{"id":343263,"date":"2026-03-23T05:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T05:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/343263\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T05:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T05:54:15","slug":"retirement-plan-coming-up-short-heres-how-to-buy-yourself-more-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/343263\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirement Plan Coming Up Short? Here\u2019s How to Buy Yourself More Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this episode of The Long View<\/a>, Emily Guy Birken<\/a>, author and retirement expert, discusses key steps for investors as they get closer to retirement, how Social Security can help with retirement shortfalls, and lessons from her latest book, The Five Years Before You Retire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are a few excerpts from Guy Birken\u2019s conversation<\/a> with Morningstar\u2019s Christine Benz<\/a> and Amy Arnott<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How to Bridge a Retirement Shortfall<\/p>\n

Amy Arnott: What if you find yourself in a situation where you\u2019re approaching retirement and it looks like you really won\u2019t have enough to retire when you would hope to, even if you scale down your lifestyle? What\u2019s the most important step to consider in that case?<\/p>\n

Emily Guy Birken: If you\u2019re approaching retirement and it really does not seem like you\u2019ll have enough, there are only a few levers you can pull. One, as you mentioned, is scaling down what your retirement plans are so that you\u2019d spend less in retirement. If that\u2019s not going to move the needle enough, another is to work longer so that you don\u2019t have to spend as much in retirement. And even a single year can make a big difference in how much longer your nest egg will last. So that\u2019s a possibility.<\/p>\n

Also, if you can put off accessing your Social Security so that you can have that be a portion of your retirement income that you are not counting on early in your retirement so that you know that it\u2019ll be a larger amount because it is the only aspect of retirement income that is as close to a guarantee as is possible in this world, then that is something that is also possible. If you have scaled down as much as you can, there are also other ways like: What have you scaled down? Have you thought about other options for scaling down? I know of a couple of retirees who have moved abroad because the cost of living is so much cheaper in other parts of the world. If you\u2019ve scaled things down, have you considered moving to a place that costs less?<\/p>\n

Will Social Security Still Be There When You Retire?<\/p>\n

Christine Benz: You reference the benefits of delaying Social Security, that enlarged benefit that is also guaranteed if you wait a bit. Many people are disinclined to wait. I think there are concerns probably reasonable about the future of Social Security and whether there\u2019ll be changes to the program. What would you say to people who are within five years of retirement whose plan is to take the money as soon as they are eligible, even at age 62? Why would you caution them against doing that? And how would you encourage them to approach the financial viability of Social Security? How worried about that should they be if they\u2019re that close to retirement?<\/p>\n

Guy Birken: So on the first part, the folks who are considering taking Social Security early, they may be thinking about the breakeven analysis. And the problem with the breakeven analysis, which is if you take it early and generally if you do the math at about age 72, you\u2019ll have gotten as much money by taking it early as you would if you waited to age 70 because you get about 8% per year more by waiting, but the issue with the breakeven analysis is the only way to win is to die young. Is that really the gamble you want to take? Nobody wants to assume that.<\/p>\n

And additionally, the tragedy in retirement is not necessarily dying young. Now, that is a tragedy. But the tragedy that you will experience\u2014because the tragedy of dying young is what your family and your loved ones will experience\u2014the tragedy you will experience is living to 120 and not having enough money. So that\u2019s why, for the individual, I say it is better to wait to take Social Security if you can afford to.<\/p>\n

Now, there are individuals who, they don\u2019t have a choice. They can\u2019t afford to. They need to take it just to keep the lights on. But if that is not you, then wait. Now, as for the solvency of the program, I am a bona fide Social Security fan girl. I get out the pom-poms and go, \u201cRah rah sis boom bah! Social Security!\u201d And the reason for that is my third book was Making Social Security Work For You<\/a>. And in researching the program, it became clear to me that, while Social Security has its problems and while it leaves people out and there are gaps that people fall through, because any program that affects so many millions of people will always do that, whenever you look at the law of Social Security, it is clear that everything written into it at every point was made with good intentions and the attempt to protect our most vulnerable citizens.<\/p>\n

Now, as for its solvency, the United States is the only country in the world that does a 75-year projection for its social insurance program. Now, one country does a 100-year projection\u2014that\u2019s Japan. Every other country does fewer years. So, we have known that the Social Security will be facing a solvency crisis around 2033 for a long time. America also likes to run out the clock and do a Hail Mary. And so, if we are actually at the point where Social Security is not paying out benefits, promised benefits to current beneficiaries, it means we\u2019ve got bigger problems than Social Security. And when I say that, it means like zombie apocalypse bigger problems, meteor about to hit the planet bigger problems, like serious bigger problems.<\/p>\n

So, when I say that your Social Security benefits are about as guaranteed as you can get in this world, they are backed by the full faith and credit of the American government. And when there is a lack of faith in Social Security, that is actually something that I think is more insidious and more of a problem than the oncoming potential solvency issue in 2033. Because when people lack faith in it, they are less likely to pay attention when or if there are any politicians or nefarious actors who try to dismantle it. And no one really has at any point in its 80-year history. So, all of this to say, I can reassure people as an expert in Social Security, it will be there. There will be some bumps. We are going to have to wait for Congress to get off their keisters and fix the coming shortfall. And if history is any guide, they are going to wait until the final hour to fix the coming shortfall, but it will be fixed. It\u2019s probably going to be painful and a mess. But not for current beneficiaries. It will be for, possibly, the people who will be retiring right around 2035, would be my guess. But that is a guess, not a fact. These are the things where there are always going to be bumps, growing pains, and issues, but Social Security is about as close to a guarantee as anyone can count on.<\/p>\n

More From The Long View on retirement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On this episode of The Long View, Emily Guy Birken, author and retirement expert, discusses key steps for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-343263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}