Many Amish people do not have Social Security numbers because their religion opposes commercial or government insurance, including Social Security.
For non-Amish… I guess if you’re living in a commune somewhere maybe you could avoid owing any taxes even without claiming kids. But would you really give up the refundable child tax credit?
I was just thinking of a teen I heard about. Her parents were in a cult and she didn’t even have a birth certificate. I don’t think the cult people cared much about taxes. They simply didn’t pay.
A family member got the kid out but she didn’t have any paperwork to be able to work or anything. Not sure what happened. But the aunt was in her corner.
I have never had a problem with the Amish in my neighbourhood exempting themselves from Canadian taxation and programs. About the only public service they avail themselves of is the roads they drive their horse and buggies on. I can overlook that as they do pay various sales taxes on purchases. The Amish lad that bought my farm had to pay the full transfer tax on my property which will probably cover any government provided benefits for the rest of his life.
I’m certainly not complaining, just providing data.
Federal documents allege she collected monthly retirement payments for 25 years after her mother died.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 9, 2025 at 6:11PM
Investigators claim Mavious Redmond of Austin, Minn., didn’t notify the Social Security Administration when her mother died. (Nam Y. Huh/The Associated Press)
A 54-year-old woman faces federal fraud charges after allegedly embezzling $360,000 in Social Security payments over 25 years by pretending to be her dead mother.
Mavious Redmond of Austin, Minn., faces three counts of wire fraud, one count of theft of government funds and one of aggravated identity theft for pretending to be her mother since the older woman died in January 1999.
Investigators claim Redmond didn’t notify the Social Security Administration after her mother died. According to court documents, at one point Redmond asked Social Security officials questions about how to terminate her mother’s benefits in the event she died.
Court records say Redmond continued accessing money in her mother’s accounts after she died, at times allegedly impersonating her mother over the years to continue drawing monthly retirement payments. In November 2023, she phoned the Social Security office trying to switch her mother’s address to her home in Austin.
Redmond came under suspicion in June 2024 after she allegedly twice visited the Social Security Administration office in Austin while impersonating her mother and trying to get a new Social Security card for her. According to court documents, Redmond provided an expired insurance card, birth certificate and a letter from Social Security officials addressed to her mother.
Redmond faces an arraignment hearing in March.
I’m just a lurker on this board, but I hit this milestone on paper today and I don’t really want to talk about money stuff like this with anyone in real life but want to commemorate it somehow. The markets sure are wild this year.
Congrats, that first one is the hardest!
I skimmed this thread to look back at all my retirement planning. It will soon be 1.5 years out of the full-time rat race and I’m up $180K since then and I couldn’t be happier with that decision. I’m blessed to have the stock market move my assets in the correct direction (for now) to give me extra breathing room.
I had a part-time actuarial gig that just ended, it didn’t bring in a ton of money (Under 30K) but I didn’t work a ton either but was still very helpful. They bade me farewell at the 12-month mark and hired an ACAS full-time so I wish them well.
I still do some delivering but the deals seem to have gotten worse over time so I do less. I’ll probably be directing two bridge games at the club starting in April, that could generate $150/week for not much work and I already go there to play anyway.
At what age did you retire, again, if you don’t mind?
Do you have an annual withdrawal rate that you target?
I was 52.5 years old when I quit, after working for 27.5 years. I’ll turn 54 next Monday.
Here’s another way I thought of it. Let’s say I have $1.5M in assets. I could spend down 1/3 of that en route to Social Security at 62, be left with $1M ($40K/yr) and have Social Security ($42K/yr).
Now either of those could have haircuts due to the purchasing power of $1M at that time or SS cutbacks. But that also assumes I put my money in a mattress and have no gains during the time. I also figured I would earn a bit more income just by being active and doing things that interest me.
I haven’t tracked my spending. I do know from all the savings during my working years I was probably living on 70K and I also have a $1,009 mortgage payment that will disappear in 2.5 years. So far this year my assets and side income have covered my spending and grown 1.9% as well.
I just turned 47, even at full retirement age I’ve got a 20Y gap to SS if I quit now, and I’ve been thinking about this as well. That’s got me thinking that the 4% rule might be too conservative given by the time I pull the cord I’ll likely have a ~16Y gap, and even if SS gets a haircut it’ll still cover roughly half of my spend and I’ll be withdrawing more like 2% or 2.5%.
Nice. Really nice. We still owe $159k, but our payment is $2k just for the P&I, so until I have enough $$$ invested to pay it off, this is the biggest thing holding me back.
I didn’t save up and retire early to wait an additional 5 years to collect SS. That being said I might delay SS if my situation is favorable. The tricky part is funding that corridor between retirement and SS which might require a paradigm shift away from where you usually stash your acorns.
My taxable investments are up to 288K from 243K when I retired and I will have 155K pretax coming out of my deferred account (let’s call it 116K post tax) and at 63K in documented Roth contributions (likely much more if I had kept better records) that could come out, that’s $467K and SS is 7 years away.
Haha, I was kind of saying worst case I only have to stay solvent for 16-20 years, the 4% rule was built using 30Y horizons, so my risk is lower. Yeah, if I quit with 16Y to FRA, and it goes south, I could start SS in 11Y.
My taxable accounts aren’t enough to bridge to SS, but I could set up SEPP or 72t distributions. I’m not too worried about making it work somehow.
I may have mentioned before, but Clark Howard had what was a very useful observation that has been true for my mom and apparently you as well. As a retiree, if you can earn $10k a year, it’s the equivalent of having $250k in retirement savings were you’re using the 4% rule. It definitely helps reduce the pressure on your retirement savings and keeps you entertained.
I’ve been thinking about during-retirement income, but for me I figure, I earn good money today and don’t hate what I do. I’d rather do one more year at many times $10,000 and then not worry about making money ever again than have to labor to make $10k.
Although if it’s something you enjoy, you do you. I’ve really enjoyed baking lately and see a lot of it in my retirement, but I don’t think I’d want to turn it into a profit-seeking venture. Maybe a few personal sales of $100 here and there.
I resell Lego (but am not very active at it). I’m constantly seeing deals and then realizing I don’t want to deal with it for what I could make. I’m thinking maybe I can consult when I get to retirement.b
I absolutely intend to retire early and 2nd career it. But absolutely nothing to do with insurance. Food or music in some capacity.
I completely agree. I enjoy actuarial work, I simply don’t want to do it 40 hours a week. Having done it off and on for a year part-time I would say for me that 5-10 hours per week is ideal. Just enough that I’m involved in something coherent but not so restrictive that it cramps my lifestyle. I would be willing to ramp up to 20 if I thought it would end after two or three months. Anything more than that and I would feel … employed. 
I think that part time actuarial work is likely to be more interesting and much more profitable than a lot of other part-time ideas. It all depends on what you want to do.
Also, if my full-time job had continued to develop and get interesting - I had some ideas - I might have stayed a couple years longer despite not being sure I needed the money. But the job wasn’t going to develop, management wasn’t interested in my ideas. It also didn’t help that we were two and a half years into a California rate filing either. So an easy decision to sign off.
What happens when that income goes away and you don’t have the 250k? Basically, the math only works if you assume the 10k in perpetuity, not as a temporary delay.
