and buy other currencies as I see fit.

 

[Doug]

Ha, Ha, that's pretty good!

However, Social Security is not now and never was a retirement or pension program. It was called that to sell it to the voters. It is and always has been a "spread the wealth" Ponzi scheme.
There has never been any investment of the money paid into Social Security.
The Social Security "benefits" have always been paid by the workers paying into the system. This is the classic Ponzi scheme; the new "investors" pay the "profits" of the people receiving money.
Eventually, the top of the pyramid in this scheme will get too big for the bottom of the pyramid to support it.
Then, Social Security benefits will be "indexed" to your income and net worth. If you have other income or assets that allow you to live without using foodstamps, you won't get any social Security.
Remember, promised benefits are not paid benefits.

 

[snorko]

Fun Fact: Ida May Fuller was the first social security recipient. She paid in a total of $24.75, retired in 1939, lived to be 100 years old in 1975, and in the process collected $22,888.92 in benefits.

 

[Bill B]

I am so glad I am not part of that system, you all have my sympathy

 

[dross]

I am still contemplating giving up my ss# so I can just avoid all this, save all the money i would be giving to the government and just stash it and buy other currencies as I see fit.

Just how do you plan to "give up your ss?"

 

[jedi]

I am so glad I am not part of that system, you all have my sympathy

Don't worry your money from the "cho-cho" (i think right) is based on the us paper dollar as well. So your in the same boat just a little higher up from the water line than those in SS. When the icebrg hits its gonna take all of us.

 

[jedi]

Fun Fact: Ida May Fuller was the first social security recipient. She paid in a total of $24.75, retired in 1939, lived to be 100 years old in 1975, and in the process collected $22,888.92 in benefits.

Nice!
http://www.ssa.gov/history/idapayroll.html

 

[level.eleven]

Just how do you plan to "give up your ss?"

Send me $29.95 and I will send you the complete cassette tape series! Act now, and I will through in all the forms you need to never pay SS again for free!

 

[indykid]

Another side of SS that many people don't know about is that if you kick the bucket early, the feds keep all the money you paid in. Your surviving spouse is paid about a $200 death benefit, and unless you have no children, all the rest stays in the pot.

 

[LEaSH]

If I could take my contributions and place them on seventeen black and twenty-nine red I'd have a better chance of seeing anything worthwhile.

 

[dross]

Just to clarify. It's important in any discussion of Social Security to understand there is not one penny in the account. No money. It's all been spent. There is no money.

For every dollar paid to a social security recipient (or a medicare recipient, or a government employee) 60 cents of that dollar is paid by current taxpayers, and 40 cents are borrowed.

All money coming in as social security taxes is going to pay a portion of total government spending.

This is particularly ironic, because as a demographic, social security recipients are among the most wealthy Americans, while some of those paying in are some of the poorest. It's a direct transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.

 

[88GT]

Ha, Ha, that's pretty good!

However, Social Security is not now and never was a retirement or pension program. It was called that to sell it to the voters. It is and always has been a "spread the wealth" Ponzi scheme.
There has never been any investment of the money paid into Social Security.
The Social Security "benefits" have always been paid by the workers paying into the system. This is the classic Ponzi scheme; the new "investors" pay the "profits" of the people receiving money.
Eventually, the top of the pyramid in this scheme will get too big for the bottom of the pyramid to support it.
Then, Social Security benefits will be "indexed" to your income and net worth. If you have other income or assets that allow you to live without using foodstamps, you won't get any social Security.
Remember, promised benefits are not paid benefits.

Preaching to the choir, friend. Preaching to the choir.

I have always argued that the existence of social security proves it's absolutely unnecessary. What's the main superficial argument for SS? Retirement protection, right? The idea that people are unable to do that for themselves so the government has to do it for them.

THEM: People just can't save enough for their retirement. They'd starve or have to eat dog food to pay for their meds.

ME: Really? Like you couldn't just withdraw the same or similar amount from your own paycheck and deposit it in a savings account or some other investment option? You have to have the government do it?

Only instead of actually using YOUR money to make more money, you're okay with handing it over, interest free to your neighbor who's done nothing for it? That sounds like a plan to you? That's how you think it's best to manage your money?

Try this on for size. Let's assume SS never existed and you had the foresight to plan for the future, and you withdrew from your paycheck the SAME EXACT AMOUNT that has been withdrawn for SS. How much is that? [Most don't know, but the light bulb is starting to flicker here.] Well, the next time you get your SS bulletin from .gov, pay attention to the total amount you've paid in.

How much do you realistically think you'll be getting back of that total amount paid in? And how much do you think that total amount could be TODAY if you had had the opportunity to invest it in something--ANYTHING--that provided even a modicum of ROI?

What you're essentially arguing is that giving $100 to your neighbor free and clear today for $75 of it 50 years down the road is a better retirement plan than taking that same $100 and investing it so that 50 years down the road it's $1000. [Obviously, the numbers are for illustrative purposes only.] On what planet is $75 better than $1000?


(Yeah, yeah. I know what the article says, but it has a lot of assumptions, like what constitutes a 'lifetime,' that I'll actually be able to receive benefits at 65, that they won't make any changes to it that I won't be paying taxes on those bennies and have to give some of it back. I would bet money--my SS payments, since I dont' think they'll be worth crap--that tomorrow's SS requirements and regs will look nothing like today's.)

 

[88GT]

For every dollar paid to a social security recipient (or a medicare recipient, or a government employee) 60 cents of that dollar is paid by current taxpayers, and 40 cents are borrowed.

Do you have a citation for that? Not that I don't believe you, I just want to stash it away in my "HA! Take that!!!" coffer.

 

[dross]

Do you have a citation for that? Not that I don't believe you, I just want to stash it away in my "HA! Take that!!!" coffer.

Here's a wikipedia site on the federal budget that shows charts from official sources:

United States federal budget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 2009 we took in 2,105 billion, and we spent 3,518 billion.

So for every dollar spent, we only took in 59.8 cents, meaning we borrow 40.2 cents.

 

[nawainwright]

What I just couldn't get over in the article was the silly thing called numbers. Somehow, by this "watchdog's" numbers everyone would reap a greater benefit than they paid in....forever.....how does that make any sense at all?!?!? "Sure we can make it sustainable, we just tax people more" ISN'T THE STUPID THING A TAX ALREADY?!?! So, lets review,they tax us extra to pay us back for money they already took from us, because we can't take care of ourselves.....

 

[Doug]

You have two choices:

1. Plan for your own retirement and don't count on getting anything from Social Security whether you pay into it or not.

2. Rely on Social Security for your retirement.

If you choose # 2, your existence will probably be so bleak that, in a fit of depression, you will attend the "end of life" counseling session provided by Obamacare and drink yourself to death. That is the way many Russians escaped communism. It will be your way out of Obamunism.

 

[jedi]

Another side of SS that many people don't know about is that if you kick the bucket early, the feds keep all the money you paid in. Your surviving spouse is paid about a $200 death benefit, and unless you have no children, all the rest stays in the pot.

True however your spouse can get widow's benefits off your record if s/he is old enough. So say you die at age 50 and your spouse is age 50 & never worked. Well at age 62 she can apply for widow benefits off your record and get those benefits. So all is not lost.

Just to clarify. It's important in any discussion of Social Security to understand there is not one penny in the account. No money. It's all been spent. There is no money.

Oh so true Dross. What is worse is that the SS trust fund is nothing more than IOUs by the government to the government!

The TREASURY department has been issuing the SSA US Government bonds and all those bonds fill a 5 drawer filing cabinet in MD. That is "all the money" that the SSA trust fund holds.