Your social security number, your nine digit number is as
unique as your fingerprint.
And I'm going to share with you what that means so you can better
understand, but before we get there, subscribe to our channel.
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So I've spent a lot, lot of time on this channel talking about social security
and the benefits and how to go after it, because as a part of an overall retirement
plan, and that's what we do, retirement planning, social security is huge.
And I don't want you to miss out on tens of thousands of dollars of benefits.
More importantly, I think our industry has done a lousy job of educating you.
Let me give you a story.
I recently talked to a friend, not a client, just a friend.
Um, he's a doctor out of the west coast and he retired a number of years ago.
He works with an advisor and his social security benefit
at his full retirement age.
When he went to retire, his wife is several years younger than he is.
And he's been retired now for about seven or eight years.
And when we were talking just casually, we mentioned the retirement and social
security, and I said, so, so your wife is taking her spousal benefit, right?
And he said, what?
I said, your wife is taking her spousal benefit?
He said, I don't know what you're talking about, she's not eligible for that.
I said, of course she is.
You are now getting your full work record from the full retirement age,
she's over the age of 62 now, and if she wants to, she can get her
spousal benefit off of your benefit.
And he just looked at me like really, my advisor never told me that.
Well, fortunately, he went back to the social security administration, got much
of the money that he was supposed to get.
Not all of it, because they did go back into the records and get him some back
pay, but they should have been counseling him on this, not just managing money and
we need to be broadening our counsel to you to go well beyond just investments,
and to talk to you more about all of the variables associated with putting
together a retirement plan that can provide you with the confidence that
you're getting all you're supposed to get.
One more thing before I get into this nine digit number that I think it's
important and it relates to what I just said, and the fact that you are
not highly educated in this arena, social security, even though you may be
highly educated like my doctor friend.
United income did a study couple of years ago that indicated that 96% of people
take social security at the wrong time.
They say that most people should probably take it closing in on age 70,
but 43% should be taking it before 70.
Do you know if you're maximizing your social security benefit?
Again, this all comes back to educating you properly and making sure that
you don't leave money on the table.
A part of that is preparing properly for retirement.
If you want to go to our banner, just invest two minutes into yourself and
fill out the quiz or score it for you.
I'll tell you what to the three stages of retirement preparedness you are in, I will
get you the first chapter of my new book, don't outlive your money in retirement
and also a couple of worksheets to provide you with a little bit more clarity.
We have one entire chapter in our book devoted just to social security.
So let's get into it.
Okay.
What does your number mean?
What does it represent?
How did it come to be and what might it mean for the future?
Now, as you can see here, this is a typical social security card and
there are actually for all of us, three different sets of numbers
that we need to be taking a look at.
I'll give you a little bit of history on all of them.
The first one is called the area number.
The second two numbers are called the group number and the third
is called the serial number.
Let's get into this.
Okay.
So obviously going back to 1935, when social security
was first initiated, right.
When it was founded, there were no computers, right?
So this is how they thought about doing this.
Initially it was, you know, what office is assigning your number?
Which social security administration office and each of those
offices had numbers, and those are your first three numbers.
Okay.
That's how it first started, the social security administration
office that assigned your numbers.
Then in 1973, for some reason, it was then moved to the Baltimore facility where all
the numbers were generated at that time from there and during that time, after
that, it was then pretty much associated with your zip codes, but starting in
2011, believe it or not, those first three numbers are just a random set of numbers.
Now, the second group of numbers, those two middle ones, we call the group number.
Again, think about this for a minute.
Going back to the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties,
what's a computer, right?
So this was an essence away for social security to systematize how
they could find your number in terms of the filing cabinet that that
number was going to be housed in, what's a filing cabinet anymore?
All we know is the cloud, but all they knew was the filing cabinet.
So those middle two numbers were associated with the filing cabinet
that they could find your number.
The last four numbers are the serial numbers.
And these, since the beginning are your unique fingerprint if you will.
They're random numbers that are just associated with you.
Cause if you think about it, somebody could have been
assigned from the same office.
Early, right.
They could have had the same filing cabinet number, but the last four were
really the things that distinguished your number from anyone else's.
Now, since 2011, all numbers are completely random.
So, what does that mean for the future?
So there are about 1 billion different combinations that can be provided.
And to date over history, there were about 453 million different combinations
that have been used and given there's about five to five and a half million
that are, um, initiated each year, we still have a long way to go before
we get to that 1 billion number.
If you are interested in more items with regards to social security,
certainly check out our playlist.