5 Ways to Increase Your Social Security Benefit With Minimal Effort
Social Security is, hands down, our nation's most important social program. Each month, nearly 64 million beneficiaries takes home a payout from the program, with an estimated 22.1 million people pulled out of poverty as a direct result of this payout. If Social Security didn't exist, the elderly poverty rate would be more than four times higher than it is now.
National pollster Gallup also finds that, as a whole, 90% of today's current retirees lean on Social Security as a major or minor source of income, with a combined 83% of non-retirees expecting to rely on their payout to help makes ends meet during their golden years.
With all of this being said, maximizing what you'll receive from Social Security on a monthly basis tends to be pretty important. While a number of factors that go into determining your payout from the program require quite a bit of effort -- i.e., working for at least 35 years for an opportunity to maximize your monthly payout -- there are certain ways to boost your Social Security benefit with minimal effort.
Source Fool.com
