You just retired and you decided that you wanted to start taking income from your Social Security.

You get to the Social Security office and they start asking you questions that sound a lot like a foreign language spoken just for the government.

Do they have an internal foreign language that they speak? The quick answer to that question is yes.

As we go through this blog I want to bring some of the fastest growing concerns that we are faced with and how we can satisfy those concerns with logical answers.

4 of the fastest growing concerns that we are faced with consist of:

We are all beginning to live longer

My Social Security isn’t going to last me long enough

There’s no way that I can make my Social Security last longer

Social Security is only fully funded until 2033

The centenarian population has grown 65.8 percent over the past three decades and the oldest living person is now 116 years old!

To be able to qualify for benefits you have to earn a minimum of 40 credits over 10 years of work and a formula is used to come up with your PIA “Primary Insurance Amount”.

In 2015, you have to earn $4,880 to the maximum four credits for the year and your average earnings over your working years determine how much your monthly payment will be. Hence, the need to get those raises, right?

To take longevity into consideration we have to begin thinking of alternative ways to fill in the void once retirement hits to the time that Social Security can begin to be taken while taking into consideration the qualifications of taking benefits.

If you start your benefits at 62 you will only receive 70% of your full benefit. The only way that you receive 100% of your benefits is to wait until the age of 67.

Does that mean that you have to wait until the age of 67 to retire? Absolutely not.

What it does mean is that we all have to be more proactive when it comes to retirement planning and giving ourselves the ability to have guaranteed income in retirement.