Approximately 70 million retired Americans collect Social Security benefits. Of those retirees, 8 million also collect Supplemental Security Income (SSI). But Social Security is more than retirement income. It also provides life insurance and survivor benefits.
It’s believed that retirement planning as we currently know it didn’t really exist until a few decades ago. Up to that point, people worked until 65 and then sailed into retirement on a pension plan.
There was a time when old retirement planning models like “the 70 percent rule” were more common. This rule stated that a retiree only needed 70% of their pre-retirement income to live comfortably in retirement. These “rules” may have worked for some retirees several decades ago but can be dangerously flawed in today’s new normal retirement.
With current market instability, inflation, and rising interest rates, more people are becoming acutely aware of the risks of investing. Financial markets are commonly known for their up-and-down nature, also known as market risk. Some people go into the market with higher expectations than others, but those expectations often come with an equal amount of risk.
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