The thought of retirement shouldn’t be stressful for you. There’s so many special loopholes that you can take advantage of to make that retirement income bigger than ever.
But the simplest—and most overlooked—of all loopholes is right in front of your nose, and you can’t miss out on it.
This extra $52k a year goes unclaimed by so many people simply because they’ve never heard of the loophole.
It couldn’t be any simpler, and it’s something you can take advantage of immediately…
This loophole goes by many names, but I refer to it as the “claim now, claim more later” loophole.
That name tells all: you claim money now, and you claim more money later.
The way it works is very simple, when a married couple retires, each spouse usually claims their retirement benefits immediately, but this is exactly where they’re throwing away the extra $52k a year that could have a huge impact on their life.
Consider that the average retirement income in the U.S. for 2017 is $90,000 a year (age 55-64).
The way this loophole works is this:
When the couple retires, only one person should claim their full retirement (for clarity sake, we’ll say this is the wife).
The husband would then hold off on claiming his full retirement and instead utilize something called a spousal benefit.
A spousal benefit, commonly used by couples with only one worker, is a benefit that can be claimed by the spouse of a retiree, which pays out 50% of the retiree’s income.
So let’s say the wife retired and claimed her $90,000 a year retirement package. The husband would then claim a spousal benefit which would pay out $45,000 a year.
Now, it may seem that retirement would be more comfortable if both retirees claimed the $90,000, but the reason the loophole works so well is because the husbands untouched retirement fund then grows 8% per year.
After 6 years of using this loophole, the husband can then claim his full retirement package of $142,818 per year ($90,000 plus 8% for 6 years).
So instead of the initial $180,000 per year you’d receive if you both took your full retirement benefits immediately, you’d now be claiming $232,818 per year, not to mention the $270,000 over the 6 years of the spousal benefit.
This works out to an extra $52,000 a year for you to live comfortably on.
As I mentioned, this retirement loophole is often overlooked, and hundreds of thousands of people miss out on this extra $52,000 a year that they should be claiming. That money makes a huge difference for the retirees who know about this loophole.
