How to Add Social Security Survivor Benefits

Welcome. This video will walk you through how to add Social Security survivor benefits in your Income Lab plans.

To begin, from your household, click the pencil icon in the top-right corner of your screen to enter the plan inputs.

Then locate the Social Security section. You'll want to enter the Social Security information for both members of the household.

You can follow the simple estimation steps, then select the claiming date for when each person will begin receiving Social Security. When you're finished, click Finish.

Back on the dashboard, the next step is to click Show Settings on the right side of the screen and locate the Longevity Settings.

By default, you'll likely see the slider option. Instead, click the calendar icon to enter a custom plan length for one of the household members.

Select the year and month when you want the plan to end for that specific individual.

In this example, since Tammy will be receiving the survivor benefit, you can either leave her longevity setting on the default slider or enter a custom plan length for her as well.

When you're done, click Save.

This tells the software when Tim's plan ends and when Tammy's survivor benefit begins.

A great way to analyze the impact of survivor benefits—or help Tammy determine the best time to claim Social Security—is to open Decision Lab and select the Social Security Optimizer.

Since we've already configured the settings, we can click Skip to Results.

Here you'll see the life expectancy values carried over from your plan settings. Tim's life expectancy will already be populated, and you can adjust Tammy's life expectancy to better reflect her expected longevity.

From there, use the heat map to identify Tammy's optimal claiming date.

Once you've selected the optimal claiming strategy, open Scenario Details.

Here you'll see a timeline showing when Tim's and Tammy's benefits begin, when any spousal benefit starts, and—based on the plan length you set for Tim—when Tammy's survivor benefit begins.

You can view this information in the chart or switch to the Table View for a detailed spreadsheet showing the benefit amounts and dates.

The default display shows monthly values, but you can also click the icon in the upper-right corner to switch to an annual view.

This displays the same information as yearly cash flows.

If you'd like to share or print the results, click Generate Report to download an easy-to-read report.

That's it! We hope this helps. Please reach out to our team if you have any questions.