Bryan C. Fleming

I get letters from the Social Security office here in the United States, just as everyone else does. These letters tell you how much money you’ll get when you reach retirement age. What’s funny is how they keep changing the ‘retirement age’.

Below is a photocopied section of the letter I got from them yesterday



In telemarketing there is a term called ‘spiffing’ your phone operators. It means to give them a big incentive to close one more sale. Looking at the picture above, I’d say the government is trying to ‘spiff’ everyone into working longer. Consider that they will pay me almost twice as much if I hang in and work another 7 years.

You also can’t help but read the bold print on the bottom that this could change at any moment. So none of this is guaranteed.

You simply can’t depend on the government to take care of you. That’s why you need to save money. Even by saving a modest amount of money regularly you’ll gain more interest from your retirement account than Social Security will pay you. That is, if they can even pay you at all.

If you have not been able to save money, start today. Join the Million Dollar Savings club and build the habit of saving money. You won’t need to rely on the government. In fact by the time YOU decide to retire (not when they tell you to) you’ll probably have too much money and they will disqualify you. Personally, I’m OK with that.

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