re: Social Security - Help me understand better

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For those who are very educated in this. how do you get more SS payout than you put in? Im not trying to do it, trying to understand why its so messed up without a simple "the govt controls it thats why".

Reading the rules, Im trying to understand why the program can't be better or terminated/transferred into other things now that roth and 401k programs are so mature without effecting certain people.

If more people are retiring, shouldn't more people have already contributed? Is it all due to inflation? Who comes out ahead with so many falling short of what they put in? The hot young wife that never worked who collects on her dead husband?

BTW, not a fan of it, would rather control my own destiny. Appreciate the dialog.

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So you'd best be controlling your own destiny anyway...there is nothing stopping you from doing so. Most people have some additional retirement savings although very few have adequate retirement savings.

The basis for Social Security has always been, and is today, exactly what it says in the name...a basic level of social security in the form of income to those who can not earn a living wage....the elderly, the disabled, the widowed and the orphaned. Roths and 401Ks do not provide for those people unless they are someone else was fortunate to pay into one of them long enough and with enough money to provide for them when that person is no longer around. If you live long enough and are fortunate you will get more out than you put in. Most people do so in a couple of years. Some do so in one check. Some never do but most do in a couple of years. Currently on average a person who retires at 70 will break even at age 80 and a few months. Many never make that. The life expectancy of ALL people born in any given year is around 78 or so right now. Folks are free to save as much or as little for their retirement as they can afford....but orphans, many disabled, widowed and old people can't or did so in siffucient amounts to pay their nut and those people will either pay their nut themselves, we will pay it for them, they will die or they will commit a crime to survive....SS ain't perfect but is better than any alternative anyone has ever dremaed up because it provides for those who never had an opportunity to do so for themselves....