Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Bob Chitrathorn, Co-Founder of Simplified Wealth Management Discussing Social Security Claiming Options

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Suthipong Robert Chitrathorn (or Bob for short) came from humble beginnings. Born to parents Puttachart and Sakul Chitrathorn, Bob was raised in a mobile home park in Colton, CA. His parents migrated to Michigan from Bangkok, Thailand in 1974, before settling in Southern California. As a child, Bob didn’t realize how good others had it until he ventured out of the ghetto and went over to friends’ birthday parties. There he’d witness the luxuries of living the American dream and of the possibilities that lay ahead.To the Chitrathorns, life in America was a gift and they were proud owners of property in America. They worked hard to put food on the table and to put Bob and his younger sister, Crystal, through school. Bob ate sandwiches with nothing but cheese on them, but he was blessed nonetheless. He learned that perspective made all the difference in life.In his mother’s words, “education is money in the bank.” She teaches nurses to this day, but she and Sakul, a factory worker, sacrificed to make a better life for Bob and Crystal. They paid for both kids to go through private high school and then helped pay for college.Their dedication and sacrifice didn’t go to waste. Bob received a full ride scholarship for his first year at La Sierra University, before transferring to Cal State San Bernardino. He received his B.S. in Finance, as well as a B.S. in Real Estate, while minoring in business administration. Despite the rigorous course load, Bob graduated magna cum laude and was named part of the Golden Key Honor Society.In 2004, Bob became a financial advisor, which was an opportunity to make a good living, while helping others make the best decisions for their own financial lives. He had a short stint at H&R Block and also considered real estate, but he found his passion in personal finance. While Bob was attending CSUSB, his parents were working with an agent at New York Life. Bob always sat in on their meetings. He found that by listening to his parents’ goals and conveying the pros and cons of their decisions, that they would listen to him more often than their own advisor.When Bob became an advisor, it was a no-brainer that Puttachart and Sakul would work with their son, who always listened to their needs. With over 12 years of industry experience, he now has hundreds of clients beyond his parents to guide and influence. Bob recently joined newly established Simplified Wealth Management to help grow a new brand and to help shape the next generation of financial advisors.In 2016, Bob contributed a chapter to best-selling author and esteemed motivational speaker, Brian Tracy’s book. The book, “Success Manifesto: The World’s Leading Entrepreneurs & Professionals Reveal Their Secrets to Mastering Health, Wealth & Lifestyle,” was an opportunity for Bob to share his love for planning and for his clients.He holds the Series 6, Series 7, and Series 63 registrations with LPL Financial, and Series 65 registration with Strategic Wealth Advisors Group, LLC, and life, health and long-term care insurance licenses. Bob has been married to the love of his life, Brittany, for five years. They live in their Riverside, CA home with their rescue dog, Mazy, a pool, putting green, and a Pittsburgh Steelers-themed bar that’s perfect for Sunday Night Football.If you’re looking for Bob at 6:30 or 7 p.m. on a weeknight, more often than not, he’s prepping for a case or making phone calls. His parents’ work habits weren’t lost on him and he’s usually the one at the end of the night setting the alarm and turning off the lights.Complimentary Power of AttorneyHelp with business valuationComplimentary Second Opinion, investment review/analytics.Learn more:https://planwithbob.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-bob-chitrathorn-co-founder-of-simplified-wealth-management-discussing-social-security-claiming-options

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Bob Chitra Thorne, who's the co-founder of simplified wealth management, and we'll be talking about social security claiming options, Bob. Welcome to the program. Hey, Mike, thanks for having me here. You are welcome. Before we dive into this really brief topic that'll probably take about two minutes to cover, you know, ha ha. This is a, this is really, really telling for people to really understand. So I'm excited to learn about this.

But before we jump into it, give us a little bit of your story and your background and how did you get into financial services? Yeah, I mean, I guess my story is, you know, I didn't grow up with money. Her parents arguing about money. They didn't want that to happen in the first. future as I grew and learned, took bits and pieces of pros that I learned from my mom and my dad and, you know, just applied it to everyday life and studied hard or worked hard. And I always had a niche for, you know, money and being an entrepreneur and, you know, math slash finances. So it just kind of had a natural progression. I went to school, got my BS in finance, my BS in real estate. Then I also got my certificate of financial planning from Pepperdine.

as well and been a financial advisor for about just a little over 19 years now. Loving what I do. I love educating. I love helping people. I love giving free information away, essentially speaking. Whether they work with me or not, I just love helping. You know, and what goes around comes around, the law of abundance, giving and serving, giving value, all of that ties in.

So I think that is so powerful. And like I was kind of joking at the beginning, so security is a important topic. And it really can be misunderstood. So when you are beginning to educate your clients about Social Security claiming options, where do you start? What is the first place that you're looking at to help them understand some of their options? So when we're talking about Social Security, you know, when I'm talking to a client, it's client-specific, right, based tailored directly to their age. But generally speaking, when we're talking about as a whole for Social Security, you know, the main thing is how do you maximize your Social Security, right? That's what people want to know.

Would you agree? Yeah, maximum. Yeah, give me the most. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things with that is, you know, you need to work and contribute for at least 35 years. That's how you're going to get the most out of your social security. So if you look back and you had 35 years of earnings, but on the social security statement, one year of, you know, work was 100 bucks. It might very well be great and in your benefit to go work for another year or half a year and make $7,000, greatly improving your social security benefits. benefit. You can also maximize your social security benefit by delaying taking your benefits, right? A lot of people can start taking benefits at early as 62. But once you take it at 62, you know, you're pretty much stuck. But if you wait until age 70, you might be able to get a much

higher amount of social security. Usually the number is 8% per year. From 62 to 70, your monthly benefits got to increase by waiting. Most people usually take it between 66 and 67, depending on a birth, but you can delay it all the way to age 70. Another way to maximize social security is, you know, you want to coordinate benefits with your spouses, right? You usually claim a spousal benefit, which is up to 50% of your spouses for retirement benefit. Again, these are just general ideas to speak with a specialist when you're about to claim social security. But there's lots of different ways of doing things, you know, depending on when you're born, you can consider a filed to spend, which is not going to be as feasible moving forward based on the phase out because it's

going to be phased out for those born after January 1st, 1954, right? Another great way I tell people to maximize Social Security is guess what? Work. Continue working out to you claim Social Security, right? That's going to help you bring more. Up to the, up to some of the limits, right? Yeah, yeah. Because up to a certain limit.

Yeah. If you go over the limit, then you're pretty. you're going to get a huge deduction from Social Security. So, you know, work part-time, work up to the limit when it changes every single year or every couple of years. So always check on that. That's probably the most, you know, that 8% thing that you mentioned, I want to kind of dive in a little bit deeper on that. So if you wait from whatever age up to whatever age and doesn't really matter the numbers because people need to talk to a qualified professional like yourself. But, you know, would this make sense to me?

But that 8% does not sound like it's something to jump up and down about until you realize that's 8% every year compounded, right? And per month. So you're getting so eight per year annually compounded. So from 62 to 63, if you wait until 63 instead of 62, every month, your monthly pay from social security is going to be 8% more than it would have been at 62. But guess what? 8% may not sound big, but that's every single year you're on social security. So that payment is 8% higher at 63 for the rest of your life than it would have been at 62. Yeah.

Right. You know, that's big. And if you can put it off, like, like, you know, I'm sure somebody has done a research study on this, but a large percentage of people I would feel confident are looking at retirement, but they don't want to just sit around and shop and travel and play golf. They want to just pull way back and work two days a week. Like you said, you know, one way to maximize to still work up to certain limits. So if you could, air quotes, retire and work a little bit just to stay active, but not triggering, you know, some of those extra taxes or whatnot, that could really change your lifestyle down. And then you're taking advantage of delaying it just a few more years until you can get that compounding really worked for it. So I think that's a great point that people just need the number one know what they do want.

What does retirement look like? And if it is sitting back and playing golf and whatever, more power to you. but, you know, that's the kind of thing that you need to take into consideration. Exactly. And also it's efficient and exponentially powerful because, you know, let's say you retire at 65. You're still working, but you saved enough as you worked in your 401k or IRAs or whatnot. So now you delay claiming social security, right? So you're retired working two days a week, but now you're utilizing your income from working two days a week and then also taking money from your other resources to live. And every year, your social security is going up by 8% annually.

So now when you hit age 70, guess what? You don't have to take as much out of your retirement because you have such a higher pot of social security paying you monthly. And again, it's different for everybody, depending on life expectancy and whatnot. But I would consider that kind of being, you know, the golden mecca is, hey, I'm retired. I'm 65. I'm working. I'm not touching my social security because I have enough in retirement.

I hit 70. I claim social security. Now I'm not taking as much from retirement. So that continues to go and the legacy for your family. I think, you know, and like we've said, we're very careful to say, this is not the formula for every single person, right? You have to see what's best for you. But that scenario could be very, very powerful. But then on the flip side, just like for every, you know, up, there's a down or a seesaw.

When you push it down on one side, it goes up on the other. Well, for some people, it's like, hey, listen, I cannot afford financially or physically. to put it off. So you may have some situations where it's like, I have to claim the first second that I can claim early. So you can claim early, right? So talk a little bit about claiming early. What are some of those considerations? Yeah. So I mean, you know, the frozen cons to everything, but you definitely can claim early. You know, if you need access, again, you know, claim at age 62 so that you can get a source of income that you can rely on and know that it's going to be there for you. You know, one of the things people are talking about right now, hey, Social Security, good to get up, go on pause because government might shut down.

Well, no, because Social Security, in a generic term, is funded by a pension slash kind of a trust fund, if you will. So, you know, if you retire at age 62, you have this predictable source of income. So that is a pro, right? That's good for you. Claimant early gives you flexibility, right? because if you are able to claim early, it will allow you to delay drawing down other assets, right? So if you get income of 62 from Social Security, well, now you don't have to touch that amount from your 401K or retirement accounts, right? Again, we always say it's different for everybody.

There's different pros and different cons, but that's generally a benefit as well to claiming early, you know, not having to touch those other retirement assets, depending on what you have them in and how they're doing. There's a potential, you know, if you live a certain amount of time, claiming early could be more beneficial for you, right? Because you got extra years. So it just kind of depends on everybody's specific situation in regards to that. And so those are the pros of claiming early. You know, we kind of spoke to the cons already, but that would be pros of claimant early.

One major con of claiming early is, you know, you're missing on the 8% per year. Yep. And, you know, if a husband and wife are approaching retirement and making their decisions together, there even could be some strategy or considerations to have the wife claim now and the husband claim later or vice versa. So I think some of those things are like you mentioned, the spouses and what about. Yeah. So talk about spousal benefits. And then also I've heard this before. So you can clarify.

But here's a husband and wife that got divorced a handful of years ago. kid, what of the spouses still claim on the divorce spouse? Is there some spousal benefit that way? Yeah, so there's essentially two main general functions. And again, most people think social security is pretty basic and easy. There's so many different variables in ways you can claim and do things. So I always say talk to specialists, financial advisor, social security specialist. You know, when you call the Social Security Administration, a lot of times they're very well trained.

is just they don't know the overall big picture, right? So you want someone who sees a big picture in all your finances. But when it comes to spousal benefits, you know, they're available to the current spouse husband or wife of an eligible worker who's already receiving social security retirement or disability benefits. To qualify for the spouse benefit, you know, the individual has to be 62 years old, have been married to the worker, right, the spouse for at least one year. That worker spouse must have already filed for their own social security benefits.

now the spouse benefit can be up to 50% of the person who is work, you know, the worker person who claimed that, you know, the married spouse can get 50% of the workers full retirement benefit if they claim before their full retirement age. And therefore they can wait until they're 70 and then jump onto their own social security. And, you know, potentially that could be, hey, they're taking, let's just use husband and wife. They're taking their husband's social security. and then when they turn 70, they trigger on their own claiming social security because their 70 amount is bigger than half of their husband's social security. Right. So there's lots of ways to play into that. And then for divorce spouses, you know, that could also happen in certain conditions. To qualify for a divorce spousal benefit, again, you have to be 62.

At current, you have to be married to the eligible worker for at least 10 years, right? and then be unmarried when you're claiming that divorce spouse benefit. So the bottom line is it is like we've said a couple times here, not cut and dry, not cookie cutter. But with that scenario you just mentioned, there could be some unknown opportunities that you wouldn't have thought of initially. So make sure that if you're looking at making these decisions or you don't get with someone that is a Social Security. specialist. And I think here's a word that I've heard thrown around before. So speak to this. For the most part, making your decision is irrevocable. You can't change it, right? Because I think a lot of people might go, oh, I'm going to do this. And then a couple of years, I'll change. No. Once you've

claimed, that's it. Well, let me touch on two things here. Going back to spousal benefits, yeah, there's so many things people don't think about that literally can be hundreds of thousand a dollar. So yes, always talk to an expert. But now when we're talking about irrevocable means, hey, you know, once you file, you can't change, you can't do anything. Eh, that's typically true for the most part, but you can change your social security claiming strategy after you initially claim, but there's limitations and considerations that you have to keep in mind. Okay. So one is if you claim social security benefits within the last 12 months, you may be able and eligible to withdraw your application. Now, you may have to pay back the benefits you've received, right,

including any spouse or dependent benefits that may have been received as well while you were, you know, on claim, if you will, but you can withdraw that within that first 12 months. And then after you withdraw, you can reapply for benefits at a later date, right? Essentially, if you claimed it at 63, three months later, you said, hey, I don't want to, you know, I got a windfall of money. I don't need to claim my social security. You withdraw your application. You pay back the money you took for the last three months plus any benefits that your dependents or spouses or expouses had claimed on you. And now you can delay until age 70 if you wanted to. So that's one option. Another option is if you claim before your full retirement age,

which is typically 67, and you're still within your 12 months, again, you can withdraw and reapply. But those are pretty much the only way to change benefits. You know, it's mainly drawn the application within that first 12 months. And that's about it. Yeah. There's one more caveat. Unless you appeal it, which means, hey, I've got my social security for a while now. And I realize, hey, I think there's a big error.

And you appeal it to the Social Security Administration. And, you know, they err in your favor. Yeah. So there's there's some ways, but you better make sure that if at all possible, you are doing what you prefer up front. And it kind of gets, it makes me think about this. Every time something goes wrong or you don't know how to do something in life, you go to Google and you just Google, oh, how do I fix this or do this? Getting this kind of advice from Google or even the, even the Social Security Administration website is really generic. So talk a little bit about how people can get some basic information, but make sure that it's quantified and clarified from a qualified professional.

Yeah. So let's just say you are going to Google online, you know, their social security information. That's just what you're going to do. You're steadfast on it. You don't want to talk to anybody. You don't want to talk to the financial advisor. Plain and civil, that's what you're going to do. Well, first and foremost, be aware.

know that it's different for everybody. What I mean by that, if I Google, I want to get buff, it's going to be different for me, a person who's 510, 150 pounds versus someone who is 610 and 220 pounds, right? There's going to be different things that can help each of us differently get to our, quote, end quote, buff status quicker and more efficiently.

So keep that in mind, right? But if you're going to Google, you know, one of the things to do is you want to go to the, the official social security administration website, which is ssa.gov. There's lots of information you can get about social security benefits, retirement planning, disability benefits, Medicare, and so much more. Again, if you're not working with a specialist, you may not understand it all, but you can go there for a good amount of information. By going there, you can also create your own social security account. I believe it's called

My Social Security. And you have your own account. You can pull your statement, it can calculate using calculators on their website, hey, you know, if I work for 10 more years and this is my projected income for the next 10 years, and I stop working and I claim Social Security at 62, how much do I get? If I claim it 65, how much do I get? If I claim it 67, 70, how much do I get? So it has really great information that you can get from the website. The website has plenty of educational resources as well and publications on ssa.gov.

I would definitely avoid unofficial websites. Anyone can put anything on the internet. If I wanted to say I was Superman in a movie five years ago, I could put that on the internet. Right. But was it actually the case? Probably not. 100% not, right?

Yep. And again, you know, there's lots of online calculators. But when it comes to social security, again, their ssa.gov website has so much information. And it's good information, but aren't I correct? in thinking that it's going to be kind of like the cut and dry basic information, but you're not going to get into some maybe some strategies that could, you know, because for instance, you sit down with a Social Security specialist like yourself and you might be asking a lot of questions to discover opportunities and go, oh, now here's the thing.

You could claim here, but you said this and what we really should consider is. And you're not going to get that from a website, even if it is security, because they're, they're just going to give Roat information. So I think maybe talk a little bit about the benefit of working with a specialist like yourself versus just someone that's a financial professional that can then dabbles and knows a little bit about security. Well, exactly. Yeah. Working with a specialist is far, far, far beyond going to give you more value, right? The analogy I would use here is, you know, you can get this information on the website, but knowing how to use it. and what to do with it and put all the pieces together, that's where a specialist is going to come to play.

They're going to think of different things from different questions that ask you, such as, hey, on the website, oh, yeah, guess what, yeah, you know what? You can get a benefit from your spouse. You know, they may know about a spousal benefit of such nature, but let's say you're a divorce. They may not know there's access to divorce spousal benefit. And they may tell you to claim your own benefit as opposed to saying, hey, you know, let's take two ideas.

use a divorce spouse benefit, wait until your benefit hits this amount and then claim your own. You know, there's different facets of strategies that you're not going to be able to put together unless you know how to kind of like read in between the lines, right? That's a big point. Yeah. So that's something where I think that it takes someone sitting down and going, okay, let's see how this would apply to you just for consideration. You know, I think that is, that's the big thing to keep in mind.

is it's not the same prescription, if you want to think of it that way, for every single person. So sitting down with the specialist, they can ask questions, make sure that you're understanding, and just give you those scenarios. Like if you claimed here, then here's what this would be. If you waited, here's what this would be. So I think this has been so helpful, Bob, just to realize that there's a lot more that goes into it than, quote, unquote, check in the box. So thank you for this time. If someone is interested in learning more about security claiming options and reaching out

and connecting with you. What's the best way they can do that? Yeah, the best way to connect with me, you can go to my website, www. www. com. You can email me at Bob at simplifiedwealth.com.

Those are the two easiest ways. Or you can just Google Bob Chitrethoran, C-H-I-T-R-A-T-H-O-R-N, and you'll find me somewhere online. It'll probably say I was not Superman five years ago. Exactly. Awesome. Thank you so much, Bob.

Appreciate you. coming on. Thank you. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www.Influentialentrepreneursradio.com.