“This is a bad idea,” said Edward Snyder, co-founder of Oaktree Financial Advisors in Carmel, Ind. “We already have a large number of people financially unprepared for retirement. Why give them any reason to be even more unprepared by taking Social Security benefits early?”
The one positive about Rubio’s proposal, said Snyder and a number of advisors, is that its financing mechanism is better than raising payroll taxes. “At least by taking it from Social Security, the individual is paying for their own leave, versus payroll taxes being raised on everyone to help pay for it,” Snyder said.
Erika Safran, principal of Safran Wealth Advisors in New York City, said the proposal is a political move on the part of the failed 2016 presidential candidate to get the “other team talking about their opposition to the topic and then exploiting it.”
Veteran advisor Harold Evensky said the Florida senator’s new leave proposal “sounds politically correct, but is probably a bad idea for a family’s long-term financial future.”