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Life Time Planner Social Security Income

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This discussion was created from comments split from: Lifetime Planner Bug and Idea List - Make Yourself Heard!.

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Mark Whitton

I use the lifetime planner and enter $15K for my social security and $0 for my wife. When I look at a year when we are both collecting ss, the $15K shows up for me but $10,345 for my wife. This number for my wife is not the spousal benefit (50% of my benefit), and it is not zero which I entered in the income for the lifetime planner. Where does this number come from and how can I enter a correct amount?

BTW, If I enter $7500 for my wife, and $15000 for me, the planner shows $9483 in a year for my wife!? This makes no sense.

quicken 2020 windows, build 27.1.25.21, windows 10 up to date

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Mark Whitton

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your issue.

I have gone ahead and moved your post to an ongoing thread regarding issues with the Lifetime planner that has been compiled by @Scooterlam.

Is your issue similar to one of these posts?

Social Security various
calculation issues related to SS taxation, spouse planning assumptions and spouse
survivorship benefits:

Please let me know!

-Quicken Tyka

Scooterlam

Mark Whitton said:

I use the lifetime planner and enter $15K for my social security and $0 for my wife. When I look at a year when we are both collecting ss, the $15K shows up for me but $10,345 for my wife. This number for my wife is not the spousal benefit (50% of my benefit), and it is not zero which I entered in the income for the lifetime planner. Where does this number come from and how can I enter a correct amount?

In your first example, your wife's spousal benefit is possible, but you didn't provide enough key details necessary to determine if what you are seeing is a bug or correct.

What is your PIA (benefit at full retirement age) and your planned retirement age (MM/YY)?
What your wife's planned retirement age (or in your case the age she will start claiming spousal benefits) MM/YY?
What are your dates of birth? MM/DD/YY
Maybe some screen shots?

Is the $15K your PIA at "full retirement age" or a reduced benefit due to early retirement (say at 62)? It's important. See your SSA statement.

So, I got curious.....

I will give you an example in Quicken where your scenario is possible.

You retire at 62 with a SS benefit of $15K. Image. Your PIA is not $15K but it is somewhere around $21.3K.

Your wife "retires" (claims spousal benefits) at 67 but has $0 in SS benefits against her own earning record. Image.

You wife's benefit will be 50% of your PIA (not 50% of %15K you entered in Quicken).

Your wife then would be eligible for 50% of $21.3K or $10.65K IF she starts claiming the spousal benefit at her age of 67. Otherwise, it will be reduced by a percentage every year to age 62. Image.

I cannot explain the difference in $ 65 of the annual benefit ($10,715 in Quicken vs. $10,650 that is expected). I would suspect that it has something to do with rounding errors (rounding cents to the next whole dollar).

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/xq/7gylbmua3z2f.png

I bounced this scenario against OpenSocialSecurity.com, a excellent online calculator and against my understanding of how Spousal Benefits work....See Devin Carrol's excellent YouTube video, "Social Security Spousal Benefits: The Complete Guide". The online calculator more or less agreed with Quicken's results and inline with what is expected, given the example and assumptions I posted. Image.

Did I get close?

As far as your second question / scenario, the result should be the same. All based on your PIA and planned retirement/claiming dates for you and your wife. When you added the $7500 for your wife, did you keep all the rest of the variables the same as before - No changes? No adjustments to a retirement date or your retirement SS benefit?

Quicken accounts for a spousal benefit if eligible, so no need to force the spousal benefit in the edit dialog.

Send some more data or screen shots (redacted of personal information, of course).

Mark Whitton

You seem to have found a possible reason that the planner comes up with another number. My spouse is older than me. I did not change anything in the second scenario other than the amount for my wife.

screen shots:

image.png

Mark Whitton

screen shot

image.png

Mark Whitton

In answer to the question from Q Tyka, I think the bug is related to:
BUG: How do I get my spouse's Social Security income to
calculate correctly in the Lifetime Planner? | Quicken Customer Community
related to above link.

Mark Whitton

I would also like to add that an excellent online planning tool is [removed - no soliciting]. It uses a more sophisticated monte carlo analysis for returns and allows you to customize many factors like spending, portfolio, pensions, income.. I trust it more than Quicken planner but it takes some time to run it properly.

Mark Whitton

> @Mark Whitton said:
> I would also like to add that an excellent online planning tool is [removed - no soliciting]. It uses a more sophisticated monte carlo analysis for returns and allows you to customize many factors like spending, portfolio, pensions, income.. I trust it more than Quicken planner but it takes some time to run it properly.

(Removed-Argumentative/Disruptive)

Scooterlam

For my clarity, is your position still that there is a bug in Quicken because you expected to see $7500 as a spousal benefit in the LTP results dialog for year 2022+?

I'm not seeing in LTP that this spousal benefit figure you report is out of line. Image. You didn't provide your DOBs or PIA and again I made some assumptions that your right around the corner to retirement and that you will retire and file at the same time. Also, I assumed that you are in that range where Full Retirement Age (FRA) increases from 65 to 67. I do not know if Quicken models that 5 year transition from 1955 to 1960 - I cannot see behind the curtin!.

Regardless, as stated previously, your wife's benefit will be 50% or your PIA, which is different (greater) than the $15K you entered into Quicken at age 62. Then, that spousal benefit figure is prorated for the number of years that she retires before her full retirement age.

I bumped my new scenario in Quicken against my new scenario in the SS calculator I mentioned in my earlier post. They both agreed with each other and inline with what the spousal benefit would be from SSA, more or less. Took a bunch of screen shots but I'll save the bandwidth.

If you still take issue with the spousal benefit amount, then I would recommend you call SSA or other trusted adviser and confirm your understanding and figures. Especially, since your close to making some important decisions about when to retire. So complicated!

Once you both are retired, I would assume that you would zero-out your retirement benefit entries in LTP and enter both your benefits income streams. Of course, you would have to model survivor benefits at the end of plan. That would be a change in LTP to "end" one stream and modify the other, perhaps. Something you can play with and compare Quicken retirement benefits model to an actual and known income stream.

GL

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/fo/rgj25oclten6.png

Mark Whitton

I will just fiddle the numbers in Quicken to get it to use a correct amount for the total of our SS. It looks like the developers are not planning to do anything with planner so I would ignore my bug report. I will use the free service which I cannot name for future planning. It is too bad that the Quicken planner has unfixed bugs as reported by other users.