In times of inflation, any United States citizen with a Social Security retirement check knows that sometimes that money is not enough. For that reason, many of these Americans have a pension plan outlined before they apply for retirement. With a little extra money, life gets a lot easier.
However, there are times when these same citizens not only do not have a pension plan, but also do not save any money on their own. When it comes time to start getting just a Social Security check, they realize that they should have saved some money to have a better standard of living. And the fact is that collecting only the retirement benefit may not be enough in many cases.
For that reason, knowing what our standard of living is and calculating the money we should have in savings is so important. At this point it is good to know that each citizen is unique and each situation is totally individual. Therefore, studying our own situation is really key if we want to have the best options so that the golden years become the most peaceful of our life.
How much money do I need to save before I apply for Social Security?
The answer to this question is totally different for every United States citizen. For that reason, we can’t give you an exact answer, but we can give you a rough idea so that you can organize your finances according to your goals.
If you have already applied for a Social Security check, you should know that there are other options to earn a little extra money each month, but if you have not applied for it yet, you still have options to increase it. But how to increase your retirement will be discussed later.
For now, you should consider how much money you will need in savings to be able to live well. To do this, you should check what your standard of living is. Undoubtedly, having a high standard of living means that we need more money saved.
Experts in this type of situation say that the ideal is to have saved, between pension plans and your own savings, 1.5 million dollars. With that money we should be able to live long enough without even collecting Social Security payments. So if we have a standard retirement check, that money should be more than enough.
To reach that figure the best thing to do is to make use of some kind of IRA or 401(k) pension plan. This is the only way we will be able to access that much money when we retire. Also, it is necessary to do it as soon as possible, because if we start very late with this we may not have enough time.
How do you increase your retirement check?
The other part of the story is to increase the Social Security check. This is also really important, because thanks to doing this we are going to be able to get a much larger monthly payment. The limit in this year 2024 is at $4,873 per month, but that amount will increase over the next few years thanks to the COLA.
If we want to not rely on savings alone we must work for at least 35 years and have a high salary. Similarly, the later we retire, the more money we will get every month. If we follow that scheme, the retirement payment will be as high as possible.
Even so, if we have a lot of money saved, it may be more convenient to retire as soon as possible. But working for 35 years before claiming Social Security is essential, as this will ensure that we do not have a check that is too low.