What’s new for Social Security in 2025?

0:00 Welcome to something more with Chris Boyd. Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner, practitioner, and senior vice president, financial advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered investment advisors. We call it something more because we'd like to talk not only about those important dollar and cents issues, but also the quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and across the country. Here's your host, Jay, Christopher Boyd. Hello and welcome to another episode of the something more with Chris Boyd podcast. My name is Jeff Perry, and I'm one of the team AMR individuals here.

0:42 And I'm sitting in for Chris this week. I have with me Russ Ball in the studio as well, running the control panel and my cohost for the show. How are you doing Russ? Pretty well. Thanks, Jeff. How are you? Good. Uh, Superbowl is coming up. That's right. It's, it's not the teams that I had hoped for. I think every team I was rooting for in the playoffs lost every time. I, uh, you know, if it's not new England, it's not as important. Right. But it's still quite a spectacle and I'll be going to a Superbowl party. And so I'm rooting against the chiefs. I think I understand now how the rest of the country felt about the patriots.

1:23 You know, I, I didn't understand at the time I'm going, why don't you love the Patriots? They're nice people. They do a lot in the community, but they, yeah. How about you? Well, I'm a long suffering, uh, New York Jets fan. So, yeah, that's a big statement to acknowledge on air. Oh, well, you know, it's, uh, it's hard to, uh, be a fan of a team like the Jets, but, um, I watched their games, you know, uh, when they're playing and, and the season was not unlike any other Jets season, but, uh, had the potential to be. Yeah. Well, there's always potential. And then, uh, Aaron Rogers, it's one of those teams that always seems to underperform no matter who they have and no matter what goes on.

2:09 So I have a friend and a neighbor who lives right across the street from me. He's a retired New York city police officer and he's a Jets fan as well. In the fall, August, he was, he was confident. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think all of, all of New York is pretty confident, not so much about the Giants, but, uh, about the Jets at least. And, um, didn't pan out, didn't, didn't pan out, but, uh, here we are. I got the Eagles who is, uh, you know, they, uh, no, not a lot of New Yorkers are fans of the Eagles and then, and the chiefs, so it's not, not a great, uh, matchup for, for, uh, you know, old New Yorkers, but, but, uh, yeah, it should be a good game.

2:50 I mean, the teams look pretty evenly matched. Um, I'm rooting for the Eagles. Um, not because I don't like New York, which is a reason to, apparently the root for the Eagles. Um, I just, I guess I'm just want somebody else to win. I agree. I agree. It's time for some, some new, uh, a new winner out there. And, um, it would, you know, you always feel like when the team's one enough and you, you've been on the other side of this, obviously with the Patriots. So I didn't mind it at all. And my team's winning. Yeah, but no, it's, it's time for a different team to, to take it together. But yeah, lots of reasons to watch Superbowl. I mean, some people watch it for the halftime. Some people watch it for the game.

3:31 Some people bet on these games, squares and all that. And then some people are going to watch it to see how many times Taylor Swift is on TV. That's right. Well, at least you got another Superbowl, more people tuning in. But yeah, my, whenever we do a Superbowl party at my place, it's a couple of people watching the game, a couple of people talking on the side, cool people play a game or whatever, just waiting for the good, uh, good ads to come up on TV. So it'll probably be like that this year as well. Yeah. Um, go, go Eagles, but at the end of the day, I don't really care. Yeah. Hopefully it's a good game. That's, that's what we're hoping for. Well, we're not here to talk about football, though. It sounds like we could probably do a podcast on football.

4:13 We're here to talk of today, um, just to summarize the changes coming to social security in 2025. It's a new year and there's changes every year. Some of them are, you know, kind of boring, but we'll still talk about them. The big news of 2025 social security. And we, we did a podcast on it. Uh, you know, when the break news was breaking and the elimination, uh, the repeal of the windfall elimination provision, which had to do with, um, public employees, government employees who did not pay into social security during the years that they worked for a governmental entity that did not collect social security. They are their social security.

4:54 If they had earned it with private sector work, um, was reduced depending on how many years and a formula, um, because they had a public pension and many public employees fought for decades to have this repealed. And finally, that's one of the last things that president Biden did in an office, I guess, was sign the social security fairness act, which repealed this. So I think most government employees, uh, present and former have heard about it. But if you haven't heard about it, I'll put a link in the show notes to the podcast that we did. And if, after you listen to it, if you have a question, please feel free to reach out to us.

5:35 You know, it's a, it's a big deal for people who, uh, did have, or would have had their social security reduced because they worked for the government. Yeah. And that's, uh, you know, especially, uh, relevant in states like, uh, Massachusetts, Texas, California, where, um, government employees are not paying into social security and, and they're sort of punished in a way, uh, as, as a result, but, uh, um, yeah, definitely a good time to, uh, to check on your financial plan, uh, see how that might impact the plan and, uh, we can definitely, definitely help with that. I did talk to one, uh, of our clients last week, I guess it was.

6:19 And I assumed I said, Joe, that's not his name. Um, Joe, I'm sure you've heard about the repeal of the windfall elimination provision. He says, I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah. So he actually assumed, and this was a misconception. It's such a big misconception that, and, and Joe didn't know about it. I feel like I need to say it again is because of this decades long provision, many public employees drew the misconception of if I worked for the government and get a pension, I don't get social security. That's that that's wrong. It was always wrong. So not only did he think that he hadn't heard about the elimination of the elimination.

7:02 So he was very happy to with, uh, and he jumped on, on the call. We jumped on social security, uh, for your own account, people should do that and check their benefits, future benefits or current benefits, and he's going to have like an $800 monthly benefit that he didn't know existed. Wow. Yeah. So if you're not sure, learn more about it and please feel free to contact us if we can be of assistance. And on that one other point on that is, uh, that there is a retroactive period from, uh, from the beginning of last year, I believe. Uh, so that might end up coming in, you know, one larger chunk from, uh, what you, what you might've been, uh, that's right.

7:43 Oh, so, uh, you know, nice timetable on the retroactivity payment, but it's coming sometime. Right. Right. So I just, uh, prepare for that and maybe you can, uh, have that as a thought for projects that you have or, or put it extra into savings, whatever you might want to do, but, uh, just know that that might be coming. So that's right. Good news for a former and future, future, former past, everybody who worked for the government at some point, and it's just a matter of fairness. And, um, I'm about, I'm biased. I'm uniquely, not uniquely, I'm personally impacted by that as well. So it's full disclosure. There's a reason that I'm so happy about it.

8:27 So for those 73 million people out there that receive retirement income from social security, did you realize there were 73 million Americans that get so they're on social security? No, that's a big number. Well, so they're, they're interested in all of these issues that we're going to talk about. Uh, I think most of them are positive. Uh, maybe not as positive as people wished, you know, uh, they get an annual cost of living when you hear the word Cola, that means cost of living adjustment. And during COVID when inflation was high, it was 8.7% for 2023.

9:07 That was, that was a bump that was much higher than his history indicates last year, 24 was 3.2, which is still a nice increase. Uh, this year it's 2.5. Yeah. So you should have already received that. It's not bad. It's an increase, you know, not, not everything gets adjusted for inflation, but this does. So the average monthly payment, um, people often ask, you know, how much should I expect from social security when I retire? When we talk to them, obviously the best choice is to go onto the social security website and create your account and get your own earnings benefit statement. Um, not just because it is accurate and they'll project out at different ages, what your social security benefit will be.

9:55 It's also a great opportunity to make sure it is accurate. You can look at your earnings in any given year in your past. And if something doesn't look right, you know, go back to your tax return. If you have them, that's a discussion for later in the podcast, I guess. Um, but to validate that the earnings that you're being credited with the years of earnings, um, are accurate because that will affect your social security adjustments. And it's always better to deal with things, you know, before you're applying for benefits to have them corrected. So, but the average, um, social security benefit is $1,976 for the average person, which is up from $1,788 last year.

10:41 So the average benefit is up. Okay. Always, always nice to see those numbers going up, but I think it, you raise a good point that, uh, checking on the social security website is the best thing you can do. It's, it's more accurate if we have that information for a financial plan. Uh, and, um, uh, it's pretty easy to set up and create your account. It is. And it's good to see, um, you know, a lot of, a lot of people ask us the question of when should I collect social security or some people just default while I can get it at 62, I'm getting it while I can. Right. Um, but when you really look at the difference between ages, say 62 and 70, which is kind of the range of range of different, um, it does, it should make you pause and say, Hmm, should I wait?

11:29 Let's, let's do some math and that's this math that we do for our clients all the time. It's, it's a, it's not a simple calculation cause you have to factor in the value of money, the worth of money, you know, and it's factored on your health certainly. And of course the first question is, do you absolutely need the money? If you need the money, then you should take it, but yeah, lots of factors. So, uh, there also, there is also a maximum social security benefit. So, you know, even if you were, had a high income and you worked a long time, social security for the people who may not know is 35, your 35 highest years of earnings is how the formula is based.

12:10 At full re at age 62, the highest benefit that you're, you can collect it's capped at $2,831 at age 62. And if you're age 70, the cap is 5,108. So big, big rent, you know, that gets you thinking if you're the highest, if you're in the highest range and those are your numbers, should I take age 62, 2,800, can I wait at age 70 and collect 5,100? Obviously how much longer you're going to live is the primary question. And do you need the money? But that's a, uh, that's a question that should be thought of deeply and put into the context of a financial plan.

12:56 Yeah. And I think when, when we're looking at the numbers on those financial plans, when I'm building them out and we are as a team, uh, you know, more times than not, it's going to, it's going to look like 70 is the, is the best time to take it because you're getting those, uh, increases every year you wait. And, um, as, like you said, Jeff, as long as you're able to wait that period out and have sufficient cashflow or, or, uh, you know, cash reserves to cover your expenses between that time, it's usually a pretty good bet to, to wait until, um, you're 70 to get that full, uh, benefit. Um, obviously it's going to depend, but, uh, when, when you look at the numbers, unless you assume that you're not going to live all that long, right.

13:38 Uh, uh, it can definitely make a big difference over that retirement period. Yep. And we can, when we do a financial plan, we do some long-term projections and we can show you how your projection changes based upon that decision alone or any other decision you make. Um, one mistake I see that people make and I see it, you know, I live in Florida and I don't live in a retirement community, but I live in Florida. So, you know, every community is a retirement community, basically. So a lot of retired people, I see people who, uh, collect their social security at 62. I don't know their thought process. I don't interrogate them about it on the pickleball court or anything, but I see that they decided to take it at 62 and then they are also working like either they had a pause and didn't expect it.

14:28 Maybe they thought they would have a lot more things to do, or maybe they got a good job and they said, Oh, I'll go back to work. But if you're not a full retirement age, there's an income test. So if your income is over 23,400 in 2025, 2025, social security deducts $1 benefits for every $2 earned over that threshold. So if you're thinking about, I'm going to retire, um, should I take it at 62? One of the factors that is a negative against taking it early is if you think you might be working and making over $23 ,000, know that part of your income, that part over is going to be taxed.

15:16 If you will tax, meaning losing a dollar, um, for every two. So it might be a reason to wait, right? If you think you're going to go back to work, or if you're not sure what you're going to do when you retire, uh, might be better to wait either way. Uh, just to see, you know, how, how early retirement plays out. If you maybe down the road, you might want to go back to work. And, um, then you're already, you already decided on that social security decision and, uh, you're going to maybe lose out on some of the benefits. Yep. And if you wait every month that you wait, your benefit goes up a little bit, you know, we use the extreme examples by waiting eight years, but even if you wait a year to factor that out, if you're going to go back to work and this goes back, you know, this is another factor.

16:02 Am I going to work? Well, that has to do with your health as well. Right. Right. Yeah. So yeah, get it modeled out and don't make just to just don't make the quick decision, like I I'm eligible. Therefore I should take it. Yeah. And that was another thing I was thinking with a lot of people, at least, um, you know, people in my age group and, and maybe even a little older, they think, all right, well, yeah, I'm going to retire at 65. Um, and that's kind of just a lock. That's, that's what it's going to be. And so 65 retire and start social security that same year. That's kind of just like, if you're not, if you don't really know about the different options, a lot of people don't know that, uh, social security, there's actually benefit to that. Um, similar with, with pensions.

16:44 Um, we've talked about that in previous episodes and my, um, uh, I seem to be mother-in-law is, uh, you know, she was a teacher and she didn't realize that if she waits, she could actually get the full benefit of her pension. So these are things that, uh, not everyone's thinking about, but definitely things to consider and maybe, you know, get some guidance from financial planning. The other thing that's changing for this year in social security is the, um, there's a limit to the income limit to your income. That is actually taxed by social security. It's not an unlimited. Like if you, if you make last year, if you made over $168,600 earnings above that, there was no social security, uh, tax, if you will, being withheld, that number has gone up to 176,100.

17:33 So a little bit more of your earnings, if you're in that earning level will be taxed by social security. And, you know, this is, um, this is a group, uh, this is a category that is ripe for political debate of, you know, we have a social security issue where the trust fund will not be able to pay full benefits in the projected of 2034. So, or 2033, maybe it's a moving number that people are looking to reform different parts of social security. And I think this one having a cap on earnings being taxed and what that is, is one that's ripe for discussion, right?

18:14 So why should there be a cap? I guess is the question, right? Should you pay your social security taxes on the first dollar all the way up to whatever your income is, is a legitimate question that I think we're going to see in the political arena for debate, is this one of the ways that we can mitigate the insolvency of future social security, right? But for this year, you're, you're being taxed on the first 176,100. It's not a real sympathetic group for people to think about for people making over 176 ,100, that they shouldn't pay a little bit more. It's a tough principle wise, you know, you could say, well, there's a maximum benefit to social security.

19:01 So there should be a maximum contribution, right? As a matter, but when you're talking about the system and the solvency of the system, something's got to give, and I think that's probably going to be one of the things that is the easiest or the least difficult to be a little bit movable, right? Yeah. And we talk about it a lot, Jeff, that there are bound to be discussions, very serious discussions on this topic in the, hopefully the near future. We'll see how it plays out, but that's definitely one way to, to go about getting some more, you know, cashflow into the social security system.

19:42 Yeah. Love them or hate them. President Trump is a bold politician. And I would like to see him take on the issue of social security reform. You know, every year that we wait, it's like driving a big ship, right? I mean, the closer you get to shore, the more aggressive your turn needs to be if you're heading for a rock, right? You can't get beyond top of it and think you're going to turn this big ship. So the, the closer we get to the insolvency projected date of 2033, the bigger or the more difficult decisions, I think there's decisions we can make now that would make that date longer, you know, further away at a minimum or solve it as a maximum.

20:28 So he hasn't, he hasn't really talked about it, but I hope it's one of the issues that he takes up in his, this term. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately you get the sense that no one really wants to talk about politics on either side of the aisle. And that's, you know, probably every day Americans are going to be the ones who have to, you know, suffer potentially because of it, but here we are. And hopefully it does get resolved sooner rather than later. Cause it's definitely something that people in my cohort are, are thinking about social security and even from a planning point of view, can we count on full social security down the road? Yeah, I think we can.

21:08 I just think the solutions are better when it's further away than in the middle of a crisis. Yeah. Right. So a few, a few changes to social security for 2025. Most of it's kind of bland and mundane, but we wanted to share it with you. If you have any questions about it, feel free to contact our office and we'll be happy to go through with you. And if you haven't done it, get your earnings and benefits statement off the social security website and make sure it's accurate and it'll help your planning as well. Another thing that people are thinking about this time of year, Russ is income tax preparation time. Yes. I can talk about an exciting episode.

21:49 Everyone loves to do their taxes. I don't want to go into income tax too much, but I saw an article in this. I get bottom line, personal finance magazine, and it's always got these interesting, I think it's very well written and little things that you don't comment commonly come across in the, you know, general media. So this one was about how you organize your tax records and other records, what you should keep, how long you should keep it. I think there's a lot of people who ask this question a lot, but there's not a lot of good answers, meaning it depends or this long, but so I found the article really interesting.

22:32 I thought it might be good just to go through, through some of this stuff. Yeah. Do you have a system, Russ? Do you like, so I'll share my system under my desk right now is a banker's box. Right. And all I'm looking at it for, for those of us watching on YouTube, I'm looking at it and everything in it is my 2024 filing cabinet, right. That I've moved to archives or it sits there until I do my taxes. Then I put it in the archives. I'm not going to tell you where that is. So that's, that's a box of paper. Yeah. With my last year stuff. Um, you're younger than me. I I'm thinking you might not use the banker's box.

23:15 Well, I do, I do keep my, uh, my paper files and, and I, I do have a, I do have a folder that I put them in it's, uh, you know, not, it's a growing, but you know, not overwhelming amount of paperwork. Um, and then for the current year, I have, um, yeah, just, uh, drawing my desk that I put in time to do taxes. Um, I think, uh, personally I do, I do my taxes on, um, you know, a tax software. So, uh, I have the benefit of, if I need to get my tax return from previous year or whatever document it is, I can go into there and, um, I hope and pray that it's, uh, as secure as they, as they say, get it on the IRS website.

24:00 If it's okay. Yeah. Right. Right. Uh, I guess that's a little bit of a caveat, uh, it's not, not bugging, but, um, that's a good point. I think, um, I, I maybe I'm a little bit old school. I know my parents had done the same. They have a drawer full of files from, from years and years and years of, um, businesses and personal taxes, whatever it may be. Uh, so I do like to keep something physical, a hard copy, but, uh, you know, it can obviously become overwhelming over time. Right. You know, what got me thinking about this, not just the article, but, uh, thinking about the larger questions is the fires in California. Yeah. So my art, if I, if I lived in a region like that or had a incident here, uh, my archives would be gone.

24:47 Right. And, and even, you know, just to magnify that, I, when I'm watching the news reports of the fires, they were, um, interviewing at his home, which was destroyed Mel Gibson, the actor. And he said that he had a lot of his like documents that you say forever. And that's another question. What are they? But, you know, things that you are going to keep forever, like they're important, either sentimental or legal or whatever in, in a safe in that home. And the safe survived the fire. I mean, the safe was still a square piece of steel, but when they opened the heat of the fire was so much that everything was incinerated basically.

25:33 Wow. Yeah. So, you know, you, you can think that you're protecting whatever Mel Gibson was protecting in that safe, but it's gone. So, I mean, that kind of leads people to maybe use one of those services that are online or, you know, everything from one drive to some of these actual vaults. Um, you know, and there's companies, let's say the cold, uh, cold mountain, or forget the name of the first one that, you know, these storage facilities, these cloud storage facilities that will do this for a fee. Right. Um, and if you do that, then the next day there's going to be something on the news that they were hacked. And then you're going to worry about that. Right.

26:13 Exactly. Exactly. And, um, I had a client recently ask, uh, you know, he has all these estate planning documents saved, um, on, uh, you know, on what's considered a secure, uh, portal online. And, um, the fact of the matter is, uh, no matter where your, uh, documents are stored, it seems that, um, with any level of encryption and security, it's never a hundred percent secure 99.99%. But the U S government treasury isn't, they were hacked and utilities are hacked. And so what is who can say a hundred percent, right? That's right. But, um, there are a few things you could look out for when you're, you know, storing your, your documents online.

26:59 Uh, I believe it's a 256 bit encryption. That's the highest level that's, that's currently available. And that's, um, uh, you know, reportedly very secure and, um, and extremely challenging to hack. I think there are all these, uh, cybersecurity tips that I could probably rattle off, but one that, uh, I think is really important if you're storing your documents online or really for any. Uh, online usage is to have multi-factor authentication. So that's where you get that text message or whatever it is, whichever app that you put in a certain number. And, um, that's, uh, across the board. I've, I've always heard that that's, uh, one of the best things you can do to add another level of security, especially if you're dealing with really important documents online.

27:42 I think that's good advice. The minor inconvenience of having that extra step or having to go get your phone because it's in the next room or whatever is worth it, whether it's a bank account or whether it's storing documents or a financial account, it's, it's advisable. It's a standard now. I think, I think you're kind of negligent if you're not doing that actually. Yeah, I agree. So how long should we keep this stuff? So I have my archive here. My box has 2024 on it. And if you just kind of Google it, it's going to say, well, you should keep your tax records and your records for three years in most circumstances. Okay. So that sounds pretty simple, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep them longer.

28:26 Right? So the situations that come up, um, if you're audited and it's an issue of fraud, there's no limit on how long the IRS can come back to you. As long as it wasn't statute limitations for whatever they're accusing you. But if there's fraud involved, if there's a, there's also no limit, if they audit you on a gift tax return that didn't include adequate disclosure. Right. Or there's a six year limit. If you, they audit you and you underreport your income by more than 25%. Or they allege that you underreported your income. Doesn't have to be true. It just has to be, that's the subject of the audit.

29:07 So that makes me think, okay, I guess I should save it for longer than three years, and then you think about some things that happen on your tax return. Um, so maybe you have a house that you bought and maybe you sell that house someday and you know, so you have an exclusion if you're single $250,000 married $500 ,000 exclusion from capital gains. So that might save you. But if the capital gain is larger than that, you're going to have to show your cost basis. So you're going to have to have some documentation of what you paid for the house, all the capital improvements you've made along the way, and then the sales cost, right?

29:49 So a lot of people don't have that. They might have bought a house 20 years ago and they have no memory of what they paid. Certainly no proof. Or what happens super often is a home changes from a primary residence to a rental. Yeah. And then, so you, you know, after three years, you're not going to get that exclusion. Then you really need those records for your capital gains. So I'd say any house home purchases or sales, you need to keep those documents for a long time. So the, the return that made the return on the year that you sold that property. There won't be, there won't be something on your taxes the year that you bought it, but you'll, you need records like a closing statement when you bought it to establish your cost basis.

30:33 Right. How much did I pay for it? When, and then you add back, you add in capital improvements, how you increase the value of the house, not maintenance, but capital improvements. I put an addition on, right. I finished the basement, whatever improved the capital. Investment in the house. So you have to keep those records to prove if you audited what your cost basis was and what the cost of capital improvements were for when you do the tax return in my example, 20 years later. Yeah. So that's kind of a bit unique that people don't think about. We mentioned in earlier in the episode about checking your social security statement.

31:14 So let's say you go on, you're taking our advice. After you listen to us, you go on to social security, you create your account, you look at your earnings and you say, gee, in 1995, it says I had no earnings. I know I didn't miss a whole year of work. This is more beefy for me than you, I think, for the years we're talking about, but I was working at this company. I was working with this government. I, I need to prove to social security. I'm going to file a claim, if you will. I'm going to file a, something's wrong with my report report. And they're going to say, show me, right. Cause they don't have it. So if you're going with this three year thing in my archive box system that I have under my desk, I'm going to keep it for three years and I need to prove 1995, that box is gone.

32:06 Yeah. A little bit of trouble there. Yeah. So I'm not having, I don't have a solution here. I'm just bringing up things that happen. Um, the other thing that we were talking about off air that just happened to me is, um, it's kind of sounds kind of silly, but it's funny, so I'll share it. I was buying something that was expensive on home Depot and I keep, I know that they give a veteran's discount. Uh, cause I see it on the form sometimes on the register or whatever. And I just never filled out the home Depot paperwork. And so I said, well, this is, this is good. This, you know, this one, I should do it. And they, I needed to know my date of my end of military service.

32:48 I knew the year, but I didn't know the date. So when I filled it out, it wouldn't let me do it. So I had to go back in. I had to go to my archives where they're held and dig into my box that says military records and pull it out. Eventually I did it, but if I didn't save those records, I mean, it's been 24 years since I was in the military. Yeah. Why do I need that? Well, I didn't need it, but it was convenient that I had it. Turned out to be helpful. Yeah, that's right. And sometimes you need your military records, your DD 214, which is your discharge papers that outline your service, your loved ones may need that when you pass away to get veterans benefits upon your death or to it's the whole host of things that happen, you know, in your life that you should keep your military records.

33:36 If you have them, you should keep your, you know, some people say you should keep your college transcripts longer than you think, right? Yeah. You don't even know when, when you might need them. And as you mentioned, my brother was recently looking at, you know, interest rates on a, on a loan and he found that a specific credit union was, was a viable option and they had a feature where if your family member, if your parent, or even I believe it was even grandparent served in the military, you would have access. And, um, we, um, you know, we weren't sure where to find any of the military records that we needed to prove that, uh, long, long story short, it turned out that, uh, my, my, my father who served his, his records were, um, got caught on fire and, and a big warehouse in the big DOD fire.

34:31 Yeah. Yes. And, um, so it became a little bit of a, of a, a tracking thing, try to find, um, how to get that information. But, uh, if we had a box with that information that we might not have thought we needed, it could have proved helpful and expedited the whole process. But I'm sure there's a fine line when it's like, uh, certain things you, you do want to keep other things you don't, otherwise you're going to have boxes and boxes and boxes of, of, uh, paperwork. But, uh, I think you brought up some of the ones that are, you know, more vital to keep them. Well, we hope this inspires you to get organized and prepare for your taxes and to come up with some system that doesn't take over your, wherever your archive system is and is secure.

35:12 Um, because sometimes you need to go back to get these things, to get benefits that you're entitled to a correct records that were wrong, Russ. Thanks for joining us. And, uh, thank you for listening. We really do appreciate it and tune in next week until then keep striving for something more. Thank you for listening to something more with Chris Boyd. Call us for help, whether it's for financial planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those quality of life issues that make the money matters, batter, whatever's on your mind, visit us at something more with Chris Boyd.com or call us toll free at 8 6 6 7 7 1 8 9 0 1.

35:53 Or send us your questions to AMR dash info at wealth enhancement.com. You're listening to something more with Chris Boyd, financial talk show wealth enhancement, advisory services, and Jay Christopher would provide investment advice on an individual basis to clients only proper advice. Depends on a complete analysis of all facts and circumstances. The information given on this program is general financial comments and cannot be relied upon as pertaining to your specific situation. Wealth enhancement group cannot guarantee that using the information from this show will generate profits or ensure freedom from loss. Listeners should consult their own financial advisors or conduct their own due diligence before making any financial decisions.