Happy 90th Birthday Social Security….Will You Make It to 100?

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By Monday, 25 August 2025 12:06 PM EDT ET Current | Bio | Archive

Social Security was enacted into law by President Franklin Delano Rosevelt in August, 1935 and has provided retirement benefits to millions of Americans over its 90-year history. But today there is a great deal of national anxiety about the future of Social Security and Medicare.

Since the beginning of 2025 people are seeing in the news and across social media a great deal of information about solvency issues getting worse, potential benefit cuts, possible increases in eligibility ages, and the growing demand driven by an aging population.

They constantly hear that entitlement programs are in the crosshairs of Congress and the Administration for cuts and restructuring and they are now seeing with their own eyes what has started happening: 47 Social Security field offices are being closed, consolidated, or relocated, and 7,000 workers will be eliminated, with about 4,600 having left since the beginning of the year. In addition, Medicaid, ACA, and food assistance programs such as SNAP will now be cut by $1 trillion, adding to the anxiety.

We are not yet seeing people make retirement plans explicitly around the idea that these programs won’t be there in ten years. But for many right now reaching eligibility age, the reaction has been to get ahead of the storm by starting benefits at the earliest age possible at record levels. The fear is that if they wait the program could be drastically different or even gone.

People who elect to take their Social Security benefit at 62 are locking in the lowest monthly benefit for the rest of their lives—and for many they are doing so driven by fear. If a person waits until 70, they would be collecting almost twice as much compared to starting at 62.

For example, if you are a maximum income earner and start at full retirement age of 67 in 2025 your maximum benefit would be $4,018; at 62 it would be $2,831; at 70 it would be $5,108. Once you start collecting, you lock in that level for life other than annual COLA adjustments. It is always better to make financial decisions based on the numbers instead of the headlines that can drive costly mistakes.

A solvency crisis that is projected to be 10-years away is a political eternity. But if the trust funds are allowed to go dry, that would mean a cut of benefits to everyone on Social Security of around 21% and an increase of premiums, co-pays and deductibles for people on Medicare coupled with a reduction in benefits.

There are proposals to shore up solvency that range from moving towards privatizing the program, increasing eligibility and full retirement age, or raising more revenue by increasing payroll taxes on people earning $400,000 and above.

Of these options, the best approach would be to bring more equity to the tax base that funds benefits. Leveling the tax base would shift a large portion of the financial responsibility that now falls mostly on low to middle income earners by asking the highest income earners to pick up their share of the burden. This would be the fairest and most immediately impactful direction forward to extend the solvency of the trust fund past 2034.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will not disappear within 10 years, and planning for retirement as if they will be gone is unnecessary. But there is a real need for changes to address the looming solvency crisis within a decade or less-- or people will experience serious cuts with repercussions across the U.S. economy. The best immediate step would be tax increases on higher income earners.

Then, in the longer run, increasing the retirement age could make sense, but targeted at a point in the future (maybe 10 years out) that would impact people not yet on the program. You can’t take benefits away from people already on the program, but increasing eligibility ages for people who will go on in the future is more manageable.

As with any financial shortfall, it will take a combination of increasing revenue (taxes) and decreasing spending (age based eligibility) to ensure these programs remain solvent for decades to come. Reform is important, it needs to be done over time, and reforms should begin now.

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Chris Orestis, Retirement Genius is a nationally recognized senior care advocate and expert in retirement, long-term care and specialty senior living funding solutions. The author of two books, numerous published papers and articles, and a frequent industry speaker; he is the innovator that brought the LTC Life Settlement into the market over a decade ago.

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ChrisOrestis
Social Security was enacted into law by President Franklin Delano Rosevelt in August, 1935 and has provided retirement benefits to millions of Americans over its 90-year history.
social security, 90th anniversary, future, retirement
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2025-06-25
Monday, 25 August 2025 12:06 PM
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