Maximize My Social Security Review 2023 – Know When to Take Your Benefits
Six in 10 retired Americans count on Social Security as their major source of income, and plenty more use it as a secondary source. However, getting the most out of Social Security isn't a particularly clear-cut process. Knowing when to take your benefits for the maximum result can be tricky.
Maximize My Social Security offers a range of tools to help you take your Social Security benefits at the right time for the best possible financial outcome. But is it worth its $40 price tag? Let’s dive in and find out.
Cost - 7.5
Customer Service - 6
Ease of Use - 10
Tools & Resources - 8.5
Synchronization - 7
Accessibility - 9
8
We like Maximize My Social Security's easy-to-use tools and reports. They can give you an in-depth analysis of the best time to claim benefits. However, it's geared primarily toward people who are nearing retirement.
Maximize My Social Security Features
| Price | Min: $40.00, Max: $40.00, Term: year |
| Budgeting | |
| Bill Payment | |
| Investment Tracking | |
| Access | Web Based, iOS, Android |
| Credit Score Monitoring | |
| Bill Management | |
| Retirement Planning | |
| Tax Reporting | |
| Reconcile Transactions | |
| Custom Categories | |
| Import QFX, QIF Files | |
| Two-Factor Authentication | |
| Online Synchronization |
Maximize My Social Security is a tool designed to do exactly what its name implies: maximize what you get from Social Security. It was developed by economist and academic Laurence Kotlikoff, co-author of the New York Times bestseller Get What's Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security. Hands down, Kotlikoff is the expert when it comes to Social Security strategies.
Seeing as Americans have been saving for Social Security with every paycheck since 1935, it is important to know how everything works to squeeze out as much value as possible. After all, if you’ve been paying for it for your entire life, you want it to come back and work hard for you in return! Kotlikoff and his team created Maximize My Social Security to help folks nearing retirement determine their ideal benefits strategy.
Maximize My Social Security is part of Economic Security Planning Inc., a company that offers multiple financial tools, each with its own unique features and value. The tools are:
- Maximize My Social Security
- MaxiFi Planner
- Analyze My Divorce Settlement
Each tool has a unique focus and use case. This review is focused solely on the Maximize My Social Security app.
The core Maximize My Social Security product is an economist-designed application that looks at Social Security rules and regulations and your contributions over time to help you best understand how to withdraw and take your maximum benefits.
The app automatically looks at all potential scenarios to help you best understand when to withdraw for the best results. If you start taking Social Security at the wrong time, it could easily cost you tens of thousands of dollars, so this is an important consideration.
If you are a financial advisor, an advisor edition is available as well at a rate that makes it affordable for most advisors to add this to their arsenal of financial-planning utilities ($250 per year).
Getting to work with Maximize My Social Security’s core tool is easy. After filling out a short questionnaire, you quickly get your results. I ran two test scenarios, one for “Divorced Debbie” and one for “Married Mark.” Both offered a quick and easy setup process that took me less than five minutes to complete. It just needed names and birthdays to set up a family.
Once the family is setup, you’ll have to import or manually add your earnings information. I said that both Debbie and Mark earned about $40,000 per year for much of their career, but you would want to use accurate data to ensure you get the right results.
Once you enter the data, you can run your reports to see everything you need to know, including “what-if” scenarios for money, longevity and alternate plans. From the time I clicked “run report,” it took less than 10 seconds to get my results.
One standout feature is the ability to look at yourself as a single individual, divorced individual or married couple. Each situation has unique pros and cons to when you take your Social Security withdrawals, so knowing more about how your benefits fit in with a spouse or former spouse is helpful.
The reports showed the best date to start taking Social Security benefits with details on why and options to download the report as a PDF for easy access in the future. It even takes pensions into account if you expect payments coming your way. The three reports are the standard report, longevity comparison and alternate plans.
Maximize My Social Security suggested that Mark file for retirement benefits in January 2036 and that his wife, Mary, file in January 2038 for maximized benefits, both at age 70, with a combined present value of $1,537,825 in benefits. Debbie did better, filing a little earlier in December 2026 at age 69 with a present value of $941,847.
Maximize My Social Security Pros & Cons
[table “proscons” not found /]Summary
Maximize My Social Security is best for folks who are nearing retirement and who are looking for comprehensive answers to their Social Security-related questions. True, there are free apps and calculators available online (such as the one provided by AARP), but these free services pale in comparison to the in-depth analysis Maximize My Social Security can provide. They're fine for the casual user who wants to get a basic idea of where they need to be when it comes to savings.
Maximize My Social Security is a powerful tool that offers personalized Social Security withdrawal strategies based on your real earnings history, expected future earnings and expected lifespan. When you plug your numbers into this easy-to-use system, you can quickly find the best withdrawal strategy and compare several scenarios to make the most informed decision.
I think it is a great tool. Purchased it two years ago when making the decision on whether to start taking benefits or wait until age 70. Easy to use, lots of flexibility and the ability to go back as things changed. As we near a decision I paid for the additional service of spending an hour with an advisor (John) and it was more than worth the money.
Yes, you can wade through the SSA site and others. For me, you get what you pay for and I am happy I spent the money.
Since the last tax changes in 2014, there is nothing in Maximize My Social Security that you can’t get yourself from secure.ssa.gov.
If $40 is nothing to you, go ahead and Kotlikoff will hold your hand. You will get you some pretty graphs and spreadsheets, but ssa does a good presentation too, for free. Try it out.
I don’t see any place at ssa.gov that will compare present values of benefit streams, and certainly not any place that will calculate the maximized present value for a married couple with different earnings and retirement ages, taking into account spousal benefits, widow(er) benefits, disabled child benefits, earnings test and reduction factor, restricted applications for those who were born before 1/1/54, different life expectancies for those with family histories of living into their 90s, and the combination of those factors and others that generate the best strategy.
Maybe I’m not looking in the right place at ssa.gov. Give me a link to the place where it provides the above analysis and I’ll agree with you.
Misrepresented, incomplete analysis of SS benefits. Save your money.