It’s that time of year again!

School buses are rolling and people are back in the office. We all know what that means…. traffic.

It’s been a busy summer, and that’s probably an understatement. There’s news every day that we’re watching and tracking because it impacts retirement planning. A lot of the news we see is just designed
to inflame emotions and get views or clicks. Our job is to look for things that could negatively affect your family and navigate around it.

Let’s bring you up to speed on a few of the biggest things that are happening right now as we approach the fourth quarter of 2022. Maybe the most impactful change this year has been inflation, which
has tapered off a bit but still remains a significant financial burden for Americans.

We have talked about this definition of Inflation before. Simply, inflation is too much money chasing too few goods and services.

Of course, The largest expense item for any business is typically the cost of labor. If labor is NOT plentiful and costs more, the business passes the cost on to the consumer. To lower inflation in the long run, we simply need more workers to create and deliver goods and services.

As we try to get more people back into the workforce to help offset some of the supply issues, it’s been interesting to track the trend of early retirement.

Many of the people that haven’t returned to work over the past year are between the ages of 55 and 65. In the first 18 months of the pandemic, 2.5 million people over the age of 55 left the workforce! It’s certainly understandable given the concerns over health risks.

However, unlike a lot of younger people who only received federal government stimulus money along with unemployment benefits, the older cohort has savings and investments to live on.

Unfortunately, with lower investment returns over the past several months, many are considering re-entering the workforce.

As we assess a person’s ability to possible retire early, we look at three key questions:

• What’s the cost of living for yourself and your family?
• What are the big-ticket items you want now?
• What does health insurance look like?
• When will Social Security kick in?

Speaking of Social Security, there’s some new legislation being discussed that could impact benefits. It’s called the ‘You Earned It You Keep It Act’ and the goal is to eliminate the taxation of Social Security
benefits, but there has to be a catch, right? We’ll tell you what the policymakers aren’t on this show.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn on this episode:

• What’s the latest on inflation? [3:31]
• Stats on the early retirement trends we’re seeing. [8:07]
• What other effects have we seen due to COVID? [9:16]
• The considerations you need to weigh for early retirement. [13:02]
• The details on the ‘You Earned It, You Keep It Act’ and taxes. [15:46]
• What’s the catch to this new Social Security legislation? [18:55]
• Phil’s big takeaway from this bill as it relates to retirement. [20:31]

If you want to discuss your investment strategy or have someone give your portfolio a second opinion, please reach out and we’ll set up a time to talk.