Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Danny Favreau with One Less Worry Discussing Social Security Claiming Options

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Danny Favreau is a knowledgeable, detail-oriented leader with nearly 17 years of experience in the dynamic financial industry. As the owner of One Less Worry, Danny has become a trusted authority in pension and retirement planning, providing Federal and State employees with tailored guidance to achieve “Retirement by Design.” His success stems from his strategic approach to business development, his dedication to building strong client relationships, and his clear, practical communication style.Danny’s career spans a range of challenging roles, from field underwriter to account executive, financial advisor, and now business owner. Each position has refined his financial expertise and deepened his industry insights. With a National Social Security Advisor certification, Danny is equipped to address Social Security-related needs, including optimization strategies to maximize benefits.Throughout his career, Danny has demonstrated a commitment to professional growth, expanding his financial acumen through continuous education and leadership roles within top-tier organizations. His clients and colleagues alike value his integrity, his attention to detail, and his ability to consistently deliver exceptional results.Learn More: https://www.onelessworry.co/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-danny-favreau-with-one-less-worry-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 back with this Danny Fabro, who's the founder of One Less Worry and we'll be talking about Social Security claiming options. Danny, welcome back to the program. Thank you back, Mike. I appreciate it.

Hey, so I think when I hear claiming options, that means that there are choices. And it means there's not just one choice. And I think that a lot of people think, oh, I can retire at X. So I check the box and I claim some security and then I head on down the road. But that's not quite the easiest route for people or the most effective route because there's a lot of considerations. Where do you start with your clients when they come to you talking about hey, when should I take Social Security? Well, that's important right there.

I mean, that is a great question, and it's a question that needs to be analyzed with all your other stuff to make sure that everything is in place for your retirement. It's not a question of, okay, let me just take a look at your statement, and let's just pick a date and time and figure out what's best for you. Okay, we actually will pull, you know, if you're a couple, we pull both of your statements together.

We actually do a maximization report for you, will tell you the month and the year of when each of you should file to get the maximum dollar from Social Security. Now, most people don't do that. Most people will just quickly pick a time frame, a date, and that's it because they figure, like, I'm retiring at 62, I'm going to take my money at 62,

and I'll be done with it. But they turn around, they're going to run out of money, or they've lost a lot of money because they didn't maximize their Social Security. And a lot of advice just don't even talk to them about Social Security because there's no money made. for advisors in it, okay? So a lot of times they don't even talk about it.

And that's a downside. I mean, our first thing we do talk about is Social Security because that's very important because that could literally make your finances last year's your lifetime. You know, every dollar that you could take more from Uncle Sam is one less dollar coming out of your nest egg. Yes, that's huge. And you mentioned a software. So talk a little bit about that analysis from some of those outputs.

How can you maximize Social Security income? What are some examples? keep seen. Greatest examples are, you know, whoever the breadwinner is, there tends to be the one that's going to be, obviously, you know, taking it the later in life, you know, they can maximize it past their full retirement age of 67, roughly, or 66, and whatever month it is. But let's just say it's 67. Every year they could wait and go all the way to 70.

They're going to go up by 8% each year. money. Okay. That's important. Now it's just not for their lifetime. When they pass and their spouse is still alive, that money will go to the spouse. The spouse will lose theirs, obviously, but the funds will just transfer over and spouse will lose theirs because they're going to take the higher of the two. You're not only taking it for your lifetime, but you're taking it for your spouse's lifetime too. So that's important. So you can max that out. But our report, what we do is we just put in all your figures of everything that you've made, put it all into the system,

and it will generate over, I want to say over a thousand different ways of doing it, and it comes up with a max, one to take it out, and one should. It'll give you a couple of scenarios like the next one that's better than the top four or five, and they'll break you down so you have different ages to choose from, but it's going to also show you how much money you can lose.

So if you live to X number, you know, age, you're going to lose this much money. So it's pretty much a great report. People want to see it and realize it, like, wow, that's what we're going to shoot for. Now, granted, you know, if somebody's sick, something like that, then you may want to change it a little bit, take it earlier. But, you know, most people should wait until later in life to take it, at least to the full retirement age, because every time you take it before, you know,

67, if that's your full retirement age, you're losing money. You know, at age 62, you're, you're, You're only getting 70% of that figure of your full retirement age. And I get this every year. I get people like, well, I'm turned to 73 now, so I get the increase, right? No, once you take it, you can't change the tax back. Right, right. That's a big point.

Yep. And that's a question all the time. That really is interesting to where it's like it's not just, let me click a couple buttons and update this or, oh, when we come out with the latest and greatest new and improved, I get that right. It's kind of like the car you bought five years ago. Right now, the model probably has all kinds of new WISBank features, but they don't give it to you.

You already bought the car. Yeah. So know what you. There is a case, Sarah, if it's, say you have it, you got your social security now and with in the first, before retirement age, so between 62 and 66, say. You started taking it, and it's less than 12 months of that, then you could actually stop, pay that money back to them, and then life will go on like it never happened.

You know, in them cases that do happen every now and then. Somebody would inherit some money. You know, they started taking Social Security, and they inherited money. They could stop that Social Security, pay that money back, live off their inheritance until a later day and age, you know, and then start to Social Security at a later time. that is very, you know, once in a while that does happen.

But most cases are not that. For the most part, yeah, it's a revocable. You just, yep, you're stuck. Yeah. You know, I want to go back to that software example because it makes me think of software is wonderful and it gives you all these analysis and then the professional like yourself can kind of bring the top suggestions to the client for consideration. But you have to know the right questions to input into.

the software that maybe even a fill in the blank kind of oh i could just do that on my own or if i had the software i could fill it on my own because there's going to be some life type life questions that maybe someone like yourself would know to ask to put in there and go oh hey tell me do you ever have something like this and i think i remember once talking to someone that um was was going to claim so security but then they they had i forget what it was custody of their grandchild and the grandchild had special needs and because of that one thing that all of a sudden increased their Social Security by a nice, a dramatic amount, and they didn't even think to bring it up.

It was asked of them. So are there some things that you're watching for when you're working with your client and working with that software model that would kind of help bring the best out of it? Yeah, we actually do quite a few questions. We ask quite a few questions to get the answers, you know, just figure out, you know, first and most part, when do you want to retire? and what are your goals in life? And what are you going to do after retirement?

Okay? Because you work 35 years and then you're going to retire, but you still got another 35 years to live typically or 30 more years to live. What are you going to do? And how's that financing going to take care of that for you? So that's part of it. But we started asking some health questions a little bit,

see how they're healthy, if they're not, see if, you know, figure out what that is for them because everybody's different. And everybody's goals are different, too. So we sit down with a couple and we forget what their goals are. You know, in scenario cases, what happens if this one passes away? What's your plans then? And then that's the other way around, you know, to spouse.

What happens to your spouse? What are your plans? Life changes here and life could take a big U-turn real fast because you never know. You know, when something's going to happen when you get up in age. And our plans are always flexible. We try to make it so much flexibility. If this scenario happens, this could take place. This will take place.

It makes it easier to change things. But we want to make sure we get all your concerns out of the way. We have a concerns questions that we literally go through. When you rate down your top five concerns and then which ones keep you up at night, and we address every one of them concerns. That's the first thing that we do. We want to make sure we know that. Then we ask, we do a commerce, you know, it's not a credit score, it's a commerce score.

Tell us your risk factors of how risky you are with your money. Where do you want to be in that scale? And people, when they're retired, they're not too risky. They want something secure. This will tell us that. And once we get all that compiled together, then we could give you all these different reports. And then we do the Social Security report, too, for maximization. Now we're looking at what your full picture of retirement looks like.

This is what you currently have. This is your Social Security. This is what we're currently suggesting. This is what the outcome is going to be. And this is what we would change under different circumstances. So if this is something you like, we could get this all together for you. It's something that you want to take parts of. And, you know, be aware that certain things will affect different things.

and we make all them points out. Clear cut, you walk away with some paperwork with everything that we talked about. And it's so amazing that people just love it because it's a plan. They don't have to worry about things. If something happened to one or the other, they know what they're going to be doing. They know how to take care of it. So it's a complete package and it's all free of charge.

That's huge. And I know that there's never one solution for every person regarding Social Security claiming. We know that. But let's talk a little bit more about what you've touched on, like, you know, hey, you can claim early or you could delay it as long as possible because delaying could be a good idea. Talk a little bit about some of the pros and cons of claiming early. Like, why would you want to claim early? Or what about some of the pros and cons of delaying your claiming? Okay, that's good, they're both good questions. Let's do the pros and cons by delaying first. The more you delay, the more money you're going to have, okay? You can add up to 24% more than what your retirement age is going to be. So that's important, okay?

But if you live long and longevity in your family, that's what you want to do. You know, and you're the breadwinner, you want to make sure of that, okay? Now, if you weren't the breadwinner, you know, you can't claim early. You can maybe claim that 62, 63. Some more's in there. It all depending on the dollar amounts that each have and your age difference, too, when you, you know, that's important. There's a lot of things to consider in there.

But the breadwinner, the longer you wait, the better off because you're actually doing it for two people. And it's not always... And if you can afford it. You know, you mentioned health, but... Also, can you afford to live and pay your bills in retirement if you don't have that amount, you know? And I think that would be a factor. Like, what if you can't rub two nickels together, then there's no need to think about delaying because you need it as soon as possible. But health is a good one.

Can you afford it? Because every year you do wait, there's a benefit of more for you. So that's a good point. Yep. And taking it early, if you're sick, yeah. I'm right there with you. take it. I don't, I'm not with the people that I hear this all the time. Well, Social Security, I'm afraid Social Security won't be there when I retire. So I'm going to take it now at 62. Okay. Well, that's not an answer. Okay. That's not even a good analogy, okay? So Social Security is here. I don't see it going anywhere. They may make adjustments by prolonging it a little bit or raising taxes and something of that nature. But if it goes away, then the country's really in trouble. I think.

It's almost like back in the economic crisis of 2007, like when the banks were too big to fail, so the government stepped in. Social security is too big to fail. There's logically, you can't let that fail and disappear and go away. But like you said, there might be some little tweaks or adjustments, but I think that's a good point. I've been hearing that argument for 30 years. Oh, so security is going to expire, go away. Every year, every decade, people keep saying it. but it just can't logically.

That's a good point. Right. I mean, people are living longer. You know, and people don't realize when they first started Social Security, you know, 65, they get their money. But 65 is when people were dying. You know what I'm saying? So people are living a lot longer. They are taking more out.

But I believe it's 181 million people contributing to it to 60 million taking the money. So there's money being made every year. going into the pot. So, you know, granted, it may not be the finest machine that this government has, but it's a working machine that they could adjust to it, okay? So that makes it easier. I've seen people where they did have enough money set aside. The portfolio looked great. They weren't worried about taxes. Everything looked good. They decided, you know what, let's take it at 62, okay? I had a couple of, they're both taking it at 62. They could afford to take that loss.

They had no kids, you know, so it made it easy. They were giving money to charity. So, yeah, go ahead, take advantage of it then if you want to do that. But it's rarely you see that because people do need it. Now, if you need the money because you're sick and you're retired, then you have to take it. You got to take it. You know, that I understand too. but if you can afford to maybe make adjustment somewhere else in your portfolio

by delaying your Social Security and still retiring, we could help you with that, you know? People think that as soon as you retire, you have to take your Social Security. That is not the case, okay? You can take Social Security any time you want. And that's the thing, you know. People think, I'm going to retire at 62, and I'm going to take my Social Security. You don't have to, okay?

It's a misled theory there for some people. Yeah. Yeah, good point. Yeah, so I think that's the bottom line is, should I claim early, should I claim late? There's not a direct answer for that. And I know that a lot of times people kind of might get frustrated. Like, well, just tell me, there's no way. You got to figure it out.

You got to run that analysis, whether it's software or working with an advisor or both. And that's how you're going to be able to. tell because everyone's situation is different. You know, I've even heard that sometimes people don't realize, oh, you mean, I can get Social Security for maybe my ex-husband and we've been divorced for this many years. I didn't realize. So how are some of those spouse, divorce-spouse benefits work? Yeah.

If your spouse, if you guys got divorced and you've been divorced or excuse me, married for 10 years, okay? And then you turn around as long as you're married for 10 years and your spouse is with higher income, you could take advantage of that right there. And then I hear this all the time, well, how am I going to find out? When is you going to take it? Because you want to make sure he's taking it before you can use it. You could actually call a Social Security number, and they will actually help you with that.

You know, just be named if you have the social, that's a great. But they get the name in the city and where they live. They could actually look it up and say, okay, well, he's not taking it yet. or yes, he is taking it, and this is what he's getting. So this is what you have when you start at 62. So you could actually work that out, the numbers, and Social Security will help you with that. You don't have to call your ex up and find out. And it doesn't hurt the X at all.

It's not money coming up his pocket. So that's kind of a good thing there. That's good to know. And that's available to you. And if you don't ask for it, you don't get it. But if it's all the pieces line up, that's benefit to. you that you might not have thought you would get? Yeah, and it happens all the time.

I mean, people don't think about it. And they go back six months. So, you know, if they started six months ago, they can go back six months on that. Social Security will. I advise people call every six months, so you don't lose six months. You know, don't wear the ear to call. Call twice a year, you know, every six months until they start taking it and boom, you know. But if you've got kids, the kids will say when dad's retiring, you know, something like that.

It's just pretty easy there. You'll hear. You'll hear. Hey, so I know that I know that we logically know that Google is nice for information, but you shouldn't Google for really specific things. And we've already established the fact that, wow, Social Security claiming early, late, there's all kinds of factors. But what about people that go, well, the Social Security website has. a lot of information or I can go down to my Social Security office and talk to them. Why can't I just get all this done using what Social Security Administration, you know,

the government website or the government office, can't they just help me make all these decisions? Well, they can't advise you what to do. Okay. Social Security cannot advise you what to do. And more importantly, any other thing that you have, they don't know how you feel. They don't know your finances. They don't know what you're. goals are that they don't know when you want to retire. Nobody knows that. You need to sit down

with somebody like myself and we go through all them details for you. We need to know your concerns. We need to know, you know, how you feel, what your plans are. What are you can do after retirement, you know, for the next 30 years of life. They don't know that. And they're not going to tell you. They're going to say you could take it from 62 to 70. That's all he could do. And they can't advise you one to take it, one not to take it, okay? So don't expect them to give you that answer. And if somebody gave you an answer without even looking at your finances and looking at the whole picture, then that is so wrong right there to begin with because it's a big picture you've got to look at.

Social Security is just a part of your, is one part of your retirement. You got to look at the whole picture. Do you have a pension? Do you not have a pension? You know, stuff of that nature. Does your spouse have a pension that you get, you know, after he passed? or she passes, you get that money. You know, so there's a lot of different things to look at.

Life insurance, you know, there's so many things to look at. And we have a complete program of all the stuff that we look at. We make sure that we hit everything, you know. Every person's needs are different. So that's the important part, is everything we do is customized for you. Well, Danny, I think if someone is wanting to check out their options, what that computer software analysis would come back with and just kind of give some guidance that way.

What's the best way that they can reach out and connect with you? 475-257-1-807. Just give me a call. Excellent. Awesome, Danny. Well, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Thank you, Mike.

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