Here's What Most People Get Wrong in Retirement

Retirement planning can feel overwhelming, especially for women, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of delaying big decisions or thinking “we” have it covered, when it turns out your name might not even be on that 401(k).

In this episode, I sit down with retirement consultant and consumer advocate Marcia Mantell, who has spent over 30 years translating Social Security, Medicare, and retirement rules into clear, practical guidance.

We explore why women face a retirement gap, debunk Social Security myths, and discuss delaying planning until it’s urgent. Marcia offers practical steps to boost your confidence and control over your future, regardless of age.

What You’ll Learn:

1. The Hidden Retirement Gap for Women
   Why women often have less in retirement, even if they were high earners or took “time out” for family, and how missing career years affect Social Security.
2. The Truth About Social Security
   Social Security isn’t a personal bank account or a one-stop retirement solution. Learn how benefits are calculated, what ‘35 years” really mean, and why claiming early at 62 can permanently reduce your check.
3. No Such Thing as a Joint 401(k)
   Why “we” doesn’t exist in retirement accounts, the key difference between owning and being a beneficiary, and what every married (or divorced!) woman should know about her account name.
4. Don’t Fall for the COLA Myth
   Cost-of-living increases sound helpful, but Marcia explains why they won’t replace early benefit reductions and what truly protects your retirement income.
5. It’s Never Too Late to Make a Difference
   Whether you’re behind in savings or starting to think about retirement at 50 or 60, Marcia shares three realistic steps any woman can take now to improve her security and peace of mind for the next 30 years. 

Music by: 

Epidemic Sound 

Call to Action:

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📕 Resources: 

https://createthebestme.com/ep164

https://boomerretirementbriefs.com/ 

https://mantellretirementconsulting.com/

https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/  

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This podcast is for educational use only, not financial, investment, or legal advice. Consult your advisor before making retirement decisions. Guest views are their own and may not reflect those of Create The Best Me.

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Transcript

0:00

Okay, real talk. If you're married and you've been thinking we have a 401k, apparently we isn't a thing in retirement accounts. Yep, that surprised me, too. So stay with me because what you don't know here can get expensive later. Today we're talking about something a lot of women avoid until it suddenly right now, retirement, Social Security and Medicare and specifically the retirement gap for women. My guest is Marcia Mantelll, a retirement consultant and consumer advocate who has spent over 30 years helping people make smart decisions about retirement income. She has been recognized by ThinkAdvisor. Her books have been featured in Must Reads for Retirement Planning and and she has a gift for translating all the confusing rules into plain English. And in this conversation, Marcia is going to help us answer questions like why the decisions you make in Your early to mid-60s can follow you for 30 years. No pressure. What Social Security actually is hint, not a personal bank account. You're not cashing out. Why claiming at 62 can quietly shrink your monthly check. And why COLA's increases don't magically fix later. And the one thing a lot of women don't realize until it's too late, whose name or isn't on that retirement account. Plus, before we wrap up, I'm going to ask Marcia three pieces of advice to give you real hope. If you're thinking, Carmen, I'm 50 something. I missed the window. Spoiler alert, you didn't. All right, grab your coffee or tea or water, take a deep breath, and let's make retirement feel a whole lot less scary. Marcia Mantell, welcome to Create The Best Me. This is an honor and a privilege, and I'm so excited about today's conversation. Well, thank you so much, Carmen. I am delighted that you invited me here. Thank you. So, Marcia, we are going to talk about something that I'm passionate about. I hope every woman my age below or higher is also could you please tell the listeners and viewers a little bit about who the mastermind I have in the studio today? I would be happy to. So I am. I would call a consumer advocate and a retirement consultant. So I help people in every walk of life it seems these days make some really big decisions about their retirement might be saving, you know, how do I save more, where do I save? Or it's hey, I'm thinking about retiring. So are there things I should think about differently now that I'm in my late 50s or early 60s and I help with retirement income? So in there I help people think about, hey, you might need income for the next 30 years, where are you going to get it? And then a lot with Social Security and Medicare. I have just deep experience in those two very specific federal laws. And there is a lot to know. There is so much. I think that's why a lot of us skirt around it. I think so too. That's why we need people like you who understand all these scary things. I agree. And I do hear from a lot of women in particular though some men as well, that they are very nervous because a lot of the moves that we make in our early 60s to mid 60s, it's a once and done. Once you push that final button on Social Security's website or Medicare signing up for Medicare, you're done. And so you've now made a decision in your early to mid-60s that will last you for 30 years. That's. It's a lot of weight on our shoulders. So it's big. It is, it is. So, Marcia, the reason why I invited you onto this show is specifically for that, to help us women be more confident in making that decision about retiring. I appreciate that. Because even women with either lots of money or who have built big careers, it's still a whole new territory for us. And the more we can help answer questions or address topics, the better prepared and confident we're all going to be. So we all know about the gender gap. Let's talk about the retirement gap. That's something that a lot of us, don't know about. Yeah, the retirement gap is pretty serious in that women live longer. Just as an actuarial fact, my husband jokes around, it's like, well, that's because men don't want to live longer. But once we get over that, and the fact is that more women live longer, which should be a good thing, these are bonus years. This is a great opportunity to get things done that we couldn't do while we were building careers and raising families. However, the flip side of living longer is that we also tend to have less money and that's because we popped in and out of careers. Oftentimes we can't just have a career. You know, whether you have children or not. Most of us have parents or older relatives. So there are times we have to pop out to take care of older family members or friends. But if you have children, then you may be popped out for a few years to take care of your children when they were little or teenage years, which are so tough. So we don't always have this consistent and rising income throughout our 40 year career span. And the result of that is we save Less for retirement. Generally speaking, you know, this is not for every woman, but these are the general trends among the genders here. We tend to save less. And we didn't know that how much we earn in those years we were either in or out of the workforce impact how much money we will get as a calculated benefit from our Social Security insurance. So the less you earn, the more years out of the workforce, the lower your Social Security benefit is going to be. So, so we sort of get hit on both the bonus side, we live longer, and on the discount side, we haven't often saved enough. So we need to start to put those facts together and then have a plan for how are we going to address that gap. We might not be able to save anymore. I mean, you might be, well, I'll be 65 in July, so, like, if I didn't have it done by now, it wasn't going to get done. So then how do you take what you have managed to pull together and make that last longer? How do you make smarter moves? And that's what I think is so important for us women to, to think about, because everyone will have a different solution. But you need to know, you have to ask the questions and find a solution. And sometimes you might have people that have that mindset that they think, well, you know what, when I was in the workforce, during those periods that I was before I popped out, I, I was a high wage earner. So the more I put in, you know, this is kind of like my bank account. The more I put in, I'm going to get it when I retire. Could you explain that, how that works? Sure. And I look at it on two, two different hands. So on the one hand, if you were a high wage worker and you were saving aggressively in your 401k or your 403b, you do have more or should have more, so long as you also invested well. You know, for women who put in maybe up to the maximum, it's over $20,000 this year. But say you put$10,000 away, if you just put it into the account but didn't actively manage it, you didn't get the double advantage of yay, you saved, but you also had to invest. So that needed to happen. And a lot of times we don't know that. The other side of it is where I think you're going is with Social Security. For Social Security benefits to be calculated, there are a number of hurdles we all have to jump over. The first is we had to be paying into FICA, into the payroll Taxes paying into the system and you have to pay in for at least 40 quarters, which when you have a career, you get there pretty quickly, usually 10 years, you have your 40 quarters. But again, women who are popping in and out, you might have had two years initially and then you were out for five and then you had five years. And so it may take a little while to get your 40 quarters, but if you have them now, you have a benefit that is in your name. Super. But how does the calculation really occur? Well, it's on your highest 35 years of earnings. Well, lots of women who stayed home for whatever reason don't have 35 years with dollars in those years. They might have 20 years with actual wages or self employment income, but they have what I say, 20 years. So they have 15 years with zeros. And it's those zeros. They're part of your highest 35 years of earnings. It's okay if that was your journey, but it does pull down how much you will receive in benefits because we all have that same same base number which is 35 years. And for those of us with some zeros in there, well, then some zeros get factored in. And I think another thing that's kind of scary because you hear it here and there on the news is that people sometimes hear people say sometimes that Social Security may not be around when I retire. Yeah, well, that's the elephant in the room, isn't it? There is so much turmoil with Social Security right now. Here's what I tell people. Social Security will be there for us. Whether you're a boomer and you're on the cusp of making this decision, or you're a Gen Xer and it's like, well, I haven't saved a whole lot or you're a millennial or even younger. Social Security will be there for the younger folks. It might take a little bit of a different twist and turn because the problem today, and the reason we're all so anxious about it is it is not running out of money. But there are two sides to the Social Security equation. There's the, I call it the checking account. The inflows of all the money we put in through our payroll taxes. And for many years we had extra after we paid the retirees. So the extra, the surplus went into the piggy bank or the savings account side. It's that savings account that we now need to use to fully meet the benefit obligations of our older Americans, the people who earn these benefits. So payroll taxes come in and they go right back out. That's great. But we also need to take from the piggy bank to pay our current retirees. My dad thanks all of us for making sure we're paying it. So he gets his check every month, you know, so we are doing a great service for our oldest Americans who were workers for 35, 40, 50 years, and now they have an earned benefit. But that savings account is quickly being used up. It is truly a rainy day fund. And it is raining. Thunderstorms in the forecast here. And that's because we don't have enough workers paying in relative to the number of retirees that we have now. Social Security is a law and it's a huge law. It's like 3900 pages of legalese that runs this program. Only Congress can make and change laws. Congress has known that this piggy bank was going to run out of funds since 1983. The last time we ran out of funds, they put in, you know, amendments and changes to Social Security, hoping that it would last for 75 years. But then we went through the Great Recession and that really did change things. And we had high inflation for years back in the early 80s when they were implementing the changes. So there were reasons that the 75 year forecast got cut short. But for the last 20, 25 years, every Congress has known that we were going to run out of the reserve account by about the mid-2030s. So it is no surprise that we heard in June, every year about in June, the Social Security trustees, the people who administer and manage this huge trust fund, they came out with their annual report and said, looks like the reserve account is going to be emptied by 2033. Well, right on target. Like we've all known this for the last 25 years. Where y' all been? The problem is Congress is not doing anything to shore up that problem. And it's complicated. Right? We have different points of view on how do we address Social Security and what solutions are there. And there are many. Call it two dozen really good, interesting solutions. No one solution fixes it all. So we have to do take a little of cost savings and a little of increased revenue and maybe adjust some inflation and maybe have high income earners pay in really all of their fair share. There are things that can be done, but Congress has not been willing to work on this. So what it does, it makes for a media frenzy. I call it the hype and hoopla of the headlines. And that's what we're all faced with. You know, you can wake up any given morning, it's like, oh my gosh, Social Security is having a problem and I going to get my money. And so you immediately go to you, as rightly we should question that, like, am I in danger here? And the answer is, when you have that concern, pick up the phone and call your congressman, call your senators and say, what are you people doing? I sent you to Washington to make sure you were going to take care of and protect my retirement that I've earned. So that's what we need to do. It is a little scary. The headlines do not make it easy. They give no one peace of mind right now. It's going to amplify over the next five or six years as we get closer and closer to 2033, which is really 2032 and maybe 2031 by the time we get the report later this year. So it is concerning but what people don't do, Carmen. And this is where I really get frustrated, I would say, with the younger generations, for us older folks, we will be fine. Some solutions will happen and payments will continue. They've continued for 90 years. Never missed a payment, never missed a dollar. That will continue. For my kids, though, who are in their 30s, they're concerned and, and they think frankly that Social Security isn't even going to be there for them. Like, okay, if that is your perspective and you're entitled to that, you'll find when you're in your late 60s, Social Security will be there. But, okay, in your 30s, you think it's not going to be there. How much more are you saving? Are you socking away another 15% of your income in addition to what you're already fully funding, your 401? Are you really all doing that, young people? Well, you know, the answer is no, they're not doing that. So if you think that this incredibly important foundation to all American workers retirements, if you think that bottom layer of the layer cake is going away, you got to fill it with something. And I don't see that on that other side of the coin. I see complaints and dismissal of your retirement Social Security, but I don't see the young people doing anything to counterbalance that. That's really the problem for me. So you can't say it's going to go away but do nothing about it. So that's a long answer, but that's what's going on. Yeah, but I think it goes back to maybe old school thinking where a lot of us said, oh, when I retire, Social Security will take care of me, when in essence, Social Security was just a, a Slice of the pie? Yeah, just a slice of the pie. You needed to fill in the. The rest of the pie with other products or tools to carry you until you go leave this earth. Right, right. Which no one wants to think about, but that's exactly it. And you do have to fill the pie, or for me, I do. The layer cake. You know, like, what are your other layers? You can't just have one layer. Social Security was never intended for that. And I think that the problem is when the law was written in 1935, the country was just coming out of the Great Depression. That's why it finally got through Congress. And then they started making payments in 1940. And people did not want. Back then, they did not even want to sign up and get a Social Security number because they felt this was welfare. It's like, I'm not taking welfare. I don't want. I don't want this handout from the government. So it took a generation to figure out that, oh, we're actually paying into that. Like, this is directed contributions, you know, not like our regular taxes that go into the general fund, and then the federal government decides how to spend it. This is literally your dollars going directly into Social Security's bucket. And your employer fully matches that. So 6.2% of your income from you, 6.2 from your employer. That is like the cleanest, most directed money movement money transfer we have. So it was all your money and your employer's money going in to Social Security. So the first generation didn't quite get it. The second generation did get it and said, oh, thank goodness we have a social safety net. Well, by the 1990s, and as the. Really, as us boomers were moving into retirement, it's like, oh, isn't Social Security there to take care of us? We forgot the last 50 years worth of facts. And so we have misconstrued what this program is and a lot of myths and misconceptions and misunderstandings about this program. I mean, they're everywhere. And we have to get back to the basic facts. This was never meant to. To cover your income. This was meant to provide working families when they reached retirement, an insurance product, an insurance policy that if they lived a long time, they could live just above the poverty level. That was it. It gave you some shelter and some food from day one. Nothing's changed. But the American retirees don't remember that. And so it is a. I agree with you totally. It's a mindset. But where did it come from? Because it was never the fact to Begin with. And really no one can live just on Social Security. Not the lifestyle they had while they were working. You know, it just the. All you have to do is look at your statement, let's say you make$100,000 a year or higher income worker and then you look at your Social Security statement and you'll see that the maximum amount that anyone receives, if they are retirement age this year 20, 26, they get $4,000 a month. Well that times 12 is not $100,000, not by a long shot. So it's right there for you, for you to see based on your own earnings history. But somehow we just don't sort of put all those pieces together in advance. And then where people call me in a panic and sort of arrive on my business doorstep is oh my God, I'm going to be 65 next month or 67 or I'm turning 70 and what am I supposed to do? And how come Social Security is so little? It's like, well, let's talk through that. So yeah, I, I agree with you. It, we've got to be. And that's why I love that you're having this conversation with me today. Because as many particularly women as we can reach, you know, this is not, it's not a handout, you had to earn it and you did earn it, but it's not as much as you may think. And then let's talk about some employers offer this. I mean when I was in the workforce every employer offered it. Now it's, it's some of retirement benefit, you know, like 401ks finance and thrift for 403bs, all that stuff. How much should we be putting into those? For those of us that have just like kind of thrown in a little extra because I, you know, I'm barely making it, I'm barely making it, you know, so this is all I can put in, you know, what should we be striving for? That is a brilliant question. It's so hard today and I'd say especially for our young people to manage every debt or financial obligations they have. Our financial world is incredibly complicated and for those who enter the workforce either in a lower paying job or with lots of student debt, the net effect is the same, which is you're having a hard time making ends meet to pay your rent and put food on the table. It's very, very hard to save. And yet I will tell you that your 20s are your most important decade to save for retirement. So if you can save anything, if you can come up with any avenue to save and whether your employer offers something for you or not, maybe you have to do this on your own. In an IRA you get a tax deduction a lot of times. Or you can save in a Roth IR which will be tax free later. There are a couple of choices of how you save. But if you can save to at least get to the employer match at your company. If the employer matches, very common, it's a 3 or 4% match. So what that means is you take your even small salary, take 4% of it and put it in the 401k or 403b and then your employer matches the same dollar amount. So it's a two for one. It might not be a lot of money today and you go, but it's only $25 a month or it's only$10 a week. No, only those dollars in your 20s and your 30s, they will grow up through investing and become a big balloon of money for you. So if you can, and it's a lifestyle change, know if you can give up going out for coffee, if you can give up Friday nights at the bar. So there is a give up here involved. But if you can, you will be so appreciative later. So that's low income young people. What if you're 55 and you did not have a chance to save? You had, you know, several children, you did get to buy a house. You know, you were so proud of buying that house. Celebrate your accomplishments. I feel that women especially, first of all, a lot of times we don't even recognize that we've accomplished so many things. Like well, I guess I raised four kids and I have a house and I have a car. Really? That's amazing. So let's first of all celebrate what we have done now. What can you do moving forward? Well, can you super save? Is there anything you can do? Can you move, move up? If you have an employer plan, can you add a percent or two or three? And again you're going to give up something on the other end where you can't spend on clothes and shoes or on the grandkids. But can you add to that, boost that savings over here or save in an ira? And the limits are very high. They're unattainable for most people. The 401 and 403B contribution limit this year it's well north of $20,000. I want to say 24,500. Then there's a catch up provision which is another 11,000 if you're between 60 and 63. Otherwise, it's. The numbers are a little bit off. I'd have to actually look them up, but they're hanging on my wall over there. But it's a lot of money. Like all in. You could sock away 30 to $35,000. And I sit back and I look at when Congress passes these laws that allows us to put that much money into a plan, tax deferred, so you don't have to pay tax on the earnings yet. I look at that and I go, who's got an extra $30,000 in America today? You know what? If you do use it, you know you're going to need it for your lifestyle, so good for you. But most people don't. But if you can do anything. So what I want to tell the young people, and I don't want us older people to listen to this part, we have moved away in the financial industry from giving anyone a number. Oh, you need to save so that you can, you know, support 65 or 70% of your future spending needs. Or, you know, you want to be able to replace 85% of your income. What the heck does that mean, Carmen? Like 85% of what? Plus I need a calculator. And I don't know what the. Stop already. I know that's the academic theory and it is actually correct. For normal people, though, if you're in your 20s and your 30s, the number you want to aim for is a million dollars. We need to help you all think about the fact that and this is, you know, for our kids and our grandkids. Like, we need to tell them, hey, girls, you got to be socking away enough money so you have a million bucks when you're 65 or 70. And the deer in the headlights, like $1 million. That's still a lot of money for almost all of us. So we need people to understand that's the magnitude we are talking about. Some people won't need that much. Maybe in the long term, you live in a more affordable area of the country, you're doing fine, and you have a modest lifestyle, maybe you need three or four or$500,000. Okay, fine. But you don't know that in your 20s. So aim for a million. If you have a really big job, you gotta. And you spend a lot more, you have to aim for higher than that. But again, we're talking about seven figures here. And I think the financial services industry has, you know, we waffle. I've been in this industry for almost 35 years now. There was an ad years ago not that many years ago, but like 10 or 15 years ago from one of the big financial firms and they called it the gazillion dollars. They had this TV commercial around, well, how much do you need to save for retirement? It's like I need a gazillion dollars. So we've struggled with this. We don't want to scare people off and paralyze them because saving to a million dollars and investing to get to a million dollars is a really tall order. So we don't want to scare people off. On the other hand, we've swung the pendulum so far that nobody has any idea how much they should be saving toward. And instead what they say is, well, my employer offers a 3% match. So I'll put in my 3% and I'll get my free 3%. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you all that is not enough. So I think we need to get back to put some reasonable though very aggressive numbers out there. Because if you're saving to$100,000, that is just not going to cut it in America today. So let's say you're, let's say you're a woman and you're 50. You're 50, you're not 55. What is the maximum, and I hope you can answer this, what is the maximum that you can put in your retirement account with your employer? And if you hit the max, can you also utilize a tool such as a Roth IRA or a traditional ira? That is great to know and I'm sorry, I don't have the exact numbers, but again the maximum. So it depends on the plan, first of all, which is more technical than we want to know. But let's assume that you work for a large employer, relatively large employer, and they have the standard rules, which is you can put in up to 100% of your income or to some dollar amount. That dollar amount is somewhere in the 20, $24,000 range. Once you hit 50, you can put in the catch up portion, it's another$8,000 or so. So you could stand to put in again about$30,000. Remember, this is an approximate huge amount of money, but some people can. So you could put in that much or you put in however much you can afford up to those limits. Can you save outside of the plan? Absolutely. And what a great strategy to have. That's another layer to your layer cake, right? So if Social Security is on the bottom, then you've got a bigger layer. Hopefully that is your 401k or 403b, because you got this free money all along your career. Then you can add another layer, which is the Roth ira. And the Roth IRA is when you just take money out of your checking account and you put it into a Roth ira. It's a different kind of IRA in that you don't get a tax deduction, but instead you put in your regular after tax cash flow money right out of your grocery money, if you will. And you fund the Roth IRA so that when you reach retirement, you know, many years later, 15 years later, 20 years later, you've got a bucket of tax free money that it will be yours to use in retirement. So that's a really valuable source you can contribute. This year I'm Pretty sure it's $8,000 with a. We had a th$1,500 catch up. Maybe I'm close on those numbers again, it might be $7,500 and $1,000 catch up or it's 8,000 base amount. And then once you're 50 and older, you can put in a little bit more. So you can definitely do a Roth ira. Maybe you do a traditional IRA if you can do a tax deduction. So these are considerations. Usually you talk to a financial advisor about or when you call the big financial firms, they have people who can help you decide what might be better for you. So you can, you don't even schedule an appointment. You just call 1-800-Fidelity or 1-800-SCHWAB or whatever the phone numbers are. And very well trained phone representatives can help you make those decisions. And then you have to decide from a budget perspective. The other thing that's super important these days from employers and if you have an ACA Affordable Care act health insurance plan, a lot of them now offer health savings accounts. So this is a really terrific account. If you have access to it, where you save tax free and tax deductible money for medical needs and healthcare expenses. That's a very Powerful account. It's $4,400 for an individual. So if you. 50, 60, anyone can have an HSA Health Savings Account if they have what's called a high deductible health plan. So it's a particular. Everybody thinks they have a high deductible health plan, Carmen. It's like, oh, I have a high deductible health plan. You know, I have to pay the first $500 out of that thing. That's not a high deductible health plan. That's a pain in the neck. Oh my gosh. I have to pay out of my pocket health plan. But they're very specific dollar amounts that make a plan high deductible. If you have that type of plan, then you can, you know, route some of your paycheck. You'll get lower taxable income, so you're going to pay less taxes. And then when you need that money to pay for certain medical expenses, it will come out of that account tax free. Or you can save it for retirement health care needs. So it's a really powerful, relatively new, Maybe the last 15 years, about 15, 20 years is the health savings accounts, but. But not everyone has access to them. But that's another outside of your 401k where you can save and it's important to look at. I always thought that the HSAs or FSA accounts, at the end of the year you have to exhaust that account. You are correct in that that's what people think. So they're two very different account types. The FSA, which is the flexible spending account, that's been around for quite a while. You're exactly right. You can put maybe up to $5,000 in that account. And it's a user lose. So like don't put $5,000 in there if you're not going to use $5,000 in expenses in healthcare. So that one is the use or lose. But that's not helpful to most people. We don't know how much we're going to. Am I going to break my leg tomorrow when I slip on the ice? Okay, then I needed that money. But you don't know. So Congress came up with a different law which is very similar to the Roth IRA in that it's the health savings account that goes with this hdhp, the high deductible health plan, that one you use and keep. And it really operates very much like what we're more familiar with is the IRAs. So you actually fund that account and it doesn't matter. You never have to use it. So you can invest it, let it grow even more. There are people I work with who have $200,000 in those accounts at the point they're retiring at 67 because they had high income enough where they could pay the deductible out of their own cash flow while saving in the HSA for specifically for healthcare expenses in retirement. Now that's more uncommon to see those huge accounts, but that's where we are now. People who got in really early with them and invested they've got 200, $250,000 to use for healthcare stuff in retirement. Most of the rest of us, we have our health savings account. We fund it each year. And then my younger one breaks her arm, so I pay out of the HSA for her broken arm. And then the older one has some health issues that year and we see the doctor seven times. I pay, you know, so it's, it's a revolving account, which it can be, so you can use it as a checking account for health care expenses and a savings account and you do not lose that money. That's part of why it is so powerful. They talk about it in terms of triple tax advantaged because it's tax deductible when you fund it, any investment earnings grow tax free and all the money that comes out of it comes out tax free when you need it for qualified medical expenses. That's a powerful account. But what about when you're collecting, let's say you hit that magic number. Woohoo, I'm dancing. I'm retired. Do you have to pay taxes on it? No, you're not. If you use it for qualified health care expenses and literally, I mean, you can pay your Medicare Part B premiums with this money. You can pay your drug costs with this money. You can use it or the dentists. When we move from insurance with an employer to Medicare, we will have more out of pocket costs in health care. So for example, we don't have a dental plan anymore. It's more expensive to have the dental plan than to get the discount that we get with our dentist by being a member. So we can use our HSA dollars to pay for the dentist. My glasses, eyeglasses, I had my knees replaced. You know, we had to pay the deductible for that. Paid it out of the HSA. So it's a really, really big important account for those who. So it becomes another layer of the cake. But it's higher on the layer of the cake because you've got to get your retirement savings really locked in first. So you know, you can keep your house if that's what you're planning, pay your rent if you're renting, keep food on the table, keep your car going, your technology, you know, the basics of what we need for American life today. Then if you can find, eke out, you know, a few hundred dollars more a year, sock it into that HSA. It's a powerful account. It is. And going back to when I asked you about limits that you can put in with your employer and then other vehicles that you could possibly use as part of that, my thought with that was let's say your husband makes a good amount of money and he has been putting, you know, he's been kind of stuffing his retirement account. So I was kind of thinking that route. So, like, if, you know, my husband makes tons of money and we don't really need, we don't really rely on my income per se, that I can just kind of take a pay cut per se. Yep. To dump as much as I can into the 401k, 403b, whatever, self employed. And then, you know, the Roth IRA. If I'm married and he's putting the max on his end, does that impact how much I can put into the Roth IRA? Oh, I just love how you phrased all of this because the key thing you said, Carmen, and this is for all married couples, even if you're in a same sex marriage, there's a higher earner and a lower earner, typically. But I'm going to go with the traditional language here. But I am meaning to be inclusive in your scenario where the husband makes a lot more and he's been saving in his 401k, that is exactly what that account is. It is his and not yours. And we don't understand that as married couples, retirement accounts are only and ever individual accounts. There is no such thing as a joint 401k or a joint IRA or a joint Roth IRA. It either has your name on it as the owner or it doesn't. So why is that such a big deal? That's because particularly for boomers and the older boomers who are already maybe retired, these moms stayed home. Right. And so maybe their husbands were saving. And we tend to, in married couples, we tend to do everything together. So we think of all this money as our money. Well, legally it is not our money. My husband's name is Dan. So Dan has his 401k, Marcia has her 401k. They don't come together ever. Now, when Dan dies, if he has named me as his sole primary beneficiary, literally on a form said, Marcia gets all my money, if I die first, then I can get the money. And there are some 401ks that are still set up where the wife would get half of the money, but the rest would be distributed elsewhere. That is not your money, ladies. That is Dan's money. So do you need a 401k in your own name? Yes. If you don't have access to it, set up your own IRA. The other thing that can happen or the power is in the ownership of the account? Yes. You make then your own investment decisions and you help that account grow. The real power in ownership here is you name the beneficiaries. Dan does not name the beneficiaries on my IRA. Dan has zero say. I love him to death. Carmen, we've been married 42 years. We met in college. You know, it's not a, oh, my God, she must have a horrible husband. Nope. It's that the law is very specific. And the law says if my name is on that account, I own that account. I pick the investments. I decide how much goes in. I pick my beneficiaries, full stop. Can Dan change that? No, he cannot. He might have access. If I grant him access to be a viewer of my account, I can. And in an IRA, he could actually be a trader in T R A D E R. He could trade in my account if I grant him the authority to do so. But if you don't have ownership, you don't have any of that, say, in your husband's big old 401k. You also can't get the money out when you want it in retirement, which I find to be the most distressing thing here. You've been living together and living on his income, especially if it's a one income family, you know, you've always lived on that income together. Well, that's nice. But when the income stops, he does not have any obligation to tap that account until he's 73 or 75, when the law says you have to start taking required minimum distributions. So this is a huge piece of the equation for women, married women that we just didn't really know that. It's like, wait, we've been socking all the money away in his account because we were saving for retirement. And generally speaking, most couples will work this out and say, oh, we need more out of the account or less. They may work together on it. But the fact of the matter is, legally, we got nothing, ladies, if our name isn't on that account as owner. So, yeah, if Dan has his own 401k going over here, that's all well and good. He better, because he needs to contribute, you know, when we're in retirement. But I better have mine as well. And my name had better be on that account. So, yeah, and you can't share it, by the way. So in our case, I actually have a larger 401k than Dan does. And our big joke, like, we are tax season. You know, we just did taxes and such. Know, we look at our accounts and Dan will say, hey, wait a minute we're out of balance here. You need to give me my half of your account. It's like, yeah, good luck with that, buddy. You, you can't give your spouse that money. Like, you can't scooch it from one account to another or transfer it. That's not allowed. So what you have is what you have, and it might be zero. And I don't like that for women. I want women to own some of their retirement money even if they didn't have the same opportunities, even if they stayed home, even if they work for a not for profit and there was no opportunity to save through an employer plan. I get it. But the IRA is always out there for you. So I'm going to go down the dark hole. Okay. Now, because we know this is pretty common. I, I, it makes me sad, but it's very common. Gray divorces and how that kind of spools into where you said, you know, Dan's 401ks, Dan's not yours. You know, great divorces happen a lot. Once the kids leave the house, how does that impact the wife? As far as you've already said the 401k part Social Security. Yeah. And then he remarries. Oh, I know. Isn't that always the way it goes? Yes. So great divorce. You are exactly right. I always find that surprising, like, man, oh man, if you slog together for the first 30, but, you know, you sort of live different lives a lot of times. And I understand sometimes the relationships don't last and that's the, that's well and good. I hope they end amicably. And in that case, the 401k may be split. Now, there's a legal avenue only when you get a divorce where you may get a transfer of some of that money because there is recognition that at least half of it was supposed to be hers. Or the other way around. I'd have to give Dan some of mine, but that's a legal order and only under divorce with Social Security, though it's very interesting. So we all get to claim Social Security if we earned those 40 quarters that we talked about before. So you worked and paid FICA taxes for 10 years. And I'm going to assume for this example that she did work for at least 40 quarters. So she's got her own Social Security statement and it says she's going to get X dollars. But he was the bigger earner because that's how they divvied up the household. Very classic. Well, he's entitled on his statement. Let's say for$4,000 a month. She looks at her statement, she's only eligible for $1,500 a month. So no one wins financially in a divorce. But very often the higher earner makes out a lot better. So he's going to get us $4,000 a month and she's got to get by with 1,500. If they had a long marriage, defined as 10 years or longer, she will get what's called an ex spousal top up in this scenario because her wages were so much lower relative to his. If they had stayed married, her benefit would be half of his$4,000. So she would have gotten $2,000, her$1,500 plus a spousal top up. But if they're a qualified divorced couple now, she will still get that spousal top up, but now it's an ex spousal top up. So she'll get her $1,500 because she earned that and then she'll get an extra 500 really to make her whole as a dependent spouse. So lots of divorced women don't know this. So they've been living on that $1,500. They didn't know they might be eligible for more. Now, it's not always$500. It might be $100, okay, but it's yours. So the way you find out about this, you know, you don't talk to your ex typically about this, but you do call Social Security, you set up an appointment, they're going to need a divorce decree, sometimes your marriage license as well. And they're going to go through all the rules, you know, were you married 10 consecutive years or longer? Are you both at least age 62? So there are a few rules once you meet that 10 year mark, and assuming you meet all of them, they will run a calculation for you to let you know if you are eligible for some extra money per month. And really any extra money is great. It can make the difference between really having no fun in retirement because all you can do is get food on the table and having a little bit of cushion, a little bit of security. So these divorce rules are super important to know now where it usually comes out though, Carmen, exactly where you were going that he's remarried. And what he thinks is going to happen is if his ex wife claims on his record and gets that extra spousal top up, that extra $500 in my example, he's going to get$500 less. It's not how the math works. He has zero impact he still gets his $4,000. And his second wife, if she qualifies as a dependent spouse, will get her spousal half once she reaches her full retirement age. So she'll get$2,000. The ex wife will get$2,000, just made up of her own benefit, plus that extra$500. So everyone is made whole in this case, but the. The men I work with, they are very funny. A lot of times, like, well, how much do I have to give up so that my ex can get my money? It's like, well, I'm here to tell you, you give up nothing. It's all baked into the equation. All of us, you know, might have someone else claiming on our record if certain situations happen. So divorce is key. But what if you have minor children when you retire? Well, they can claim on your record. Or who else can claim on your. Well, your current spouse. So, you know, this guy could have his ex wife claiming on his record, him claiming his second wife, who was a lot younger, who is taking care of their two new children, their minor children. The children get benefits. So there's a lot of people who might be paid out on a record, knowing the law allows for and acknowledges that marriages and families can be very complicated. It's all built into the math. But what I really want, women who are divorced 10 years or longer, if that marriage lasted. Make sure you're checking with Social Security to see if you get a boost. Now, what is the difference between retiring early and holding out till. What did you say, 73? 70, actually. For Social Security? Yep. Yeah, the difference is really big. The difference is almost $1,000 a month in income for your oldest years. Let me back up a bit. I swear, Carmen, every single person knows that you can claim Social Security at 62. Of all the rules that you people don't know, that's the one you know. So people are waiting, chomping at the bit to get there, you know, 60, age 62 and claim Social Security. Don't do it. Is the rare person who should claim at 62, though there sometimes is a reason why not claim at 62. Well, what people don't know is your Social Security benefit. Not only is it you have your 40 quarters and your highest 35 years of earnings, but your optimal calculated benefit happens at your full retirement age, which is 67. For almost all the remaining boomers at this point, might be 66 and 10 months or 66 and 8 months. But let's use 67 to keep it clean. So your full retirement age is 67. That's when you're supposed to claim that's what Social Security sort of deems us to be retired. That's when we get the best benefit we can. If you claim at 62 though, you're going to get a penalty and you are going to get reduced income from Social Security because now your Social Security benefit needs to stretch out over another five years. So instead of getting whatever your full retirement age benefit is, you're going to get 30% cut, which is huge. Where are you going to make up 30% in monthly income? It only comes out of your own pocket. So what we try to do and try to encourage people, most people, it's all going to be situational on your exact circumstances. But in general I'd really try to help people make it to 67. Get to your full retirement age because at that point you can claim your benefits the amount you are due. And if you want to keep working, you can still keep working, no claw back to your earnings. You get your full amount that you were due for Social Security and you can make any amount when you work. If you claimed early, not only do you get this penalty amount, this reduced income, but you also, if you're still working, you might not get all of your Social Security benefit. You can only make about$24,000 a year before Social Security starts pulling back those monthly payments. Like wait a minute, you're not at full retirement age and you're not retired. So we're not going to pay you to keep working. You're already working. So there are a lot of rules and a lot of additional clawbacks and with withholdings that happen if you claim early and keep working. So it is not a good strategy for almost anyone. However, if you are terminally ill, it might be the right strategy. Or if you are a younger spouse like your the older and the older spouse was the higher earner and you're trying to get to 70 so that he'll get or she'll get their maximum age 70 benefit. The lower earning spouse, sometimes it makes some cash flow sense to claim earlier. Might not be 62, it might be 65. So you have to put together a strategy to see what will work best in your, your exact situation. But you want to aim for full retirement age. And if you can go longer, typically because you like your job and you're still working or you don't have enough saved so you're going to have to keep working, then hold up on Social Security because you will automatically get bonus money and you get 8% per year more by waiting, but only until 70. Once you reach your 70th birthday month, all the bonus money stops. And you want to claim at that point, but that's 24% more in monthly income versus the 30% less you'd get if you claim early. And once you claim, I mean, there are a couple of ways, a couple of very specific timings you can undo a claim, but most people never do that. So once you're in, I consider it, you're locking in your bottom layer of that layer cake for your entire retirement. So you got to make a really good decision. And I think another thing to point out here is that any COLAs that are added will never, ever make up for what you gave up. You are so right. Yeah. The COLA is the annual cost of living adjustment. And every year when the COLA is announced, it was announced in November this year, I think we, we were at 2.7% increase or 2.8% increase from 2025 to 2026. And the headlines are always, oh, my gosh, this is a terribly small cost of living adjustment. So you're never going to get a big cost of living adjustment. And if you get it on a tiny amount, your tiny amount only grows little, teeny, tiny amounts as you age. But what happens to the real cost of buying stuff? It goes up a lot. Yeah. So the really good news about Social Security is there is a COLA on it. It's an automatic now since the 1970s, it's automatic. We all get an automatic adjustment every year. But it's not enough really to cover what you're really living on. You need your investments to be tappable. You've got to be able to tap some investments. IRAs or brokerage investments, annuities. You have to have those other layers of the cake. That's what you're pulling from to supplement Social Security, even though it does go up a little bit each year. Marcia, based on the conversation that we've had here today, what pieces of advice would you give her to give her hope that it's not too late and she can begin to save for her retirement? Love that. And you're so right. It is not too late. Carmen and I are screaming from the rooftops, ladies, it is not too late. Because anything you do now, especially in your 50s and even early 60s, helps you in your 80s. So do something. What should you do? There are three good things to do. The first is look into funding a Roth ira. If you don't already have a company plan or you're not already doing that. I would say try to amp up your personal savings first. The second thing to do is to go onto Social Security's website, it's ssa.gov and set up your My Social Security. It's a personal, online, highly secure account. You want to have that account to secure your Social Security number to you, first of all. And second is to find and download your most current Social Security statement. And you can look at that statement and they already lay out for you in a little chart what your full retirement age dollar amount is as of your age, 67. And then they'll show you from 62 on how much less you get at 62 if you claim at 63, 4 or 5 and then all the way till 70. So that piece of paper, your Social Security statement is gold. You can make such good decisions by looking at either how much less or how much more you will get. And it helps you think about your job and how much longer. Because brings me to number three. What you want to do is work longer. I know no one wants to hear that, but unless you're really married to a super rich person or you personally have amassed an absolute fortune, it is best when you can to continue to work. Now notice I didn't say keep your same job. If you don't like your job, go find a new one. Hopefully find one with a few extra dollars an hour in your hourly rate or with a promotion. It might be time to find a new job. It is not easy. You know, there's a lot of ageism. People don't always want to hire the old girls. But my God, we're smart, we're capable, and we have an excellent work ethic. So you own this, ladies. You can do this. And it doesn't matter how old you are. It is not too late. Marcia, thank you so much for. Oh my goodness, you've blown my mind. All your wisdom. You are, you are a national treasure. Thank you, Carmen. Where can people learn more about you? Well, you can certainly Google my name, but it's better to go to boomer retirement briefs.com that's my blog. I've been writing this blog for 15 years, 16 years now. And I have lots of great stories about what boomers are doing to reinvent retirement. But I also have a whole lot of information about Social Security and Medicare on the Social Security tab, so you can keep up with what's going on with law changes. I try to put that into English as well as lots of retirement information. So you are welcome. Everything on There is free. There's worksheets to download and checklists and so forth. So boomerretirementbriefs.com is your best way to see what's going on. And you can reach me from there. And where can people work with you if they wanted to? Usually come through my website, mantellretirementconsulting.com. that's pretty long. But you can either go Mantell Retirement Consulting or from Boomer Retirement Briefs. There's a link to email me. Great. Marcia, again, thank you so much. You are so awesome. Oh, thank you, Carmen. Thank you so much for inviting me onto your podcast. Great. I will include all of your links because they're long in the show notes so that people can learn more about their future, learn more about you, start following you, and start making wise retirement decisions. That'd be awesome. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Marcia. Thank you. Seriously, you made something that feels intimidating feel clear and honestly empowering. Okay, let's close the loops we just opened because you just heard a few. Wait, what? Moments. First, yes, the big one. There's no such thing as a joint 401k or joint IRA if your name is isn't on the account. As the owner, you don't control the investments, you don't control the beneficiaries, and you may not have access you assumed you'd have. That's right there is why this conversation matters so much for women. Second, Social Security is not a cash out situation. It's an insurance foundation, not a whole pie. Or, or as Marcia says, it's the bottom layer of the cake. You still need other layers. Savings retirement plans. Maybe a Roth IRA, maybe an HSA. So you're not trying to live your whole retirement on one slice. Third, if you can avoid it, don't rush to claim it at 62 just because you can. That early claim can mean a permanent reduction. And. And as Marcia pointed out, those cost of living increases don't magically make up what you gave up. If you're able to wait, especially closer to full retirement age or even towards 70, you're protecting your future. You. And finally, for those women listening who think it's too late, here's your hope, wrapped up in Marcia's simple direction. Do something now. Even small savings moves matters later. Set up your My Social Security account and download your statement. That one document can change how confidently you plan and if possible, work longer. And remember, that doesn't mean you have to stay in a job you hate. If you want to learn more about Marcia, Mantell Retirement Consulting, or connect with her, head on over to createthebestme.com/ep164 or click below in the show notes. And hey, if this episode made you think of a friend or a sister, a co-worker or your future self, share it. This is the kind of conversation that literally changes someone's next 30 years. Until then, keep dreaming big, take care of yourself, and remember, you are beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself. Thank you for watching. Catch you next week. Bye for now.