When should you claim Social Security, and how do you know if the “optimal” strategy actually fits your retirement plan? In this episode, we react to a White Coat Investor article exploring whether Social Security should be claimed early and invested or delayed for a larger guaranteed benefit. You’ll learn why Social Security optimization is about more than a simple break-even calculation, how delaying one spouse’s benefit to age 70 can create higher lifetime and survivor income, and why federal employees may have more flexibility because of their pensions and other guaranteed income sources.
Listen in to hear about the role of taxes, longevity, dependents, behavioral preferences, and market conditions in deciding when to claim. You’ll discover why a strategy that looks mathematically optimal may not be the best fit for every person, how tools like Savvy Social Security and RightCapital can help evaluate different scenarios, and why Social Security decisions should be integrated into the broader retirement plan rather than made in isolation. We also discuss how changing market conditions can cause advisors to revisit a claiming strategy and why the best Social Security plan is ultimately one that is customized to your cash flow, circumstances, and ability to follow it.
Listen to the full episode here:
What you will learn:
- How claiming at 62 and 70 can work for married couples. (3:30)
- Why delaying benefits can increase guaranteed and survivor income. (6:00)
- How behavioral needs can influence the right claiming strategy. (13:40)
- Why advisors use specialized Social Security software instead of spreadsheets. (17:20)
- How taxes may impact your Social Security. (21:30)
- How market conditions can cause you to revisit a claiming strategy. (24:45)
Ideas Worth Sharing:
- “Just because we’re delaying doesn’t mean we’re living on less.” – Mason & Associates
- “Decisions shouldn’t be made in a silo.” – Mason & Associates
- “The plan needs to adapt, and it needs to be customized to your situation.” – Mason & Associates
Resources from this episode:
- Federal Survivor Benefits eBook
- Refer a Friend
- Webinar Registration
- Episode 73: Maximizing Social Security with Elaine Floyd
- Social Security Shake-Up: What Proposed Changes Mean for Federal Employees
- Mason & Associates: LinkedIn
- John Mason: LinkedIn
- Tommy Blackburn: LinkedIn
Did you enjoy the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast? Never miss an episode by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, and YouTube Music.
Read the Transcript Below:
John Mason: Welcome to the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast and the Mason YouTube channel. In this episode, Tommy and I discuss an article from The White Coat Investor titled When to Begin Social Security Benefits: How the Math Helped Me Decide. Tommy, welcome to the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.
Tommy Blackburn: John, it’s always good to do another one of these. Hopefully, we can do this succinctly. Sometimes you and I either just start spitballing about life and can go on for a little while, or we just really have fun in the topic and can go a little longer than we want to. But the story behind this one is, well, one, we advise on Social Security quite a bit with clients.
And a lot of times—this article kind of gets to it—it’s about, you know, we’ll have optimization conversations, but there’s more to it than just optimizing. It needs to fit your plan and what’s gonna work for you, what you can follow. Many factors to consider, many technicalities, and different nuances and assumptions to consider.
But ultimately, just fast-forwarding to what the article even says, like, if you’re wealthy enough, which we like to believe our clients are, it matters less and less to your plan in that it’s not gonna make or break it. So that being said, a client sent this White Coat Investor article, and it kind of goes in, starts off, Dave Ramsey says take it at 62 and invest it, and the founder of The White Coat Investor, Dr. Jim, I think he’s more of a fan of waiting until 70. The article is written by a guest doctor, and basically says, “Hey, they’re both right. Just depends on how you want to look at this.”
John Mason: All right. Well, I think we can pretty much end the recording.
Tommy Blackburn: Well—
John Mason: Just kidding.
Tommy Blackburn: We gotta unpack it a little bit more than that.
John Mason: Yes. So audience, today is July 8th, 2026. I’ve changed coats for those of you watching, so this will not be six episodes in a row that you’ve seen the same jacket. Tommy’s in a new jacket, I think, as well. So yeah, we’re excited to do this one.
Summer’s hot and heavy here in Virginia. It’s muggy. We’re leaving on an RV trip soon and just really trying to enjoy summer. That being said, Tommy, I think that, you know, one, the audience should go back and listen to prior Social Security episodes. The one with Elaine Floyd, really great episode. We’ll try to link that one in the description below.
There used to be like a billion ways one could claim Social Security, and now there’s less because the evolution has been, you used to be able to file and suspend, you used to be able to claim now, claim more later. You could do all kinds of really cool things, and then Social Security’s a month-by-month decision.
So when you start taking 12 months a year times eight years times two spouses times scenarios, it was a good sales pitch to say, “Come to a seminar to learn about the one billion ways you can claim.” Now there’s still several hundred ways, but it is less complicated than it was before. I think we should lead in with our favorite strategy: having one person claim at 62 and the other claim at 70.
And the reason we like that strategy is maybe a couple of reasons. One is that you have a big tax planning window. If you turn on all the income, maybe you lose the ability to do Roth conversions. The second thing is the bigger benefit grows until 70, so you have great guaranteed income, and you have great survivor income.
In this article, they even talk about how sometimes it’s not even the break-even that matters, it’s the guarantee. And yes, you could turn it on, invest the money, all of these things, but what happens when you die, your spouse wakes up, and you’re dead? You have more money in an investment account, but the market’s down 30 or 40%, and your spouse wasn’t the manager of the portfolio.
That’s not a great place for that person to be. So yes, we have to acknowledge there’s math to this, and we should do things that make mathematical sense. Then we should also just acknowledge what’s gonna give me the peace of mind to have a great retirement. And sometimes the peace of mind leads to more investment return, because what screws up your investment return is a freak-out moment.
Tommy Blackburn: Let your investments be your investments, right? Yes, yes. They kind of have these different layers in there. And even looking at it, that’s where some of the assumptions—like how should you view Social Security as part of your portfolio, your investments? And we’ll get to that. And part of that’s like a Dave Ramsey assumption versus…
And we’ve talked about this before. Only ’cause it was the hot take on YouTube, I feel like, a few months ago: “Oh, take your Social Security early and invest it because you can get X%.” And we kind of joked around and unpacked it, gave our opinion, which was, yeah, you have to get what we would say is kind of a risky rate of return, a high rate of return, taking on a decent bit of risk to make that math work out.
Confirmation bias here: the article, I thought, did a really good job, and Jim, the founder of White Coat, at the end basically gets to what we love, which is that 62 and 70. Now, that’s general. We’re not saying this is always the case. It should be individualized to you. But generally, we like the lower-earning spouse taking it at 62, and the higher-earning spouse, if we can delay it, taking it at 70.
He comes out and says, “That’s usually the right answer.” Here’s a buddy of his, I think, built some free calculator out there everybody can use. He’s like, “Go check it out instead of doing it yourself because this is really complicated, and I bet you’ll get that answer.” So it just further confirmed it’s like, yeah, so what we’ve been thinking and doing, you’re at least agreeing with us.
So it’s really cool. One of the reasons is, so it grows, you know, 6 to 8% depending on where you are in that delay. So it has a very nice increase to it. It gets cost-of-living adjustments, and we only get to keep the higher one. So by delaying that higher one, we’re growing the benefit that’s gonna be around.
And when we look at two lifespans, just from a probability perspective, one of us is gonna be around for some time. So we can bank on that benefit. Probably we’re gonna get some longevity out of it. It’s worth getting more bang for our buck delaying that one, and then we can go ahead. There’s less return from delaying the earlier one.
So that’s kind of how that strategy comes together. And John, you kind of hit on, there’s like an entire emotional side to this. Another confirmation bias I thought was—or just made me chuckle when you see things you agree with—is I think he even says, maybe he stole it from us and we just don’t know.
He said, “But if you die at 108, you’re not gonna kick yourself for having delayed your Social Security.” You’re gonna be, you know, probably pretty happy that you delayed your Social Security. And if you die early, well, you don’t care either way, and you’ll probably be thankful if you left your spouse in the best position you could.
John Mason: You know, continuing our reaction to this piece, federal employees have a really unique opportunity to delay Social Security until age 70 because they have great pensions, and a lot of our clients also have military and VA benefits on top of that.
In the private sector, if your only guaranteed income is Social Security and, like most people, you haven’t saved a lot for retirement—a lot of people have manual labor jobs or get fired, downsized, RIF’d, or what have you—then all of a sudden, turning on Social Security at 62 is the only option. So I think we need to acknowledge, and the article does that, I believe, that sometimes the only option is just to turn it on.
Mm-hmm. And federal employees have more options because you have more guaranteed income, so as a percent of your portfolio—remember, just because we’re delaying doesn’t mean we’re living on less. So as a percentage of your portfolio, it becomes much more feasible to delay. I loved how the article puts in, you know, at inflation, here’s your break-even.
At a 7% rate of return, here’s your break-even. At a 10% return, here’s your break-even. So I thought that was a nice touch that they were able to show multiple different kinds of math here. And what I also liked about the article is it basically says it depends. Mm-hmm. Which we know to be true. And then it talks in here about dependents, which I don’t remember if it specifically calls out, like, disabled adult children.
Well, that’s a different equation.
Tommy Blackburn: I think it mentions it and basically says, “That’s complicated. You should tread carefully.”
John Mason: Yes. So if you have a disabled adult child, you know, if you don’t turn on your benefit at 62, your 19-year-old disabled son or daughter is also not eligible for benefits.
And so does it make sense for you to turn it on? Because now all of a sudden your 19-year-old, who was disabled before 18, would be eligible for benefits there. Their SSI could grow, ’cause they’re getting SSI at like—don’t quote me, audience—like $700 to $900 a month. But maybe half of your PIA, half of your unreduced 67 benefit, could have them at, like, $1,500 to $1,700 a month.
And oh, by the way—
Tommy Blackburn: Tax-free
John Mason: Doing that doesn’t eliminate them from Medicaid or any government benefits that they’re entitled to. So I don’t know where this comes from, I don’t remember, but that’s a horse of a different color, and it is a complicated equation. And I mean, I just did this recently with a client.
He’s 62 and a half, I believe. He’s listening to the podcast right now, I know for sure. His spouse is 66 or 67, like right at FRA, and doesn’t have Social Security in her own right, so she doesn’t have 40 quarters. So looking at Savvy Social Security, looking at RightCapital, we made the decision to go ahead and activate his Social Security now, even though he has military, even though he has a federal pension, because it unlocks $1,500 to $1,600 a month for his spouse.
And it’s like, well, yeah, we should probably just do that. We should probably just do that, because although his would grow, her spousal benefit doesn’t.
Tommy Blackburn: Exactly. Yeah, it works a lot better when we have two records so that we can actually activate one and delay the other, whereas when both of you are contingent upon that one person filing, that begins to shift the math.
Yeah, a lot of, it was well done. It was just a good article to expand on some different thoughts there. I think they said basic break-even was like 80, which kind of confirmed what we thought. And then it said, oh, if you throw inflation in at like 2.5%, it brings it to 78. So the break-even being, you know, take at 62 or delay to 70.
That, and as I saw that, I was like, that’s almost always what we see—78 is about the break-even when you factor in inflation. Talks about the tax planning window, and delaying certainly moves that up even more. So it just said it’s all complex and needs to really be catered to you and your plan, and a plan that you’re gonna follow in your situation.
But yeah, I just thought this was really good. And the Dave Ramsey one, which isn’t wrong, but Dave says that you invest it and earn 10%. And, you know, and even when you look at it and say, “Oh, well, maybe I’ll assume a more reasonable 7% rate of return,” it’s like, I don’t know, Social Security is about as risk-free…
I understand we can debate the stability of it, but it’s guaranteed by the government, so it’s about as risk-free as we can get. And I don’t know that I’ve seen many people—and I’m sure there’s some out there, so I can’t, there’s no absolutes in life—but how many people are taking the check and investing it and not spending it at all?
So it’s just like, there’s some flawed assumptions, I think, when we start looking at things that way.
John Mason: Yeah, that’s very rare. I mean, humans are very good at spending 100% of what hits their paycheck or what hits their bank account. So yeah, I just don’t buy it. I don’t know that there’s a scenario out there where somebody was disciplined and saved 100% of their Social Security for 96 months.
I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. They’re gonna go buy a Tahoe, and instead of getting an LT, they’re gonna get a High Country. You know? It’s what’s gonna happen. And talking about assumptions, Tommy, RightCapital, you know, we like to use RightCapital, our financial planning software, where we have life expectancies of 90 to 92, 92 to 95, whatever we pick.
It’s a long time, and it’s very conservative. And when you do that, RightCapital always says, “Delay both people until 70.” And we say, “Yeah, but they’re probably not gonna live that long.” So then we go back to the 62 and 70 or the 62 and 67. Mm-hmm. And what I want the audience to know is we’ve done almost every Social Security claiming strategy that can be done, and it’s completely customized to the client’s cash flow as well as their emotional needs going into retirement.
I know I’ve told this story before. I had to activate Social Security for a client because I was pretty sure he was gonna be eating cat food if we didn’t. There you go. He was just so nervous about retirement. He was so nervous to spend his own money that I just had to send it to him. I say me—I had to help him activate it because that was the only thing that was gonna be good for him.
It could have been, like, emotionally devastating. It could have been bad for his health. He needed that money. That’s just who he was. And as financial advisors, we have to be able to see that. So what I’m getting at, audience, is RightCapital’s always gonna say 70, 70. When I run calculators for folks in Savvy Social Security, I use average life expectancy or above average, but I don’t typically go out till 92 and 95.
I feel like I like the Savvy report better. Yes, ’cause it feels more realistic. But I wanna have the RightCapital backup in case somebody lives longer than expected. So yeah, we don’t use RightCapital for Social Security optimization, long and short of it.
Tommy Blackburn: We don’t. And I think that’s such a good segue, though.
You’re saying optimization, and we’re fortunate enough that our clients, you know, tend to be, they’re set up for success, right? They’re successful people. They’ve done the right things. They’re gonna have a successful retirement. We’re gonna work on the soft side of things, of making sure that we enjoy life and have a plan for when we get there.
But ultimately, for many people, it is a discussion about what’s optimal here. And sometimes it’s really cool discussions. Like John said, when we can think about, well, if we activate this, we free up this benefit, whether that’s for disabled children or spouses, and like, this is really cool ’cause we’re math nerds or, you know, we geek out about this, and then this is valuable.
But it also comes back to exactly what you just said, which is turn it on at 62 ’cause he just needed it behaviorally, whatever. And my guess is that plan was gonna work whether we took Social Security at 62 or at 70, or anywhere in between, so that at the end of the day, this is an optimization question.
We’re happy to have that, but it’s also behavioral. And the article goes into, which we know to be true through experience, is if you’re wealthy enough—however you wanna measure that, and yes, federal employees, I know we don’t feel wealthy, but we have a pension that’s worth $1 to $2 million probably.
We’re gonna have a nice Social Security benefit, and we’ve probably saved just like everybody in the private sector did, so we probably have a couple million dollars, $1 to $2, $3 million in our TSP and investments. So we’re wealthy, whether we feel it or not. And for you, your plan is gonna work. Like, Social Security’s gonna get turned on at some point.
It’s gonna work. It’s just optimization. The sad thing, as the article goes into—which I agree with, and I think John does too—is that probably most people who aren’t wealthy in that regard truly would be best served by delaying, but you don’t have a choice. That’s what John got into, where it’s like, you know, you’re probably in a situation where cash flow has to be what it has to be.
There’s no real choice to be had here. And that’s where it’s like, yeah, it really would help your plan if you could do it. You just don’t have an option. For most of us, it’s just an optimization question, and it’s fun to look at the stress tests and the different strategies and figure out, you know, what does the rest of the world say?
What do we say? And ultimately, what do you, the client, think when we go through this together?
John Mason: I think a takeaway for the audience is—we’ll link to this article—and the takeaway here is please don’t build your own spreadsheet. I mean, I know there’s a NASA engineer or somebody listening to this podcast, but like, the spreadsheets have been done.
You could purchase Savvy Social Security for like $1,000 a year, run your scenarios one time, and you would have bought back your time, right? And it would’ve been right, rather than you trying to recreate all of this. So you know, you can trust our guidance. You can hire us. You can buy software that’s already out there.
But I don’t think building this in Excel—unless you just love it and you’re up for a challenge—I don’t think that it’s worth your time or effort. If you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re getting ready to retire, and you don’t wanna hire us or somebody like us, go buy Savvy Social Security. Save yourself the time.
Decisions shouldn’t be made in a silo. So for instance, did you decline survivor benefits on your military or federal pension? If so, maybe even more of a reason to delay one of those benefits, Tommy, until 70. You know, flip side of that, the house is paid off. We have SBP on everything. We don’t owe any debt.
We have a million or more in assets saved, and you feel passionate about 62? Go on with your bad self. Go ahead. Do it. You know? Like, there are times where we will shout from a rooftop, “Yeah, this breaks your plan,” or “This hurts your plan.” Luckily for our clients—and I just wanna come back to this—our clients and the people listening to this podcast are not just a little wealthy.
They’re, like, very wealthy, the majority of people, when you look at the value of Social Security, the value of a pension, and what they’ve saved. Like you said, they’ve saved like everybody else in the private sector, but the fact of the matter is they saved more than most. Having a million dollars is still pretty awesome, man, you know? And the fact that we see 15, 20, 30 families a year or more calling us that have more than that saved—good job. I mean, you’ve really crushed it. You’ve crushed it.
Tommy Blackburn: You’ve done a good thing, and I think where I was going with it is you saved most likely like everybody in the private sector is being told to save, with no regard for the special things you have available to you, like your FERS pension.
So you’ve built for not having a pension. And then half the time, they tell you to build with no Social Security in mind, too. So now you’ve showed up, and you have a pension you weren’t counting on as well as a Social Security benefit you weren’t counting on, in addition to the investments to support a lifestyle with none of that.
So you’re just really in a great position, and it’s fun for us to be a part of. I thought that, you know, another thing too, as you think about Social Security and this optimization, like, that’s why these conversations and planning engagements and relationships with an advisor are so fun and meaningful, because it should be a process.
It should be an ongoing process. There’s so many other layers to this onion than just when do we turn on Social Security. We can figure out optimal times, but we really need to put the entire plan together, and a plan that works for you. And there’s a benefit to something that’s guaranteed, right? There’s a peace of mind here.
And maybe that’s turning it on at 62 in your scenario. Like, maybe that’s the peace of mind. But this thing is guaranteed. It’s gonna go with inflation. If we can delay it, we’re probably never gonna regret having delayed it. I think you’ll probably wake up later in life and be happy that you delayed it because your income benefit’s gonna be that much more. So it’s all a lot of fun and a lot of things to think about.
It’s complex, as everything in financial planning is to a degree.
John Mason: But the article specifically does also mention taxes and how taxes impact everything, which—you may have already said this—but Social Security is tax-free in 37 states, I believe. If your only income is Social Security, it’s tax-free federally.
So there is a world where, you know, one could make—if you and I were married—$80,000 a year in Social Security. Like, I think the maximum now is close to 50. Like if you maxed out, I think it’s 50. So you and I could make $100,000 of Social Security and not pay a dime to anybody anywhere in taxes. You know, and then you throw in a $30,000, $40,000, or $50,000 Roth distribution on top of it.
Now you’re at $140,000 to $150,000 completely tax-free. Now that would mean you had a million dollars in Roth, but, you know, think about that plan. And then, I’m not gonna go down too much of a rabbit hole, but I may or may not have been commenting on LinkedIn posts about tax-free retirements and the need for IULs and sexy insurance policies that talk about tax diversification.
Well, you only need tax diversification if you’re paying taxes. Right. And there’s a lot of people in this country that aren’t paying taxes. So I don’t mean that to throw stones, but like, if your only income is Social Security, then your tax diversification is everything is tax-free. You probably don’t need an IUL or something like that to generate, you know—
Tommy Blackburn: Tax-free income where we’re gonna always be tax-free.
You’re not hiding anything. Yeah, we probably were already in our highest tax years. It’s not true for everybody, but for many people who have probably been sold those products, that’s probably the case. You gotta teach me where you find these conversations to join, because I very much, I need to get in on them, but as separate ones, ’cause yeah, I’m very curious. Like, how is John going to war? I say war in a jovial term, but like, how is he finding these threads to try to add some education to—we’ll put that in a hopefully diplomatic term. John, you mentioned the 62 one. I was thinking about that, and that behavioral aspect was a great call.
Like, you need that. If that’s what you need for your own behavioral well-being in order to enjoy life and not be a detriment, then that’s what you should do. But you and I remember we’ve talked before with clients where they say, like, “I think I wanna turn it on.” We’re looking, and it’s like, you know, probably in this situation I’m thinking of, we probably have a military pension, we have a federal pension, and we got a lot of guaranteed great income going on, VA disability.
We’re not spending everything we’re getting as it is, but we’re gung-ho we’re gonna turn on Social Security because of everything we read in here and, like, our biases potentially. And our question back is, that’s fine, ’cause again, your plan works. Optimal would be for you to delay it, but what are you gonna do with this?
Like, are you gonna, you’re saying you’re gonna take it because you think you can do better, and this and that. It’s like, are you just gonna throw it in the bank account? Because if that’s what we’re gonna do, that’s definitely not the optimal answer. You know, be honest with yourself—if that’s what you’re gonna do, so be it.
But also be honest that you’re not beating what you would have done if you’d have just left it in there.
John Mason: Well, the article says as much, right? It’s like, “Hey, here’s your hurdle rate. Here’s what you have to earn, and you’re not gonna earn that in a bank account.” I don’t think—and we’ll wrap this up soon—is I don’t think the article addressed it, and I don’t know off the top of my head how it all works mathematically, but 2022 and ’23, I think, were pretty sizable COLAs for Social Security, if I’m not mistaken.
Like a 9 and a 7. Oh, very high, yeah. Wasn’t it? I mean, it was—
Tommy Blackburn: Those were high inflation years, yeah.
John Mason: Super-duper high. And 2022—maybe ’22 was one of those years too—but like, your portfolio went down 20 or 30%, whatever it went down. It went down a lot that year. But your Social Security got a giant COLA.
So, you know, had you taken Social Security at 62, you know, you’re getting a smaller COLA on that amount. So I don’t really know how all that math works out. I’m just pointing out that the best, like you said in the last episode, the best-laid plans, or like Ben said yesterday, what was it? “Man makes plans, and God laughs.” Yeah. And, you know, you may have every intention of delaying Social Security, and then the market lays an egg for two or three years in a row, and forces your hand. You know—
Tommy Blackburn: Yeah, that’s part of the ongoing relationship, John. I was just thinking about it, and we have that conversation with clients, which is, “Hey, maybe if we’re doing a high distribution,” or it’s like, “Hey, your lifestyle doesn’t change. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have some guardrails, some flexibility in our mindset. We’re hoping to delay Social Security, but hey, if we get dealt a rough hand in the market, we may have to revisit this strategy and pull the Social Security lever to give the portfolio a break.” So I guess that’s where it comes in.
Yeah, we have general guideposts here and what we tend to see, but there’s a lot of flexibility and strategy and bobbing and weaving depending upon, you know, what cards we’re dealt. I do think—hopefully I’m not getting off the train of thought, or you’ll come back to it, John—it’s all just such recency bias, too.
Sometimes it’s funny thinking back to ’22, not that long ago. It feels like a long time ago, and we’ve had enough of a bull market, you know, a really great market since then. But that was a bad market, right? And everybody, and where I’m going with this is I think when you’re in those markets, particularly if they’re prolonged enough, everybody’s in favor of delaying Social Security because it’s a guarantee and it’s going up and everything else is going down.
But when the market is doing great, all of a sudden, “Let’s take Social Security early, and let me throw it in the market because we’re guaranteed.” And I am not saying, I’m saying this tongue-in-cheek. Nothing is guaranteed. You know, this is educational. Compliance, come on. But if we say we’re guaranteed to do whatever the market’s doing, come on.
That’s recency bias. We cannot go forward with that expectation.
John Mason: Well, it’s a great point. And, you know, just having fun here. We’ve been doing this for 17 years. We’ve seen quite a few market shocks now. I don’t necessarily wish myself to be older, audience, but like, I am excited for the day where people look at me and they say, “Oh, John, you have been through hell. Like, you’ve seen some market drops. You’ve seen some stuff,” you know? But for some reason, we’ve been doing this 17 years, and people are like, “Tommy, John, you know, when you experience your first market drop…” It’s like, what do you call the last 17 years of what we’ve been doing? Yeah. Like, we’ve been through some volatility.
Stress-free, huh? Yeah. And audience, you’ve been through it, too. So yes, the market’s been up two or three years, but 2022 was bad. 2020 was pretty stressful. You know, you keep going back in time, this has not been a smooth ride in the market. The trajectory is up and to the right—it never is, right? Trajectory is up and to the right, but there’s volatility associated with it.
And, you know, one day I’m sure we’ll be 65 years old, Mike and Ken will be 90, and they’ll be like, “You know, you guys just haven’t experienced anything,” you know?
Tommy Blackburn: Yeah. At a certain point, like, I don’t know, so John and I have given them a little bit of a hard time. Like, what do you call ’22 and ’23? It was like 18 months where it was one of the worst markets for a balanced portfolio that’s existed.
It was hard. That was a real bear market. I don’t know why we’ve forgotten or pretended like it didn’t exist, but that was a hard one. And yeah, I don’t know, John, we’ll never have, I guess, experienced certain things. We’ll experience similar things, I’m sure, but it won’t be exactly the same. So because we didn’t go through the dot-com boom or the Great Recession, you’ll never really know.
So we’re just, nothing. No winning.
John Mason: We’ll just never be as good.
Tommy Blackburn: Yeah.
John Mason: You know?
Tommy Blackburn: That’s it.
John Mason: Well, audience, we have a few asks for you. One, do you like this? This is a reaction piece, so we read an article, we’ve reacted to it. It’s a short episode, around 30 minutes. If you have an article that you’d like us to react to, drop it in the comments below.
Send it over to us at masonfp@masonllc.net. We’ll record a short episode where we react to a piece that you want us to react to. So we would love to do more of these. We have a question about Federal Employees Health Benefits that we will address on a coming episode. If you have questions, you can be part of the program by sending those to masonfp@masonllc.net, and we’ll either answer them via email, or we’ll answer them on the podcast, or both.
So again, would love some comments on this reaction piece, you know, anything that you want us to comment on, as well as questions. Tommy, closing thoughts?
Tommy Blackburn: I think we’ve hit it. It’s been great, a lot of fun. I agree, audience, we wanna hear from you. We wanna talk about the things you would like us to comment on.
It’s a lot of fun to get the engagement from you, so please keep that coming. And I guess my biggest takeaway here is it comes back to a plan that’s catered, that’s built for you. There’s a lot of assumptions, a lot of variables. The plan needs to adapt, and it needs to be customized to your situation.
John Mason: Thank you, Tommy.
A couple housekeeping items. Audience, our e-book on survivor benefits is available. Make sure you check that out at masonllc.net. Do not decline survivor benefits without reading this first and watching our YouTube content. And remember, you can be somebody’s hero by sharing this content—the e-book, the videos, everything—with people before they make a catastrophic decision like declining survivor benefits at retirement.
E-book at masonllc.net. We are growing. We’re accepting new clients. Soon, coming to the Mason webpage is going to be a referral link where—I don’t know if we can make it look like Zillow, but I think about Zillow—where it’s like, “Share this with somebody else.” So now on our website, if you like our podcast, if you like the client-advisor relationship that you have, you’re gonna be able to hit a button on the website that says, “Share this with others,” and you’ll be able to introduce people to our firm.
We hope that eliminates the friction. We’re also gonna do some other cool stuff on this podcast going forward. We’ve got some really cool guests coming up. So yes, please stay engaged. Do all the things. Like, subscribe, hit that bell notification, share this with friends, family, and coworkers. Remember, audience, we are financial planners first. We do this second.
We hope you leave this episode and every episode empowered and educated to make positive changes in your financial plan. Thank you for hanging out with us on another episode of the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.
The topics discussed on this podcast represent our best understanding of federal benefits and are for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment, financial planning, or other professional advice.
We encourage you to consult with the office of personnel management and one or more professional advisors before taking any action based on the information presented.
