Your Best Options For Avoiding A Miserable Retirement If You Don’t Have Savings

Whether Social Security checks provide enough income to sustain you in your retirement depends largely on how much money you have when you do not figure in your Social Security income. If you have a retirement pension, distributions from a 401(k) account, or both, and you and your spouse each get Social Security income, then the Social Security checks feel like a windfall. You might not even have to use them to pay bills; you can just give the money away as holiday gifts at the end of the year, knowing that the annual gift tax exclusion will protect you. You are especially likely to be in that situation if the mortgage on your house is already paid off, thanks to the lucrative job that enabled you to accumulate so much retirement savings. That is not most people’s reality, though. A substantial portion of the Americans who are retiring this year do not have savings, and that number will only increase in subsequent years. Social Security income, by itself, is barely enough to keep you out of poverty, so the key to an acceptable standard of living is to make the most of your other resources. For help planning for a retirement where you cannot count on employer-provided retirement savings, contact a Tampa estate planning lawyer.

Social Security Income Is Enough to Contribute to a Household but Not Enough to Be Independent

Since its inception, Social Security retirement income has never been meant to provide prosperity. Its purpose is to provide just enough money to keep a person who truly has no one out of abject poverty and to prevent an elderly member of a multigenerational household from being a financial burden on his or her family. It is unfortunate that it took desperate financial circumstances like the ones that almost everyone in our society is experiencing to make us realize that being close to people we trust brings a greater sense of security than having more than enough money in the bank to cover our expenses does.

If a multigenerational household is an option, then attaching yourself to one can be to anyone’s financial benefit. If your children will let you move in with them, then do so; it is even better if their property is conducive to a granny pod or a finished basement. A son, daughter, niece, or nephew who has young children may welcome you to the household to be an additional adult to help wrangle the children. If the closest people in your life are not blood relatives but friends, then a Millennial Golden Girls or Millennial Golden Guys arrangement may work for you, where several friends move in with a friend who owns a house, and all the senior housemates contribute to the household expenses.

Contact David Toback About Making Do With Social Security Retirement Income

A Central Florida probate lawyer can help you avoid financial catastrophe if Social Security is the only income you can count on in retirement.  Contact David Toback in Tampa, Florida to set up a consultation.

Source:

moneywise.com/retirement/retirement/65-no-retirement-savings-hybrid