Joe Pinsker
speaker
1,247 appearances
30 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2022
last heard Jan 2025
Joe Pinsker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Here's where language gets really important.
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Is Social Security going to run out of money?
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No.
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Are Social Security's trust funds going to run out of money?
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They might if the government doesn't take action.
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And this distinction is a little complicated.
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I know people's eyes might glaze over when they hear the phrase trust funds, but it's really key.
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And the thing that will run out of money...
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these trust funds is responsible for just a part of funding the program.
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The majority of the money for Social Security actually comes from payroll taxes, which are not expected to go away anytime soon.
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So right now we are at a point in time where the retirement program has a trust fund it can rely on to cover that gap in funding that we talked about earlier.
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But that trust fund is projected to run out 10 or so years from now.
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And that's the point where it's projected to have to pay out reduced benefits.
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A common figure is that only 83% of what's planned in 2035 will be able to be paid if the program's two trust funds were to be combined.
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Something that I heard that some people are doing in response is just saving more than they otherwise would.
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I talked with a 38 year old who said he has always assumed he'll get nothing from Social Security.
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That's just how he is planning his retirement savings.
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And he estimates that he and his wife are putting away about one third more than what they need if they were sort of assuming that they would get full benefits afterwards.
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A little tip that I picked up while reporting this story is that if the government were to add to payroll taxes right now in a way that closed the gap in funding, it would have to be about 3.5 percentage points increased.
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And one of the policy analysts that I was talking to was saying that if you're somebody who is worried about a reduction in Social Security benefits, maybe you could up your savings by that amount, 3.5 percentage points, to try to cover the gap yourself.
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Showing 361–380 of 1,247 · page 19 of 63
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