The Power of Delaying Your Social Security for a Tax-free Retirement (and your legacy goals)

(don’t forget to checkout the video of this blog too)

I understand the sentiment of wanting to collect your social security as soon as you’re eligible…

BUT, if you can hold off on collecting social security and leverage your other assets, you are MUCH more likely to achieve a tax-free retirement!

Not only does delaying your social security allow you to maximize your guaranteed income in retirement, but it’s also a key strategy on the road to retiring tax-free (or with as small of a tax liability as possible).

Here’s how it works:

✅ Delaying social security allows you to FULLY leverage your standard deduction in retirement

Your standard deduction gives you the capacity to take more money out of your taxable retirement accounts, completely tax-free.

But, once you start collecting social security, you are bound by “provisional income” limits of social security, which drastically reduces the amount of taxable money that you can collect tax-free.

✅ Delaying social security allows you to effectively manage the balance of your TAXABLE assets

Waiting to collect social security income gives you the time to manage and plan for your required income withdrawals from all of your taxable retirement accounts.

This way you have more time to prevent an unnecessary tax being triggered on your social security benefits because of your Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs).

✅ Delaying your social security provides you with more long-term care income

A long-term care event is the one expense that can wipe out almost any retirement plan.

By maximizing the income value of your social security (and having that guaranteed for life), you are exposing less of your retirement assets to the very real risk of being depleted if you or your spouse needs some form of long-term care in retirement.

✅ Delaying social security can allow you to leave more tax-free wealth to your loved ones.

Lastly, by maximizing your income and providing more protection against long-term care, you are preserving more of your assets, which can then be repositioned as part of a tax-free wealth transfer strategy for your loved ones.

Let’s chat 💬😎