Another proposal, and one that McIntyre said she is “very much in favor of,” is that the number of working years that are used to calculate a retirees benefit would likely increase, so instead of looking at the highest 35 years they are looking at the highest 38 to 40 years and what that might do is reduce the overall benefit for a lower earning person, but for people who are higher earners and potentially higher collector, it may increase their benefit but it would increase the tax well, she explained.

McIntyre emphasizes two ways in which retirees can boost Social Security benefits.  First, she said, people who are anticipating collecting should wait until age 70 where they will get an 8 percent lift beyond full retirement age for every year they delay collecting.  “That is a known benefit as opposed to the stock market. Who knows what rates of return will bring,” she said

The caveat, she said, is if you need to use your investment account to fund the shortfall because of the loss of compounded rates of return, then you should do an analysis to understand what the crossover is and in that case waiting until age 70 may not be in your best interest.

Further, if you are dealing with a life expectancy or medical condition, maybe you don’t want to delay collection. Also of note, she said if you have a younger spouse, particularly if the higher income spouse is older, it would make sense to delay collecting so you can maximize the survivor’s benefit for the younger spouse.

“I think that the tax impact is really important and somewhat unknown right now of that Social Security benefit. It is my perspective that the tax impact will be greater in the future than it is now,’’ she said.

McIntyre suggests that people who are eligible to collect Social Security, whether retiree or survivor benefit, should consult with an expert because it could get complicated and messy. She said the social security website is a good place to start.

“The message is, make sure that you are getting the right information and use a financial planner at this critical juncture. When you are in your 60s there are a few critical inflection points, certainly the whole Medicare decision is one, but the timing of collecting and the plan for who collects what, you can make a decision that might be irreversible,” she said.

McIntyre also pointed out that it’s important to look at Social Security benefits in the context of cash flow.  “You want to make sure looking at clients comprehensive picture and where their cash flow is coming from,’’ she said, explaining that if delaying collecting Social Security means that you have to get 100 percent of your living needs covered by your portfolio, well the loss of those dollars such that cannot grow at a compounded six percent rate of return would hurt you more than the benefit of waiting would affect you.

“So you really have to do an analysis to determine what you should do if you are someone who would need to fill the shortfall within an investment portfolio,’’ she said. “But if you have cash flow from other resources like a pension or another person is still working and if it’s covering the needs, then that’s one thing. But if you are talking about covering what could be $30,000 from a small portfolio and it would cause you to run out of money only to delay Social Security benefit then that’s not a good solution,’’ she said.   

McIntyre concluded that the Social Security climate is a moving target. “There is a tremendous amount of political sensitivity around this, on both sides of the aisles. This is not just a democratic or republican matter,” she said.

“The issue is that the longer we live, the longer we are going to live, and we have gotten very good at managing chronic illnesses so people will continue to live longer,” she said, adding that “Social Security has a tremendous focus. We cannot let it die out because so many people depend on it, so what we need to do is find a way to properly fund it,’’ she said.