Congress Eliminates Two Popular (and Profitable) Social Security Claiming Strategies

The Bad News & The Good News

Originally published CNBCLast week, the world of retirement planning experienced the financial equivalent of a deafening record scratch, courtesy of a Congressional move to end two well-used Social Security claiming strategies. In a matter of months, “File-and-Suspend” and “Restricted Application,” which were on the verge of retirement planning rock-star status, will only be referred to in the past tense.

“File-and-Suspend” and “Restricted Application” — let’s just call them “FASRA,” because it’s not like there aren’t already enough government-related acronyms — were, Congress argues, unintended consequences of the Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act.

A 4-Step Process to Integrating Money and Life

Originally in ForbesOnce you’ve abandoned the pursuit of balancing money and life in favor of integrating the two, the question still remains: Now what? How the heck do I better integrate money and life? Like most personal finance dilemmas, the answer is simple, but not easy.

It’s simple because it doesn’t require many steps. What’s more, it’s advice you’ve likely heard before, perhaps multiple times. But it’s challenging because you have to do some work—interior work. And then you have to make some difficult decisions.

Before I share the process, it’s imperative that we recognize a fundamental financial truth, often shrouded in a sea of marketing, misinformation and self-help rubbish that’s more sales than psychology.

RULE: Money is a means, not an end. Money is a tool—a neutral tool that is neither good nor evil. It may, however, be used in pursuit of either good or evil, and everything in between. Money can be well-utilized in the pursuit of goals, but it makes a very poor, lonely goal in and of itself.

Understanding—and believing and applying—this rule is the aim of the following systematic four-step approach to better integrating life and money: