Advanced Settings for Social Security Modeling

Learn how to adjust Social Security benefits in a plan to include future reductions and other advanced settings.

Last published on: September 03, 2025

 

Video: Advanced Settings for Social Security Modeling

Video Transcript

Welcome. This video will walk you

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through one of our latest features in

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the Income Lab software, the ability to

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now have advanced settings to better

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customize Social Security modeling. So,

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to get to the new feature, we want to go

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to the advanced settings by clicking the

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three dot icon of any of our plans and

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then click advanced plan settings. And

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then you'll now see the Social Security

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section here. The first option you'll

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see here in this uh section is the

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ability to include a future reduction in

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benefits for social security. So to

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factor in potentially social security

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going down later in the plan, you want

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to check this box and then you'll see

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the year month and year in which you can

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model for the date of that reduction.

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You can either input the month and year

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here or use the calendar icon and then

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you can select the reduction amount. So

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how much are we expecting social

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security to go down by when we hit that

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date? Next, you'll also see you can

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factor in the time value of the money.

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So, essentially, as you're looking at

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social security, we have many users who

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want to factor in that a dollar today is

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worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Um,

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and so to reflect this uh on the break

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even calculations for social security

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and in the total lifetime value

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calculations for social security, you

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can put in a specific interest rate or

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discount rate uh here um that we will

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factor in. It's important to note uh

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this interest rate is uh excluding the

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inflation. So we will already factor in

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inflation in these calculations. This is

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on top of the inflation calculations.

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Next here is the social security age

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option. There's a few unique instances

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where a client is born the first day of

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the month. In these cases, social

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security actually considers them to be

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born the last day of the previous month,

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which can mess with some of the timing.

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So if you have those instances, we now

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have this box here where we can select

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that this person, Tim in this case, was

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born on the first of the month. And so

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we'll actually calculate that their

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social security starts, you know, the

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previous month based on when they want

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to say they started. Once you're done,

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you can hit save and then get right to

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uh your plan by then just scrolling up

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and going hitting the back button.

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That's it. Thank you for viewing this

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video. We hope this helps and please

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reach out to our team if you have any

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questions.