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The 78 Percent Problem: What the New Social Security Report Actually Says

by Eric Seyboldt, MBA

The headlines this summer were built to frighten. "Social Security running dry." "Insolvency." "Bankrupt by 2032." A person a few years from retirement reads that over morning coffee and feels the floor tilt under the kitchen table. So the calm, true thing belongs first, in plain words. Social Security is not going away, and nobody's check is about to drop to zero.

Here is what the 2026 Trustees Report, the program's official yearly checkup, actually found. The retirement trust fund, the account that pays old-age benefits, is on track to run through its reserves in late 2032. That word "depleted" sounds like an empty drawer, and it isn't one. A trust fund is a savings cushion the program built up over decades of good years. When the cushion is gone, the money doesn't stop. Payroll taxes from every working American keep pouring in, and those taxes alone are projected to cover 78 percent of promised benefits. Not zero. Seventy-eight cents on the scheduled dollar, unless Congress adjusts the math before then.

That gap has a face. Take Bill and Susan, both 62, planning to claim in a few years and expecting about $3,600 a month between them. A 22 percent trim comes to roughly $790 a month, close to $9,500 a year, for the rest of their lives. That is a real number and it deserves respect. It is also a very different animal from "the checks stop coming," and the difference is the entire point. One is a catastrophe. The other is a shortfall a household can plan around, provided it starts before the deadline instead of after.

The reason behind all of it is no scandal. It is arithmetic and a birth rate. Social Security runs pay-as-you-go, which is a plain way of saying that today's workers fund today's retirees, with no great vault of cash sitting in between. In 2025 about 185 million people paid in and roughly 70 million drew benefits. That works out to about 2.6 workers carrying each retiree, and a couple of generations ago the figure was closer to five. Fewer hands on the same stretcher, and the folks on the stretcher are living longer than the original design ever assumed. No villain required.

This is not the first time the program has come up short, and that history is the steadying part. In 1983, with the fund only months from the edge, a bitterly divided Congress held its nose and acted. It gradually raised the full retirement age from 65 toward 67, began taxing a share of benefits for higher earners, and bought the system another half century of life. Roosevelt expected exactly this kind of repair when he called the 1935 law a structure that was "by no means complete," meant to be reinforced by the generations who came after him. So the honest expectation is that Washington patches this one too, most likely right up against the deadline, because that has always been how Washington moves.

A retirement plan, though, cannot be built on a guess about what Congress will do. That is the hard truth sitting right behind the reassurance. The levers lawmakers might pull are already known: raising the payroll tax rate, lifting the cap so higher earners pay on more of their wages, trimming benefits for the well-off, slowing the annual cost-of-living raise, or nudging the retirement age higher once more. Each one shores up the fund and hands the bill to someone, and no single one closes the whole gap by itself. Which combination wins is a political question no honest person can answer today.

What a household near retirement can control turns out to be far more useful than what it can't. The families who will move through 2032 in comfort are the ones who never rested the whole retirement on a single government check to begin with. For them, Social Security is one leg of the stool, standing next to their own savings and a plan for the early years. For a household counting on Social Security to carry seventy or eighty percent of its income, a 22 percent cut is not an inconvenience, it is an emergency, and that is precisely the household that should be strengthening its other legs now, while there is still runway to do it.

The steadying move is to stress-test the plan against a world where scheduled benefits do get trimmed, rather than pray they won't. Run the household budget at 78 percent of the expected benefit and see whether it still stands up. If it does, wonderful, and sleep well. If it wobbles, the repair is nearly always found in the things a person actually governs: when to claim, how much sits in accounts they own outright, how the taxes around all of it are handled. Those choices move the needle further, and far more dependably, than any headline out of the Capitol.

Roosevelt never promised to insure anyone against every hazard life could invent. He promised "some measure of protection," a floor beneath old age, and a structure that later hands would keep building. That floor is still there, and it will still be there in 2033. The work now is making sure it is not the only thing holding you up.

If your retirement income leans heavily on Social Security, this is the year to learn exactly how heavily, and what a trimmed benefit would do to the plan.

Reach out for a complimentary 10-minute consultation, and we'll run your numbers against the 78 percent scenario, weigh the timing of when you claim, and reinforce the parts of your retirement that don't depend on anyone in Congress. Call 614-943-2265 or email [email protected]. A retirement that can take a hit and keep standing is built on the choices you make now, not the ones you hope others will make later.

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Should I Pay Off the House Before I Retire?

by Eric Seyboldt, MBA

Client: Eric, we're both 64 and we retire in a little over a year. We've got enough set aside to write a check and clear the mortgage before we do. My father always said a paid-off house is the first rule of a good retirement, and my wife agrees with him. Something in the back of my head says it isn't that simple. Is it?

Eric: Your father wasn't wrong, and neither is the thing in the back of your head. Let me take the feeling first, because it's real and it counts for more than most advisors will admit. A paid-off house is one of the quiet pleasures of retirement. No payment leaving the account on the first of every month. Nobody with a claim on the roof over your head. When you're living on a fixed income and the market is throwing one of its tantrums, that kind of certainty is worth something a spreadsheet can't measure. So I never wave it away. What I do is put a number next to it, so you can see what the peace of mind costs and decide whether it's a good buy. Often it is. Sometimes it's the best money a person spends.

Client: Put a number next to it how?

Eric: By comparing two things: the rate on your mortgage against what those same dollars could safely earn if you kept them. That's the whole ballgame on the money side. Before we get there, clear one thing off the table. You may have heard you should keep a mortgage for the tax deduction. For most retirees, that advice quietly died. In 2026 a married couple filing jointly gets a standard deduction of $32,200, and if you're both 65 or older you stack several thousand more on top. Almost no retiree with an ordinary house has enough mortgage interest to beat that by itemizing. So the interest you're paying buys you no tax break at all. It's just interest. Set the tax story aside.

Client: All right. So it's the rate against what the cash could earn.

Eric: Right, and the answer depends on which side of a line you're standing on. Take my clients Dave and Linda, both 64, a lot like you. They refinanced back in 2021 and locked 2.875% on about $180,000. Today that same cash in a plain money market fund earns them right around 4%, safely, with the money still within reach. So on pure arithmetic, keeping the mortgage wins. Their cash out-earns what the loan costs them by a little over a point a year.

Client: But my wife would sleep better with it just gone. Doesn't that count for anything?

Eric: It counts for a great deal, and here's how I'd weigh it. In the Dave-and-Linda case, that spread is about one percent on $180,000, so call it $1,800 a year. That's the price tag on the certainty. So the real question is a personal one, and no calculator can answer it for you. Is $1,800 a year a fair price to never think about a mortgage again, to know the house is yours no matter what the market or your health does next? For a lot of people, that's the best bargain in their whole plan. I've watched clients who were "mathematically" better off keeping the loan pay it off anyway, and they never lost a wink over the spread. What they gained back was a room in their head they'd been renting to that debt for thirty years. If that's your wife, and it sounds like it might be, then paying it off is a sound financial decision in its own right. Just make it on purpose, with the price in front of you.

Client: And if our rate had been higher?

Eric: Then it's easier, because the math and the peace of mind finally agree. Gary came to me last year, 66, took out a fresh mortgage at 6.75% on $210,000 to be near the grandkids. Nothing safe pays 6.75% today. So every dollar Gary puts toward that loan earns him a guaranteed 6.75%, and it hands him the paid-off house on top. When the rate is high, you don't have to choose between the smart move and the comforting one. They're the same move. The hard call only shows up at a low rate, where your head and your heart pull in opposite directions, and then it comes down to what you value most.

Client: Is there a catch either way?

Eric: One, and it holds no matter what you value, so hear me on it. Never buy your peace of mind by emptying yourself of cash. I had a client, Ruth, 70, who wrote a check for the last $90,000 on her home and felt wonderful for about four months. Then the furnace quit and her hip needed replacing in the same winter, and she had a paid-off house and almost nothing she could reach. She ended up borrowing against the very house she'd just cleared, at a worse rate than the loan she killed. A paid-off house you can't draw on is a good night's sleep with a rough morning waiting. So the order matters. Keep your cushion first, your emergency money and a couple of years of living expenses somewhere you can reach without selling in a down market. Then send the rest at the mortgage if that's the choice that lets you rest.

Client: So for us, at 64, with a year to go?

Eric: Tell me three things: your rate, how much cash you'd have left standing after, and how much that monthly payment quietly weighs on the two of you. If it gnaws at your wife every month and your cushion stays solid, I'd hand her the pen and let her clear it, spread or no spread. Peace of mind is a real return. It just gets paid in sleep instead of dollars, and for the right household, that's the return that matters most.

The paid-off house is one of the most personal calls in retirement, and the right answer lives in your own numbers and your own peace of mind, not your neighbor's. If you're within a few years of retiring and weighing whether to clear the mortgage, let's do the arithmetic together, then talk honestly about what that certainty is worth to you.

Reach out for a complimentary 10-minute consultation, and we'll price the trade-off, make sure your cushion sits where it belongs, and give you an answer you can retire on with a clear head and a quiet mind. Call 614-943-2265 or email [email protected]. The goal is a retirement built on choices you understand and never have to second-guess.

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Fixed annuities can be an essential component of a well-rounded retirement strategy, offering security, predictability, and efficiency in financial planning.

These are current fixed annuity rates and their durations from Top A-rated carriers (subject to change at any time, not FDIC insured):

Interest Rates Are Sliding—Now Is the Moment to Lock In Strong Fixed Annuity Rates 

3-year: 5.35% (under $100k Deposited)

3-year: 5.60% (over $100k Deposited)

5-year: 6.05% (under $100k Deposited)

5-year: 6.30% (over $100k Deposited)

7-year: 6.25% (under $100k Deposited)

7-year: 6.50% (over $100k Deposited)

Please feel free to call Eric at 614-943-2265 or email him at [email protected] if you’d like to ask any questions or request information on these fixed annuities or other retirement topics that are on your mind.

REAL ASSETS, Invest Like the Ultra-Wealthy

Invest Like the Ultra-Wealthy: Why Smart Money Is Flocking to Real Assets Like Gold

A closing thought worth a few minutes of your time.

There's a habit among the largest, coolest-headed buyers in the world that rarely makes the evening news. The central banks that manage whole nations' reserves have spent years quietly adding to their gold. In 2025 they bought roughly 860 tonnes of it, well above their long-run pace, and they kept buying even with the price sitting near record highs. These are not day traders chasing a headline. They are about the most patient money on earth, and when they want something steady under the reserves, this is a good part of what they reach for.

They do it for a plain reason. Gold has held one job for a very long time: it tends to keep its purchasing power when paper money loses ground. It pays no interest, and it won't make anyone rich by Friday. That was never the point. Its job is to be the part of a portfolio that sits quiet, and now and then stands firm, while everything tied to Wall Street's mood is having a rough year. You can see it, hold it, and own it outright, which is more than most lines on a brokerage statement can claim.

Notice, too, what these buyers don't do. They don't bet the farm on it. A central bank, or a large family office, keeps a measured slice for insurance and diversification, then goes about its business. That's the piece worth borrowing. A sensible weight, sized so a quiet decade for gold never dents the larger plan, there to steady the whole boat when the water turns rough.

So carry a few honest questions into the month ahead. Is your retirement truly diversified, or just spread across different flavors of the same stock market? If inflation stays warm for another decade, what in your plan is built to take it? And if the dollar keeps slipping, is there a single asset you own that gets stronger as it does?

• If you're not sure of your answers, that's worth a conversation. Ask us how to roll a portion of your IRA or 401(k) into a Gold IRA, and how a measured allocation to real assets can:

  • Help guard part of your savings against a weakening dollar

  • Bring the "real asset" class into your portfolio the way large family offices do

  • Hedge against today's stubborn inflation

  • Add steadiness to your retirement through the next economic shock

Just get in touch. We make it easier than ever.

Feedback or Questions?

You’re invited to get in touch with us if you’d like to find out how the Novus Financial Group can help you on your journey to a happy, fulfilling life in Retirement. 

Office: 614-943-2265

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Investment advisory services are offered by duly registered individuals on behalf of CreativeOne Wealth, LLC a Registered Investment Adviser.

The content we provide here isn’t financial advice and cannot be taken as such. Please speak to your financial advisor before making any investment decision. Also, note that every investment comes with its risks and drawbacks. Lastly, we would like to remind you that past results cannot guarantee future returns.

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