Price: $20.00 - $11.28
(as of Dec 22, 2024 01:41:07 UTC – Details)
Social Security law has changed! Get What’s Yours has been revised and updated to reflect new regulations that took effect on April 29, 2016.
Get What’s Yours has proven itself to be the definitive book about how to navigate the forbidding maze of Social Security and emerge with the highest possible benefits. It is an engaging manual of tactics and strategies written by well-known financial commentators that is unobtainable elsewhere. You could try reading all 2,728 rules of the Social Security system (and the thousands of explanations of these rules), but academia’s Kotlikoff, the popular press’s Moeller, and public television’s Solman explain the Social Security system just as comprehensively, and a lot more comprehensibly. Moreover, they demonstrate that what you don’t know can seriously hurt you: wrong decisions about which Social Security benefits to apply for cost individual retirees tens of thousands of dollars in lost income every year. (Some of those people are even in the book.)
Changes to Social Security that take effect in 2016 make it more important than ever to wait as long as possible (until age 70, if possible) to claim Social Security benefits. The new law also has significant implications for those who wish to claim divorced spousal benefits (and how many Social Security recipients even know about divorced spousal benefits?). Besides addressing these and other issues, this revised edition contains a chapter explaining how Medicare rules can shape Social Security decisions.
Many other personal-finance books briefly address Social Security, but none offers the full, authoritative, yet conversational analysis of Get What’s Yours.
Get What’s Yours explains Social Security benefits through basic strategies and stirring stories. It covers the most frequent benefit scenarios faced by married retired couples; by divorced retirees; by widows and widowers. It explains what to do if you’re a retired parent of dependent children; disabled; an eligible beneficiary who continues to work. It addresses the tax consequences of your choices, as well as the financial implications for other investments. It does all this and more.
There are more than 52 million Americans aged 54 to 69. Ten thousand of them reach Social Security’s full retirement age of 66 every day. For all these people—and for their families and friends—Get What’s Yours has proven to be an invaluable, and therefore indispensable, tool.
ASIN : 1501144766
Publisher : Simon & Schuster; Revised, Updated ed. edition (May 3, 2016)
Language : English
Hardcover : 384 pages
ISBN-10 : 9781501144769
ISBN-13 : 978-1501144769
Item Weight : 15.3 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.25 inches
Bert –
Review of four books on Social Security. This the best of the four.
There is a lot online content. Some of it ls misleading and some is outright incorrect. That is why I recommend the book below.Note: This is a review of four books. You may have to scroll down to the specific book you are interested in.”Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security” by Laurence J Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller, and Paul SolmanIf you are a numbers person, mathematician, math teacher, engineer, scientist, accountant, or financial planner then this is probably the best book for you. Get the latest edition. I have read four books,cover to cover, on Social Security and how to get the most from it. This is and will be the last book purchased because it has done the best job at explaining what I wanted to know. No book can explain all of SS and the many options available. This answered many but not all of my questions and gave me a very good understanding to the complexity of Social Security. If I had bought this book 1st, I know I would have bought some of the other books in hopes of finding the solution I wanted and I would have been disappointed in the other books.You do not need this book or any book for that matter if:You’ve never been married.You’ve never been disabled.You are not supporting a disabled parent or child.Your spouse (deceased, divorced, or still married to you) has never paid into Social Security.You have never worked for a government agency.You have no other pension benefits owed to you.You will not marry (or remarry) after you retire.You may have already begun receiving benefits and figure it is too late to change anything – that there is no “do overs.” This book explains if possible, how, when, and what you can do to undo your Social Security filing. Basically, you must have just started receiving SS payments within the last 12 months. If so, you can undo what you have done. This book explains how.If you figure, you will make an appointment with Social Security and they will answer your specific questions and concerns, then you may not know all you need to know to ask the right questions. We went to our local Social Security office and we had two phone appointments. We spent a total time of 6 hours waiting and talking. The majority was waiting. The people within Social Security do try to do their best to help you but after reading this book I understand how none of them can know everything there is to know about Social Security. None of them gave me false information even if some of what we were told was a tad misleading. I feel they try their best and, in general, are good at their job. Information from Social Security should not be a substitute for getting and reading this book.If you are not that interested in having to trudge through a book like this one. One of the authors, Laurence J Kotlikoff, has on-line software home license for sale – Maximize My Social Security. While I can not review this software, I can let you know that it is available. I have to believe this is one of the better software on the market.”Social Security for Dummies, 2nd Edition”, by Jonathan PetersonThis is the 1st book on Social Security that I read. It is my second choice of Social Security books. It is easy to read and contains a lot of tips. It is not as extensive as Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security. Still it is a good basic primer on Social Security. It does contain several online links to help. One of the best links is from Dummies.com.I can recommend this book for those who want more than just general information that you can find at http://www.ssa.gov. It will answer many question about a variety of situations. It will provide a good starting point before talking with Social Security. It does fill a need but if your situation is complex this may not meet your needs. “Social Security Income Planning: The Baby Boomer Guide to Maximize Your Retirement Benefits” by Mark J OrrThis is the third book I purchased. It did have information not found in the Dummies book. It is a well written book with more information but a bit harder for me to follow. At this, I was looking specific information. In my haste, I may have missed what I needed. While a good book, I would not recommend it.”Social Security Simplified: The Complete Guide to Understanding Social Security” by ClydeBank FinanceThis was the second book I purchased. It was either free or less than $5 as an eBook. Beyond the presumptuousness of the title, it is worth a read. The simplified guide to Social Security would be similar to the simplified guide to rocket science. My recommendation is that if its free, download it. If it costs anything, save your money and purchase my 1st recommendation.
SMUDGE –
Eye opening
Very useful and know I have a bigger arsenal than I did before thank you.
Orange Newt –
Not just helpful — revelatory!
Even though this is supposed to be a simplified, made-clear guide to Social Security, my head was spinning after a first look-through. But I found that if I focused on just the parts that pertain to my own situation, after four or five readings things were understandable. Much depends on whether a person contemplating filing for Social Security is married, single, divorced, or a widow/widower (and for Social Security’s purposes, someone can be a widow/widower of an ex-spouse! but already I’m getting more into the arcane detail than I meant to). The explanations of the rules are invaluable, and the authors’ advice seems to be pretty much five-star, though you should keep an open mind about disagreeing with some of it. For example, they generally take a most-conservative attitude, advising people to wait until age 70 to file, when they can begin collecting the maximum benefit; but that’s based on assuming you’re going to live forever, or at least past 83, plus a lot of people just can’t afford to delay that long. (If the book’s authors are reading this, they’re wringing their hands, jumping up and down, and pulling their hair out — didn’t I READ Chapter 2? I did, but I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as they do.) But again, maybe getting into too much detail! Overall this book is probably the best information at the lowest price you’ll find. Don’t delay, get your copy today.Update: At least one part of this book is already almost outdated … the authors caution readers about a number of Social Security “gotchas”, and note that the biggest “gotcha” of all is that the rules can be changed: and (November 2015), that’s in the process of happening; the “file and suspend” option is about to be eliminated. Check with the SSA for more complete details…
Diljoh B –
Ignores the Elephant in the Room.
It’s a decent book, entertainingly written. But like most books of its ilk, pounding into us to work until we’re 70 to receive the maximum SS benefits totally ignores the 800 lb elephant in the room. They’re telling us to give up years of our life, years when we’re more likely to be in decent enough health to do and enjoy the things we like . . and to WASTE those healthier years working in jobs that most of us do not like or enjoy (most people don’t have rewarding upper-middle class careers) . . . So that you’ll have more money in later years, when your less-likely to have the health to enjoy the things you like.This is reducing your precious years of life to a balance sheet. If hiking is my life’s passion, do I forego it from 62 until 70, when the odds are highly likely I won’t be able to enjoy it at the same level? And instead, continue using up healthy years of my life in a job, or 2 jobs, I hate?And like most similar books, it ignores the fact that many (most?) folks in good corporate jobs start getting laid off with astounding regularity as they go through their 50s and early 60s, and have a much harder time finding any work, let alone reading work.
SCM –
Very informative and helpful
st –
The book is repetitive, and its advice sometimes seems contradictory. It’s not well organized. In the case of one important decision that spouses must make in choosing benefits, I’m still not sure what the authors are recommending, even though I’ve re-read the relevant sections several times. However, the book raises possibilities for squeezing the most out of Social Security that I would not have known about otherwise. I think there’s a good chance that it will eventually gain us income. If you’re approaching retirement age, it’s definitely worth a read.
Thomas M. Dlugosch –
Should be required reading. Amazingly easy to absorb despite complexity of SSA. I was able to read it in one day. Couldn’t stop!