Laurence Kotlikoff Professor of Economics, Boston University and President of Economic Security Planning, Inc.
Welcome to Maximize My Social Security —a simple, but comprehensive tool designed to help households, regardless of their circumstances, get the highest lifetime benefits from Social Security. Financial Advisors can purchase our Pro version to help their clients.
The video on our home page and our How it Works page explain how Maximize My Social Security gets you Social Security's best deal.
I'm a professor of economics at Boston University. I've spent much of my career studying personal financial behavior. I've come to realize three things. First, economics-based financial planning is very different from conventional financial planning, generating far more sensible guidance. Second, economists have an obligation to help people make proper financial decisions. Third, all questions in personal finance boil down to our living standard -- how to sustain it, how to protect it and how to raise it.
Getting Social Security right is critical for sustaining, protecting, and raising your living standard. This is why we developed Maximize My Social Security back in 2012. Since then, tens of thousands of individuals and financial advisors have purchased Maximize My Social Security. Their testimonials speak to the quality and value of our product.
Our clients find our tools extremely easy to use. More importantly they trust we're making the correct calculations. We cherish that trust. It's the reason we are absolutely obsessed with getting Social Security's impossibly complex rules exactly right. To do so, we've consulted extensively over the years with Social Security's actuaries. And one of our long-time employees is a full-time former Social Security technical expert who knows Social Security provisions backward and forward.
Although Social Security actuaries have been tremendously helpful in answering our questions, no one at the Social Security Administration has written or audited our code. Nor do we have any relationship of any kind with the Social Security Administration. Consequently, the Social Security Administration bears absolutely no responsibility for any errors in our calculations.
Calculating benefits correctly is one thing. Valuing them appropriately is another. Unlike other Social Security tools, we follow standard economic theory and value your benefits through your maximum age of life. We do so for a simple reason—you may live that long. If, as in other programs, we were to assume you'll die on time, at your life expectancy, we'd bias your strategy toward collecting benefits far sooner than is appropriate.
MaxiFi Planner
If your planning needs go beyond Social Security, consider purchasing MaxiFi Planner. MaxiFi is a full lifetime financial planning tool. It does two critical things. First, it calculates what you can spend on a sustainable basis to preserve your household's living standards. This calculation produces recommendations for annual spending, saving and holdings of life insurance. Second, MaxiFi determines, on its own, how to safely raise your living standard to its highest possible value. This living standard maximization considers Social Security, retirement account, annuitization and other decisions. Hence, if you purchase MaxiFi you won't need to purchase Maximize My Social Security.
One final point, our software tools come with no additional sales pitch, nor do we take advertising. Our goal is simply to help you make the best personal financial decisions.
Disclaimer
Our software offers suggestions, not recommendations or financial advice. Our tools are simply educational aides. They may contain bugs of which we are unaware. And neither I nor any of my colleagues are certified or any other form of accredited personal financial advisors. Consequently, this tool does not constitute personal financial advice. In the end, you need to make your own decisions, consult with your personal financial advisor, and discuss your plans in advance with your local Social Security office. But be careful. Social Security representatives often provide incorrect, partial, or misleading advice.