Social Security: Widows and Widowers - YouTube

Today's Cardinal lesson is going to talk about  the widow and widower benefits of Social Security,  

the surviving spouse, and so if you're the  person who survives and you're the surviving  

spouse or you might be this is going to be of  interest because it's going to talk about what  

your Social Security benefit is, if you're the  person who passes away or who might pass away  

this matters for your estate planning. Many folks  discover that there's essentially a life insurance  

benefit built into Social Security where there's  going to be something there for your surviving  

spouse. I want you to be careful relying on that  because there's a bunch of conditions around this  

stuff that I'm going to go over in a sec and I  want to speak for just a second about the term  

widow and widower, I mean I've been aware and  studying Social Security my whole adult life  

that's my profession and just those two words  are just kind of weird and my young associate,  

who is female, just coming into me and we're  preparing to do this lesson, and it's like man she  

went all over the place looking, couldn't  we just come up with one term to describe  

the person whose spouse died and they still  survived, better than having widow and widower  

I mean, I'm fine if it was just widow and  that could be a man or a woman but a widower  

to me is is a man by definition but  I think if you take the word widower  

and you said well he makes widows so  and he's not, he's the surviving spouse,  

it’s confusing, so the purpose is this and  this is the way Social Security defines them  

so we're going to have to run with what they  say so talking about Social Security benefits  

for widows or widowers. Now the first  point that we want to make up here is  

this is going to be based this benefit if your  spouse passed away it's going to be based upon  

the surviving spouse's Full Retirement Age,  which for most people that haven't done Social  

Security yet that's 67, that's going to be  the Full Retirement Age for you the survivor,  

not of the person your spouse who passed away  so the whole basis of this thing is going to be  

your age, 67. Now the second point with this  is that you're not going to get anything,  

you can't get a benefit until your age 60  as the surviving spouse, so we've had many  

mostly women but certainly some men call in and  we're talking to them and they're asking questions  

and they've or they've written in on our blog and  they're asked you know my husband died, I'm 52,  

what can I get from Social Security, and the  answer to that is nothing till you're 60, okay,  

you can't get because this is based on your Full  Retirement Age which is most likely 67 but you can  

get a reduced benefit starting at age 60. And  so it really gets down to that's why a person  

carries life insurance and that's why people  need life insurance because if your spouse dies  

while you're young and you're relying on an income  and you need survival money that's what life  

insurance is for, so that's not going to do any  good to tell those to these people calling in that  

have already suffered the loss and maybe they had  life insurance they're just looking for something  

more from Social Security there's going to be  nothing comes out of this widow or widower benefit  

until the person receiving the Social Security  checks is age 60 or more. Now this person,  

this is only going to be of benefit if they were  going to rely on their spouse's earnings history  

for filing anyhow, so if you take like my wife  and me, I'm 62, she's 61, and if I were to die  

she would be relying on this benefit,  she probably wouldn't file at 61 because  

I've got substantial life insurance and she would  have the luxury of waiting, so she'd probably  

wait till she's 67 to apply for the benefit and  then she would get my full Social Security check  

of whatever that would have been at 67 if I'd  have made it that far, so because she doesn't  

really have a substantial earnings history,  she's going to rely on my earnings history  

and we're still going to get two checks when  I retire or when I claim Social Security she's  

going to get hers based on my earnings history  so she would be a candidate for this. If you have  

a married couple who both of them work and both  of them have a substantial earnings history,  

then this widow or widower benefits you can't have  both, you can't get your own Social Security check  

and be the surviving spouse filing against your  deceased spouse, you got to do one or the other,  

so I just want people to understand this  is this isn't something you're going to get  

and you're going to want to file for if you've got  your own earnings history to rely upon. Okay now  

people that are 60, you know, I can  give you another example is we have a  

young lady, who's not a young lady anymore, she  was a young lady when she was in our wedding  

and she stood up with my wife and I  and she had her husband, who was older,  

passed away just well we were all in our 30s,  and he was in his late 40sk and just recently  

when when they all turned 60  she's the same age as my wife,  

she's not remarried, she's still working, and  kind of falling a little bit on hard times,  

I was able to go through and counsel her and put  her, she's getting a check now starting at age 60  

for $1,800 a month based upon his  earnings history, he died 22 years ago, so  

there's a lot of benefits, and for people  like that she started that exactly at age 60.  

Now the third point that I want to go  over up here has to do with people who  

both spouses are still alive, they're in  their late 60s or beyond, 70s, 80s, 90s, and  

they're collecting two checks, one of them  passes away. Now what happens to the survivors  

checks? Well first of all I'm going to tell you is  they're going to go from two checks to one check,  

so this is going to create a reduction in income  for that household and this is something that many  

people, when they do retirement planning, they buy  life insurance a lot of times, it doesn't need to  

be a huge amount but they buy life insurance to  cover this because, if you just took an example,  

let's say that you know my Social Security check  let's say that we're 75 and 74, and I'm collecting  

a big Social Security check, my spouse is  collecting a little less than half a mine, and so  

you just put those two numbers together  say $3,000 a month and $1,400 a month,  

so we're collecting $4,400 a month, every  month, I die, her $1,400 check goes away,  

she just gets the $3,000 a month that was my  check, so she's gonna have a $1,400 a month  

loss of income or household income. If she  dies it's the same thing, if she dies before me  

I still get my $3,000 a month and her $1,400  check goes away, so for people that are already on  

Social Security, the widow or widower's benefit  is really not a benefit, it's a reduction  

to where just the larger Social Security check is  going to continue on. So I hope this has helped  

educate you a bit, helped you do some estate  planning, maybe got you thinking a little bit  

about life insurance as a solution for this.  I'm Hans Scheil and I thank you for listening.