From a summary of a bill reported out of the House Ways and Means Committee:
Studies show that people are confused by the current SSA terms and are generally uninformed about how their claiming decisions affect their monthly benefits.
- As a result, many of today’s seniors are missing out on substantial retirement income because of suboptimal claiming decisions.
The Claiming Age Clarity Act:
Directs the Social Security Commissioner to change the terminology SSA uses when describing benefit claiming ages to better reflect the implications of claiming decisions:
FRA [Full Retirement Age] would be referred to as the “standard monthly benefit age.”
“Early eligibility age” would be referred to as the “minimum monthly benefit age”
Any reference to age 70 as the maximum age up to which delayed retirement credits can be accrued would be referred to as the “maximum monthly benefit age.”
8 comments:
Official agency publications had already been shifting to calling FRA "Normal Retirement Age." I'm not confident that re-labeling would cause a noticeable change in filing decisions. There's a lot of uncertainty and people generally want to final security as soon as possible, even if it means there's a big reduction. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
"many of today’s seniors are missing out on substantial retirement income because of suboptimal claiming decisions." I would be interested in knowing the basis for this statement.
There used to be a time when the CR and the RIB bene sat down during the interview and explained MOE (month of election) and all the key dates and pros and cons of each for the bene to decide. Even the dreaded today "breakeven point". We had classes in determining MOE and how to consider (at the time) taking one benefit at 62 then switching at 65 (this was before there was a "FRA") or ins and outs of widows and ones own RIB etc. Made the interviews longer but it was full service service. Bet you half the CRs around don't really grasp this as the agency decided to abdicate any of this, minimized such training and assume the bene knows all this already and "is the best person to make the decision" (without all the data). So unless they are going back to better service in this area, which isn't happening, anything that helps the citizen make a better decision can't hurt.
What a waste of time. How much effort will go into this futile exercise of lining up the deck chairs on the Titanic? It seems like the looming trust fund insolvency will have a far, far bigger negative impact on benefits than a filing decision. Unbelievable, but typical of both parties in Congress.
Renaming things costs money and confuses people. But this admin seems to love doing just that.
When you have appointments at 15-30 minute intervals it is impossible to take the time to fully explain MOEs and filing options without being perpetually behind and getting hounded by mgmt to speed it up. Training in the last 15 years has been so horrible I doubt many CS’ could fully explain the differences and the options between RIB/Widow’s benefits.
It's amazing how little thought seniors put into their MOE decision at the time of interview. SSA CSs are not financial advisors. Changing names wouldn't change forethought/actual retirement planning.
That is how i was trained back in the day. Now I dont work there anymore, and that makes me happy
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