Are Your Allocations Right for Social Security

Nothing exists in a vacuum, meaning that even if you’ve determined the best time and method of taking your Social Security benefits based on your age, objectives, and lifelong earnings, it won’t matter unless you properly coordinate your benefits with your overall retirement income plan. Most people agree that Social Security is not enough to live on in retirement; it needs to be supplemented with other sources of income. Therefore, it is essential to help ensure your other savings and investment vehicles are as reliable as Social Security and capable of meeting the same financial objective: providing income that you can’t outlive.

Retirement income for any purpose, including living expenses, major purchases, or satisfying RMDs, should ideally come from interest and dividends on your savings and investment vehicles, not from principal — just like your parents probably told you. Spending down on principal in retirement has never been a good strategy, but today it’s a more slippery slope than ever, especially in the early years of retirement.