I Asked Google's AI Five Key Social Security Questions. It Returned Five Horribly Wrong Answers.

Social Security Is Far Too Import to Screw Up. Run MaximizeMySocialSecurity.com.

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Background

I’m preparing a course to teach financial advisors and anyone else who’s interested everything they need to know about Social Security. It will likely launch in December and likely be called Qualified Social Security Advisor. Sign up will be at my company’s Maximize My Social Security (MMSS) website.

In generating the course’s slides, I decided to check whether Google’s AI was providing correct answers to critical Social Security questions. It’s not. Its answers are horrible. That’s a strong word, but when a wrong, misleading, or incomplete answer can cost households, many in desperate financial shape, tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, horrible is the only word that applies.

Read below and decide if you want to follow instructions based on Google’s AI, which like all AI tools, can be, and in this case surely was, trained on a plethora of misinformation. There is an alternative. It’s scraping together $49 to purchase MMSS and get the right strategy for maximizing your own or your parents’ or your uncles’ or your aunt’s or your friend’s or your colleague’s lifetime Social Security benefits.

Better yet, run MaxiFi Planner and get not just your Social Security, but your spending, saving, life insurance, and investment decisions right. MaxiFi costs $109. Unlike all of Wall Street’s “planning,” MaxiFi Planner is not a bait-and-switch sales job. Instead, it delivers economics-based financial planning, whose methodology reflects a century of economic thought. $49 is a pittance compared to what you’ll pay a financial professional, virtually all of whom use tools that directly violate basic principles of economics, not to mention common sense. Over the top? Not in the least. See, for example, these critiques of Fidelity’s “financial planning” and New Retirement’s financial planning.

Here are my five questions and Google’s AI answers in italics.

1. I'm 62. Should I take my retirement and widows benefits at the same time?

No, you should not typically take both your retirement and widow's Social Security benefits at the same time because you will only receive the higher amount, not the combined sum; essentially, you choose which benefit is larger and receive that one only.

This answer starts out on the right track, but then screws up horribly. As described in the NY Times Best Seller Get What’s Yours — the Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security and the award-winning Social Security Horror Stories — Protect Yourself from the System and Avoid Clawbacks, Social Security has been scamming widow(er)s and divorced widow(er)s for decades. Their game is to simultaneously enroll elderly widow(er)s and qualifying divorced widow(er)s for retirement and survivor benefits. This, as Google’s AI gets suggests, is not required. Moreover, joint filing can only produce a loss in lifetime benefits. But taking the higher of the two benefits first, as Google suggests, can also be horribly wrong.

Take Helen, a hypothetical 62 year-old widow. If Helen starts both benefits at the same time, she’ll receive $2160 a month, adjusted for inflation, for the rest of her days. (This assumes she doesn’t suspend her retirement benefit at full retirement age (FRA) and restarts it between FRA and 70.) The $2160 is her age-62 retirement benefit. Her age 62 widows benefit is $2,021.

If Helen takes both benefit simultaneously, she’ll receive the higher of the two, namely $2160 . Doing so, as Maximize My Social Security (MMSS) shows, will cost her $353,238 in the lifetime benefits — the present value of future benefits discounted at the prevailing 2 percent real return on long-term, inflation-indexed government bonds.

The strategy that maximizes Helen’s lifetime benefits is to take her widows benefit at 62 and her retirement benefit at 70 when it will be 76 percent higher adjusted for inflation. Waiting to collect her retirement benefit generates this terrific payoff for two reasons. First, Helen’s retirement benefit won’t be reduced due to her taking it early — before reaching age 67, her full retirement age. Second, Helen’s benefit will be increased based on the Delayed Retirement Credits she receives for waiting past her full retirement age to start collecting.

Note that Helen should take her age-62 widows benefit first even though her age-62 retirement benefit is higher. Google’s AI says she should do the opposite. “Essentially, you choose which benefit is larger and receive that one only.”

I ran Google’s AI “advice” through MMSS. Specifically, I had Helen take her higher benefit (her retirement benefit) first, i.e., immediately, and her widow benefit starting at 67 when it would start at its highest value per month — $2,527. Google’s AI advice beats Helen’s being scammed by Social Security into filing for both benefits simultaneously. But it’s still horrible advice. Rather than lose $353,238, following Google’s advice costs Helen $260,325. That’s a ton of money for Helen — over five years of after-tax earnings based on her wages in 2023 when she retired.

2. If I have disabled children should I take my Social Security retirement benefit early?

If you have disabled children, taking your Social Security retirement benefit early might be beneficial depending on your specific circumstances, but it's generally recommended to consult a financial advisor first as claiming early will reduce your monthly benefit and could impact your child's future benefits if they are eligible for Social Security based on your work record; waiting to claim at your full retirement age may allow for a higher monthly benefit to support your family's needs, including your disabled children.

Again, this answer starts out on the right foot, but then gets things horribly wrong. Disabled Adult Child (DAC) benefits don’t depend on the parent’s retirement benefit. Whether the parent collects their retirement benefit before full retirement or after full retirement doesn’t matter. The DAC depends on the parent’s Primary Insurance Amount, which equals the parent’s retirement benefit were they to collect it staring in the month they reach full retirement age.

3. If I earn a pension from non-covered work abroad will my widow's benefit be subject to the Government Pension Offset?

Yes, if you earn a pension from non-covered work abroad, your widow's Social Security benefit could be subject to the Government Pension Offset (GPO), meaning it may be reduced by a portion of your foreign pension amount; this is because the GPO applies to any non-covered pension, regardless of where it was earned.

This is wrong. The word government in GPO stands for a U.S. government, e.g., the State of Massachusetts, which doesn’t participate in Social Security. Working for a foreign government or a foreign private firm from which you receive a pension is not working for a U.S. government. Google’s answer could lead a widow(er) or a qualifying divorced widow(er) to abstain from filing for a substantial survivor benefit because they were incorrectly told by Google that it would be subject to the GPO. If you are subject to the GPO and two thirds of your applicable non-covered pension exceeds your survivor benefit, your survivor benefit will be reduced to zero. With Social Security, it’s use it or lose it. So, if you’re widowed at, say, 60, when you can start your survivor benefit, but don’t, and then learn at 80 that Google’s AI misled you, that’s 19.5 years of benefits out the window. Social Security will give your six months retroactive benefits, but nothing else. Why? Because you failed to file a form. Can you sue Google for giving you horrific advice? Someone should try to do so.

How can AI get this simple question completely wrong? Easy. It’s being trained on wrong answers, some of which Social Security is providing. Compare Social Security link A with Social Security link B. Link A says pensions from non-U.S. employers are subject to the GPO. Link B (search for foreign) correctly says they aren’t.

4. How do I get fully correct Social Security advice?

To get fully correct Social Security advice, the best way is to contact the Social Security Administration directly by calling their toll-free number at 1-800-772-1213, which allows you to speak with a representative who can answer your specific questions based on your personal situation. 

Social Security is truly the last place you want to go to get correct advice about Social Security. Indeed, the only way to guarantee a fully correct answer from the Agency is never to ask their thousands of underpaid, overworked, and terribly undertrained claims agents a single thing. Don’t believe me? Read Social Security Horror Stories. The best way to deal with Social Security is to tell them what to do, not ask them what to do. And knowing what to do requires running Maximize My Social Security. Yes, there are hundreds of Social Security calculators. But Social Security is immensely complex. Indeed, its Program Operating Manual System has 22,000 pages of rules about rules about rules about … ! Every Social Security calculator I’ve examined cuts corners or improperly values future benefits (e.g., doesn’t discount) or focuses on life expectancy rather than maximum age of life. Google’s answer should have been Run MMSS. But AI can’t distinguish right from wrong and much of what it’s “learning” and then spitting back to us is false.

5. At what age does my widows benefit peak?

A surviving spouse's Social Security benefits peak at full retirement age, which is between ages 66 and 67

This too is wrong. If your deceased spouse took their retirement benefit early (before FRA), a different widow(er) benefit called the RIB-LIM formula applies. This formula will generally produce peak widow(er) and qualifying divorced widow(er) benefits months to years before the survivor reaches FRA. Most surviving spouses and qualifying ex-spouses under FRA are surely subject to the RIB-LIM formula. And following Google’s “advice” could easily mean leaving tens of thousands of dollars in lifetime benefits on the table. Why? Because you can spend several years collecting far lower benefits than are available and that won’t be higher if you delay collection.