The 2033 Deadline: What Every American Over 55 Needs to Know About Social Security and The Truth About Social Security's 2033 Problem
SOCIAL SECURITY 2033
The 2033 Deadline: What Every American Over 55 Needs to Know About Social Security and The Truth About Social Security's 2033 Problem
The trust fund didn't fail overnight. It was emptied one predictable year at a time. What the Trustees' report actually says -- and what it means for the check that lands in your account every month. A straight-shooting look at the largest government program in the world, and the seven years that will decide its next chapter.
Paul Grant Truesdell, Sr.
J.D., AIF, CLU, ChFC, RFC
Paul Grant Truesdell | Founder & CEO
The Truesdell Companies
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THE EPISODE
DROP IN – 12-01
Welcome to the Paul Truesdell Podcast. This episode will be a little different — a combination of discussion, with questions sprinkled throughout. It is Friday, June 12, 2026.
Today's topic: The 2033 Deadline — What Every American Over 55 Needs to Know About Social Security, and the truth about Social Security's 2033 problem.
And so, The trust fund didn't fail overnight. It was emptied one predictable year at a time. This is what the Trustees' report actually says — and what it means for the check that lands in your account every month. Paul is a straight-shooting and blunt story teller, the polymath sage who looks at the largest government program in the world, and the seven years that will decide its next chapter.
Now get that cup of coffee and settle in. Let's begin the ride.
PAUL -- OPENING:
Social Security is the single largest government program in the world. Sixty-seven million Americans receive a check every month. No program in our nation's history has lifted more people out of poverty. And according to the Social Security Trustees themselves -- not the pundits, not the politicians, the program's own actuaries -- the retirement trust fund is projected to run dry in 2033.
When that happens, benefits don't go to zero. But every check -- every retiree, every survivor, every disabled worker -- gets cut by roughly twenty-one percent. Automatically. No vote, no warning, no exceptions. That's not my opinion. That's the math, published every year, in black and white.
Now, I've been talking about this for forty years. Four decades ago, I started writing and speaking about what I call the baby boomer bulge -- seventy-six million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, the largest generation in our history -- and what would happen when that wave stopped paying in and started drawing out. I've watched the projections. I've read the Trustees' reports year after year. And I've watched Washington read them too and do next to nothing.
So today I'm going to walk you through how this system actually works, why it's straining at the seams, what happens in 2033, and -- most importantly for those of us fifty-five and older -- what's worth thinking about right now, while there's still daylight. Along the way, you'll hear a few questions drop in. Think of them as the questions you'd ask me if you were sitting across the table. Let's start with the one I get most often.
DROP-IN -12-02
Paul, you have been discussing the dramatic effects of the baby boomer bulge in births for forty years. Are you surprised that the date at which the Social Security trust fund runs out of money keeps getting closer -- that the year keeps dropping?
PAUL:
Not surprised in the least. And honestly, that's the part that ought to bother people the most. There's an old truth any rancher will tell you: you can ignore the weather report, but you can't ignore the weather. The demographics behind this were never a secret. Those seventy-six million boomers -- we knew their birthdays. We knew, to the year, when they'd start collecting. This wasn't a storm that blew in overnight. It was a slow-moving front we watched cross the horizon for half a century.
What surprises me isn't the date. It's that Washington has watched the same horizon I have and done essentially nothing since 1983. The numbers are public. The report comes out every single year. And every year of delay, the hole gets deeper and the fix gets more expensive. Forty years ago, this was a problem you could solve with small adjustments. Today, the window for a gentle fix is closing fast.
Now -- before we go any further, we need to clear up the single biggest misunderstanding in American retirement, because almost everything else flows from it. Most people believe Social Security works like a bank account. You pay in during your working years, the money sits there with your name on it, and you draw it out when you retire. I've spent decades explaining why that picture is wrong.
DROP-IN – 12-03
If it's not a savings account, Paul, how does Social Security actually work?
PAUL:
It's a pay-as-you-go system. The money coming out of your paycheck this Friday is not being set aside for your retirement. It's being sent, almost immediately, to someone who's retired right now. Today's workers pay today's retirees. When you retire, tomorrow's workers pay you. That's the deal, and it's been the deal since 1935.
The mechanics run through FICA -- the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. You pay six-point-two percent of your wages. Your employer matches it. Together, that's twelve-point-four percent. But here's the catch most folks have never heard: that tax only applies up to a cap -- one hundred eighty-four thousand five hundred dollars in 2026. Every dollar earned above that line pays nothing into Social Security. A person making one hundred eighty-four thousand and a person making five million pay the exact same dollar amount into the system. That cap is one of the most consequential design choices in the entire program, and we'll come back to it when we talk about fixes.
But first, you need to understand the one number this whole system rises and falls on. Because once you see it, you'll understand everything.
DROP-IN - 12-04
What is that one number, Paul, and where does it stand today?
PAUL:
The worker-to-retiree ratio. That's the whole ballgame. In 1945, there were nearly forty-two workers paying in for every one retiree collecting. The system was swimming in money. By 1960, it was about five to one -- still healthy. Today? Two-point-eight workers per retiree. By 2035, it'll be two-point-three.
Picture a wagon. In 1945, forty-two people were pulling and one was riding. Today, fewer than three are pulling for every rider -- and roughly ten thousand boomers a day are climbing off the hitch and into the wagon. No system on earth, public or private, holds up under that shift unless somebody adjusts the load.
Three forces brought that ratio down, and they all hit at once. First, the boomer bulge itself. For decades, those seventy-six million people were the engine -- paying in, building surpluses. Now they're flipping, en masse, from contributors to collectors.
Second, longevity -- and this one's good news wearing a price tag. When Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, life expectancy at birth was sixty-one. The retirement age was set at sixty-five. The arithmetic was almost cynical. Today, the average American lives to about seventy-seven and a half, and a person retiring at sixty-two can reasonably expect to collect for fifteen to twenty years. The system was never engineered for that duration.
Third, declining birth rates. The generations behind the boomers are smaller. Less water flowing into the tank, more flowing out. None of this was a mystery. The demographics were predictable -- and they were predicted.
Congress did act once. In 1983, the system was weeks from missing payments, and Congress and President Reagan struck a genuinely bipartisan deal -- gradually raising the full retirement age from sixty-five to sixty-seven. It worked for one reason: they acted before the crisis fully landed. That bought us forty years. But that fix was built for a different scale of problem, and nothing meaningful has been done since.
Here's what happened after. For decades, Social Security collected more than it paid out, and the surplus was invested in special-issue U.S. Treasury bonds. That's the trust fund -- roughly two-point-eight trillion dollars at the end of 2023. Then in 2021, the program flipped. For the first time in nearly forty years, it began paying out more than it collected. Since then, it's been covering the gap by cashing in those bonds, year after year. And that drawdown has an end date.
DROP-IN – 12-05
Let's be precise, Paul. What actually happens in 2033 when the trust fund hits zero?
PAUL:
Precision matters here, because the doomsayers and the deniers both get it wrong. According to the 2024 Trustees report, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund -- the one that pays retirement checks -- is projected to be exhausted in 2033. Combine it with the disability fund and you stretch to 2035. But for retirees, 2033 is the year that matters.
Social Security does not shut down. Payroll taxes keep coming in, and those taxes cover about seventy-nine percent of scheduled benefits. But under current law, the Social Security Administration cannot borrow, cannot run a deficit, and cannot pick and choose who gets paid. It pays what it has. If it has seventy-nine cents for every promised dollar, that's what goes out. Every check, cut roughly twenty-one percent, automatically. No vote required.
Let me make that personal. The average retirement benefit runs around two thousand dollars a month. A twenty-one percent cut takes away roughly four hundred twenty dollars a month -- close to five thousand dollars a year. For a married couple both collecting, you could be looking at a combined cut approaching ten thousand dollars a year.
And here's the part that keeps me up at night. About forty percent of retirees sixty-five and older get at least half their income from Social Security. For fourteen percent, it's their only income -- every nickel. For a comfortable retiree with a pension and a 401(k), a cut like that means a tighter budget. For folks at the bottom, it means choosing between the pharmacy and the grocery store. The cut doesn't fall evenly. It falls hardest on the people with the least cushion. That's the moral weight of this issue, and we shouldn't talk around it.
So can it be fixed? Yes. And here's something that may surprise you: every serious proposal -- every single one -- comes down to just three levers. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. This is arithmetic, not ideology.
DROP-IN – 12-06
Walk us through those three levers, Paul.
PAUL:
Lever one: raise the payroll tax rate. Move it from six-point-two percent each to seven-point-two percent each -- one point per side -- and you close roughly half the gap. The cost? A direct pay cut for every working American and higher labor costs for every business in the country.
Lever two: raise or eliminate that income cap we talked about. Remember, today every dollar above one hundred eighty-four thousand five hundred pays nothing. Eliminate the cap entirely, and you close roughly seventy percent of the gap. The objection is that benefits are tied to contributions, so lifting the cap without raising benefits turns the program into more of a transfer from high earners to everyone else. Whether that's fair depends on where you stand.
Lever three: trim benefits. That can take several forms. Raise the full retirement age to sixty-nine or seventy -- which spreads the same money over fewer years. Switch the cost-of-living formula to a slower-growing measure called chained CPI. Or means-test, so high-income retirees receive less.
Every version has tradeoffs and political costs. The serious bipartisan proposals -- the ones honest economists actually draft -- blend all three: a small tax increase, a higher cap, modest benefit adjustments, phased in over twenty years. The math works fine. It's the politics that don't.
And mark this: every year of delay shrinks the menu. The 1983 fix worked because they moved before the crisis hit. By 2033, the only items left on the table are an immediate twenty-one percent cut or an emergency tax hike. Delay is the most expensive option of all.
Now -- Congress is going to do what Congress is going to do. You and I don't control that. So let's spend the rest of our time on what we can control. If you're fifty-five or older, here are five things worth understanding right now. Let me be clear up front: these are considerations, not recommendations. Everyone's trail is different.
DROP-IN – 12-07
For listeners fifty-five and older, Paul, what are those five considerations?
PAUL:
First, plan conservatively. Many advisors suggest building your retirement plan around seventy-five to eighty percent of your projected benefit rather than the full hundred. If Congress fixes the system, you've got a pleasant surprise. If they don't, you're not blindsided. Old wisdom: hope for rain, but dig the well anyway.
Second, understand the value of delaying. Every year you wait to claim past sixty-two, your monthly check grows roughly seven to eight percent, up to age seventy. Wait from sixty-two all the way to seventy, and your benefit is about seventy-seven percent larger. A bigger starting check absorbs any future cut far better than a small one.
Third, know your catch-up provisions. If you're fifty or older, the rules let you put extra money away -- an additional eight thousand dollars a year in a 401(k), an extra sixteen hundred in an IRA. And if you're eligible for a Health Savings Account, it carries triple tax advantages. Those contributions also reduce your taxable income today.
Fourth, don't leave spousal and survivor benefits on the table. A lower-earning spouse can claim up to fifty percent of the higher earner's benefit. A surviving spouse keeps the larger of the two checks. Those provisions were written into the law to be used -- strategically.
Fifth, stay informed from the source. The Trustees publish their report every year. The Social Security Administration runs the My Social Security portal, where you can see your own projected numbers in black and white. Don't get your facts from a headline or a campaign ad. Go to the well, not the puddle.
DROP-IN – 12-08
Paul, after forty years of watching this unfold, where do you land? Is the promise of Social Security broken?
PAUL -- CLOSE:
No. And I want to say that plainly, because fear sells and I'm not in the fear business. Social Security was born in 1935, in the teeth of the Great Depression, as a promise: Americans who work their whole lives should not spend their final years in poverty. That promise still stands. The program is not going to vanish. And you should know this. When Social Security was being discussed in the 30’s, discussed and debated, there were plenty of members of the House and Senate who predicted failure. In the Congressional Record, one member of the House clearly stated that the system would one day collapse and he cited, rather amazingly, that it would be a hundred years later. Well, it’s almost 100 years since Social Security began and those voices from a hundred years ago sound pretty wise and spot on.
With that said, what's failed is the arithmetic underneath it. Demographics shifted, lifespans stretched, the worker count thinned -- and arithmetic doesn't care about speeches. It's a mathematical problem that requires a political solution, and the clock on that solution runs out in about seven years.
I've spent a lifetime around people who built things -- farms, ranches, businesses, families. And they all learned the same lesson the open country teaches: nature doesn't negotiate, and neither do numbers. You can curse the drought, or you can dig the well deeper. So the question isn't whether Social Security will exist. It will. The question is whether it will be enough. And that hangs on two things: what Congress does between now and 2033, and how each of us prepares in the meantime.
Control what you can control. Plan with your eyes open. And don't bet the homestead on Washington moving quickly.
DROP-IN 12-09
COMMERCIAL – CC – COFFEE, COCKTAILS, LUNCH
Let’s take a moment to get a word in about events that are available that you may be interested in. Paul and Team Truesdell frequently speak on topics relevant to those who are within five years of retirement, who are 55 years of age or older, or those who are retired. These talks are called Casual Conversations. For the date, time, location, along with the topic and a brief description, visit Truesdell Wealth dot com, forward slash, events. On the events page, you will find in person as well as online and on demand events, such as this podcast, which will be available at your favorite podcast player such as Spotify and apple, and on Paul Truesdell dot com, where you’ll find bonus items and materials. Now, let’s return to Paul Grant Truesdell, the Elder.
PAUL -- SETUP:
Okay, let’s continue and pivot. I want to take you somewhere most people in my business won't go. It's an uncomfortable conversation, and I'll warn you up front -- it's a ghoulish one. But if you want to understand how Social Security actuaries actually think, you have to be willing to look at mortality the way they do: as a number in a ledger. The pandemic put that on full display, and my team and I were having these conversations in real time, back in the spring of 2020.
DROP-IN – 12-10
Paul, during the pandemic there was a great deal of discussion about who COVID would affect most. In the early days -- when New York State in particular was putting patients on ventilators and the death rate was climbing -- you and your team were looking at this from an economic standpoint. Is that correct?
PAUL:
Yes, that's correct. And let me say it plainly: it is a ghoulish conversation to have. Nobody enjoys it. But this is what actuarial work is -- you have to look at the numbers without flinching, because the numbers don't care about your comfort. Every insurance company, every pension fund, and yes, the Social Security Administration itself, was running these same calculations at the same time. We just had the conversation out loud.
DROP-IN – 12-11
So, in those early months of COVID, what exactly did you and your team discuss?
PAUL:
We said this: if the death rates run high among retirees, and high among people with serious comorbidities -- the folks drawing Social Security retirement and Social Security disability -- then, cold as it sounds, that extends the longevity of the trust fund. Fewer checks going out the door every month. That's not a policy position. That's not a wish. That's arithmetic, and pretending the arithmetic doesn't exist doesn't make you compassionate -- it makes you uninformed.
DROP-IN – 12-12
Wait -- in other words, taking people off the rolls is actually good for Social Security's finances?
PAUL:
Careful now -- nobody was taking anyone off the rolls. People were dying. They were being removed by the virus, not by a bureaucrat. And that assumes the federal government actually keeps good records and removes the deceased from the system in a timely way -- which, frankly, is its own problem. As we saw revealed during the forty-seventh administration, the record-keeping at the Social Security Administration is archaic at best. It has improved, but it's an enormous system, and the people working inside it are overwhelmed. There's no doubt about that.
But yes -- to answer the question directly -- when beneficiaries die, it affects Social Security's books. That's true of any pension system on earth. It's the part of the math nobody wants to say out loud.
DROP-IN – 12-13
This is interesting, Paul. Elaborate on that.
PAUL:
Well, it's not rocket science. Throughout history, most influenza outbreaks have hit hardest among the elderly and those with serious comorbidities. The 2009 swine flu was the odd exception -- it reached a wider, younger population. COVID, though, ran true to the older pattern: it concentrated its lethal force on the elderly and the medically compromised -- which is to say, squarely on the Social Security population. Roughly three-quarters of American COVID deaths were people sixty-five and older.
And remember how high the early projections ran. In March of 2020, the Imperial College London model -- the Ferguson report, the one that drove policy on both sides of the Atlantic -- projected up to two-point-two million American deaths if nothing was done. The White House coronavirus task force, standing at the podium with Doctors Birx and Fauci, told the country to expect one hundred thousand to two hundred forty thousand deaths even with full mitigation. The University of Washington's IHME model was revised constantly, and the CDC was publishing planning scenarios with enormous ranges. The forecasts were all over the map, but the headline numbers were staggering.
So based on those early projections, my back-of-the-envelope calculations said the trust fund could last well past 2033 -- into the 2040s, maybe the 2050s. Because here's the brutal truth: if you cull the herd -- and I use that ugly phrase deliberately, because that's exactly how the spreadsheet sees it -- if a large share of the population drawing income from Social Security dies off, the program becomes considerably more sound. And when you factor in the avoided final-year Medicare and Medicaid expenses -- the most expensive year of most people's lives is their last one -- it becomes more sound. That's what we talked about. Quietly, uncomfortably, but honestly.
DROP-IN – 12-14
But those numbers didn't play out, did they?
PAUL:
No, they didn't. America lost over a million people -- a genuine tragedy -- but nothing close to the worst projections, and not in a pattern that rescued the trust fund. The depletion date barely moved.
And there's a lot of controversy around COVID -- a lot of controversy that people simply don't want to touch. Your artificial intelligence, your large language models, your jaded and selectively edited Wikipedia accounts, your talking heads at both extremes -- none of them want to have the real discussion about what happened. We all lived through it. We know.
Here's what I think actually happened, from a Social Security standpoint. Instead of the rolls shrinking, they grew. A wave of Americans looked at the pandemic and decided life was short -- and they retired early, years ahead of schedule. The economists called it the Great Retirement; by some estimates, a couple million more Americans retired than the trend lines predicted. On top of that, disability claims have risen substantially in the years since. So the very event that, on paper, might have extended the trust fund ended up doing something closer to the opposite -- more people drawing, sooner, for longer.
And that's the lesson I want to leave you with. The spreadsheet can tell you what would happen if the numbers move. It can't tell you how sixty-seven million human beings will respond to fear, to loss, and to a hard look at their own mortality. The math is necessary. It is never sufficient. Anybody who gives you one without respect for the other is only telling you half the story.
As always -- this is educational content, not financial, legal, or medical advice. Talk to a qualified professional about your own situation. I'll see you down the trail.
BONUS SEGMENT -- THE GO-GO YEARS: THE TRAVEL BOOM NOBODY SAW COMING
DROP-IN - 12-15
Before we wrap this up, Paul -- are there any other economic trends you've been following? As an investment advisor, you talk with a lot of retired men and women every week. Give us a trend people will understand -- something that delivers one of those a-ha moments.
PAUL:
I'll give you one, and once I describe it, you're going to see it everywhere.
One of the industries most significantly damaged during COVID was the travel industry. We were all locked down. It was draconian. Our civil liberties were violated, and I could go on at length about that. In many ways, the response echoed the Civil War era -- and of course I'm referring to President Lincoln suspending various constitutional guarantees. Those were unusual and unique times, and COVID drew upon that same well of justification. The federal government used it to mandate what were called vaccines -- which were actually genetic modifiers. And I'll say this plainly: a vaccine has a very specific definition. A genetic modifier has a specific definition. Words have meanings, and the meanings matter, and frankly I'm tired of anyone and everyone using the word vaccine loosely. But that's a conversation for another day.
Here's the trend. Coming out the other side of the lockdowns, it took a while for people to adjust -- we talked about that during the pandemic, and we said it would. But once they adjusted, something broke loose. A lot of people moved to Florida to escape the political environment in other states. And a great many of them decided, almost in unison, to start traveling. A lot of traveling. Vacations they'd postponed for years. And the mindset driving it is simple: if I don't do it now, I may not be able to do it in the future.
DROP-IN – 12-16
Can you elaborate on that?
PAUL:
Sure. In retirement planning, we talk about three phases: the go-go years, the slow-go years, and the no-go years. The go-go years are early retirement -- you've got your health, your energy, your mobility, and you go. The slow-go years, you're still moving but the trips get shorter and closer to home. The no-go years -- well, the name says it all.
Now connect the dots. When people retire early -- and we saw a wave of early retirements coming out of the pandemic -- they hand themselves more go-go years. More years with the health and the freedom to actually do the things they spent forty years saying they'd do someday.
DROP-IN – 12-17
That makes sense. So how does that impact things -- the economy?
PAUL:
It impacts it because of the mindset underneath it. People came out of the pandemic thinking: I'm going to die eventually -- and maybe sooner than I planned. There are a lot of folks dealing with unexpected medical conditions at earlier ages than they ever anticipated. And their response has been remarkably consistent: I'm going to travel while I can.
So they're traveling -- and they're doing a tremendous amount of cruising. And notice how they're doing it: in groups. There's a safety-in-numbers instinct at work, and beyond safety, people simply like to be around people they like. Organizing and coordinating group cruises -- friends, church groups, clubs, communities -- that's a real and growing thing, and it has been for more than a few years now. The attitude is: I'm done. I've retired. I'm going to see things before I'm gone. They are working their bucket lists, item by item.
And here's where it ties back to everything we've discussed today. As the horizon comes into view -- as people start to see that big Social Security cliff out there in 2033 -- I think some of them are making a calculated decision: I'm going to spend my money now, enjoy it now, and if the cut comes, I'll deal with it by living on less later. But I am not going to keep delaying and arrive at the end having never traveled. You may quarrel with the math, but you can't quarrel with the logic of a person who's counted their summers and knows the number is finite.
DROP-IN – 12-18
Well, that makes a lot of sense, Paul. Do you think that trend is going to continue?
PAUL:
Oh, I absolutely do. The demographics guarantee it -- ten thousand people a day crossing into retirement, most of them stepping straight into their go-go years with a pandemic-sharpened sense that time is the one asset you can't buy back. And when you see a trend like that, you have to respond accordingly -- and we have as well. But we're not here to talk about that today. That's just one simple trend that's out there, hiding in plain sight. Once you see it, you'll spot it in every port, every airport, and every travel brochure that lands in your mailbox.
12-19
COMMERCIAL – TRUESDELL WEALTH, TRUESDELL TRAVEL, PAUL TRUESDELL
You are listening to The Paul Truesdell Podcast, and this is Episode five hundred and sixty four. In world where most podcasts stop after four episodes and a few make it past forty, let me repeat, this is episode five hundred and sixty four. Now, the Paul Truesdell Podcast is sponsored in part by Truesdell Wealth, a true fiduciary based investment advisor. Visit Truesdell Wealth dot com. The podcast is also sponsored in part by Truesdell Travel, a full service travel agency. Visit Truesdell dot Travel. Again, that’s Truesdell dot Travel. And for the other professional service firms, commonly known as, The Truesdell Companies, visit Truesdell dot net. Now back to today’s episode.
THE SEGMENT
DROP-IN – 12-20
Before we go, Paul -- one last thing. Earlier you used the words "genetic modifier," which is in contravention to the government's own definitions. Why is that?
PAUL:
The answer is very simple. The classic definition of a vaccine is this: you introduce into the body a small amount of the virus so the body can build up immunity -- so that when the real thing comes around, you don't take the full viral load. That's the concept generations of Americans grew up with.
Now, whenever a virus makes its way around the world, the CDC and various other organizations are racing to figure out: what type of virus is this? What strain? And we all know they don't always get it right. That's a tough business. It's why the seasonal flu vaccine some years just doesn't work -- the strain they built it around isn't the strain that actually made its way across the globe. They took their best shot, the virus zigged, and the formula zagged.
DROP-IN – 12-21
So, what was different about the pandemic shots?
PAUL:
When it came to the pandemic, people were not getting a small dose of COVID. They simply weren't. The technology worked differently, and that's my problem -- not with the science itself, but with the label. Call a thing what it is. A vaccine has a very specific definition. What was administered operated on a different principle. And when the government presses a familiar word onto an unfamiliar thing, the public stops asking questions, because the word did the reassuring for them. Words have very specific meanings, and the meanings matter.
And look -- I can see where people would throw stones at me for saying it. Throw away. I'm right, they're wrong, and sometimes a man just has to stand his ground. Whether I live long enough to see it acknowledged or not, I will be right. I'd rather be precise and criticized than loose and applauded.
Now here's why I bring this up at the end of an episode about Social Security -- because this exact disease of loose language runs all through my own industry, and it costs people real money.
DROP-IN – 12-22
Give us an example from your world, Paul -- the financial services industry.
PAUL:
I see it every single day. Start with titles. A true fiduciary-based investment and wealth advisor is a very different animal from your typical run-of-the-mill insurance agent or cookie-cutter financial planner -- the kind everybody hears about on the radio. Same suit, same smile, very different legal obligations. The words on the business card matter.
But here's my favorite example: stock ownership. People throw it around constantly. "Oh, I'm in the market." "I own stocks." "I'm an investor." The truth? Very few people actually own individual stocks. They own mutual funds. They own ETFs. They own variable annuities, business development companies, bundled financial products of every stripe -- with someone, or some algorithm, managing the bundle on a personal or impersonal basis.
And the federal government makes this same mistake all the time. It regularly publishes figures on how many Americans are "stockholders" or "investing in equities" -- and it lumps individual securities together with bundled financial products. It's a rare study that actually delineates the difference. So the headline number tells you almost nothing about how many Americans are genuinely picking and owning companies.
DROP-IN – 12-23
Well then, I guess I can say. calling yourself an investor doesn't make you one. Correct?
PAUL:
Not any more than calling yourself a marksman makes you one. If you're not doing the research -- if you're not diving deep into a company -- you're not an investor. You're a dart thrower.
Take Tesla. Take Amazon. Take SpaceX, now that everyone's talking about it. Plenty of people have money riding on those names -- or want to. How many have actually read the prospectus? How many have gone into the details of the voting-rights structure -- what control Elon Musk and other insiders actually hold versus what the ordinary shareholder holds? Very few. They haven't gone deep. They're fans. And because they're fans, they invest. That's emotional investing, and emotional investing is a different animal entirely from investigative investing.
So when anybody -- a salesman, a fan, or the federal government -- throws a word around loosely, whether that word is "vaccine" or "investor" or "fiduciary," the result is the same: people make decisions based on a label instead of the reality underneath it. That's how folks get hurt.
DROP-IN – 12-24
Let’s begin to wrap this up. Accuracy is critical in science, math, and telling a story, you fully agree with that.
PAUL -- CLOSE:
Yes, I do. I believe we need to be accurate. Accurate in our calculations and our terminology with Social Security. With Social Security Disability. With Medicare, with Medicaid, and with the whole vocabulary that surrounds them. Because that wraps us all the way back around to where we began today.
We have people on one side saying, "Oh, this is no big deal," and people on the other side saying, "This is the end of the world." Both camps throw around terms that are too bold and too nonspecific -- and neither one helps you make a single sound decision about your own retirement.
And if you're sitting there thinking, "Okay -- I need some guidance on this," well, that's what we do, all day long, day in and day out. That's the nature of our business: connecting the dots, thinking it through, and distilling it into plain language -- exactly like we've done today.
This has been an extensive discussion, and it needed to be. Because people need to know what's going on.
DROP IN – 12-25 20 SECONDS – NO VOLUME ADJUSTMENT
Retirees and pre retirees need to plan with their eyes wide open. And we need to put people in office who are actually willing to do something about it. Bottom line. Words have meanings. Numbers don't lie. And the clock is running.
ENDING –
- Sources behind the projection figures, for your show notes: Imperial College London COVID-19 Response Team, Report 9 (Ferguson et al., March 16, 2020) -- up to 2.2 million projected U.S. deaths unmitigated; White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing (March 31, 2020) -- 100,000 to 240,000 projected deaths with mitigation; IHME (University of Washington) rolling forecasts; CDC pandemic planning scenarios. Roughly 75 percent of U.S. COVID deaths were age 65-plus per CDC data. Excess-retirement estimates of roughly 2 to 3 million come from Federal Reserve research on the pandemic-era "Great Retirement." Verify current figures before publication.
- Numbers caution: Paul's "quarter to a third of the population" framing from the raw draft was softened to "a large share," since even the worst mainstream projections never approached that scale among beneficiaries. The hypothetical still lands without overstating the historical forecasts
The 2033 Deadline: What Every American Over 55 Needs to Know About Social Security and The Truth About Social Security's 2033 Problem
The trust fund didn't fail overnight. It was emptied one predictable year at a time. What the Trustees' report actually says -- and what it means for the check that lands in your account every month. A straight-shooting look at the largest government program in the world, and the seven years that will decide its next chapter.
Paul Grant Truesdell, Sr.
J.D., AIF, CLU, ChFC, RFC
Paul Grant Truesdell | Founder & CEO
The Truesdell Companies
The Truesdell Professional Building
200 NW 52nd Avenue
Ocala, Florida 34482
212-433-2525 - Switchboard
paul@truesdell.net - General Email
Websites
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THE EPISODE
DROP IN – 12-01
Welcome to the Paul Truesdell Podcast. This episode will be a little different — a combination of discussion, with questions sprinkled throughout. It is Friday, June 12, 2026.
Today's topic: The 2033 Deadline — What Every American Over 55 Needs to Know About Social Security, and the truth about Social Security's 2033 problem.
And so, The trust fund didn't fail overnight. It was emptied one predictable year at a time. This is what the Trustees' report actually says — and what it means for the check that lands in your account every month. Paul is a straight-shooting and blunt story teller, the polymath sage who looks at the largest government program in the world, and the seven years that will decide its next chapter.
Now get that cup of coffee and settle in. Let's begin the ride.
PAUL -- OPENING:
Social Security is the single largest government program in the world. Sixty-seven million Americans receive a check every month. No program in our nation's history has lifted more people out of poverty. And according to the Social Security Trustees themselves -- not the pundits, not the politicians, the program's own actuaries -- the retirement trust fund is projected to run dry in 2033.
When that happens, benefits don't go to zero. But every check -- every retiree, every survivor, every disabled worker -- gets cut by roughly twenty-one percent. Automatically. No vote, no warning, no exceptions. That's not my opinion. That's the math, published every year, in black and white.
Now, I've been talking about this for forty years. Four decades ago, I started writing and speaking about what I call the baby boomer bulge -- seventy-six million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, the largest generation in our history -- and what would happen when that wave stopped paying in and started drawing out. I've watched the projections. I've read the Trustees' reports year after year. And I've watched Washington read them too and do next to nothing.
So today I'm going to walk you through how this system actually works, why it's straining at the seams, what happens in 2033, and -- most importantly for those of us fifty-five and older -- what's worth thinking about right now, while there's still daylight. Along the way, you'll hear a few questions drop in. Think of them as the questions you'd ask me if you were sitting across the table. Let's start with the one I get most often.
DROP-IN -12-02
Paul, you have been discussing the dramatic effects of the baby boomer bulge in births for forty years. Are you surprised that the date at which the Social Security trust fund runs out of money keeps getting closer -- that the year keeps dropping?
PAUL:
Not surprised in the least. And honestly, that's the part that ought to bother people the most. There's an old truth any rancher will tell you: you can ignore the weather report, but you can't ignore the weather. The demographics behind this were never a secret. Those seventy-six million boomers -- we knew their birthdays. We knew, to the year, when they'd start collecting. This wasn't a storm that blew in overnight. It was a slow-moving front we watched cross the horizon for half a century.
What surprises me isn't the date. It's that Washington has watched the same horizon I have and done essentially nothing since 1983. The numbers are public. The report comes out every single year. And every year of delay, the hole gets deeper and the fix gets more expensive. Forty years ago, this was a problem you could solve with small adjustments. Today, the window for a gentle fix is closing fast.
Now -- before we go any further, we need to clear up the single biggest misunderstanding in American retirement, because almost everything else flows from it. Most people believe Social Security works like a bank account. You pay in during your working years, the money sits there with your name on it, and you draw it out when you retire. I've spent decades explaining why that picture is wrong.
DROP-IN – 12-03
If it's not a savings account, Paul, how does Social Security actually work?
PAUL:
It's a pay-as-you-go system. The money coming out of your paycheck this Friday is not being set aside for your retirement. It's being sent, almost immediately, to someone who's retired right now. Today's workers pay today's retirees. When you retire, tomorrow's workers pay you. That's the deal, and it's been the deal since 1935.
The mechanics run through FICA -- the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. You pay six-point-two percent of your wages. Your employer matches it. Together, that's twelve-point-four percent. But here's the catch most folks have never heard: that tax only applies up to a cap -- one hundred eighty-four thousand five hundred dollars in 2026. Every dollar earned above that line pays nothing into Social Security. A person making one hundred eighty-four thousand and a person making five million pay the exact same dollar amount into the system. That cap is one of the most consequential design choices in the entire program, and we'll come back to it when we talk about fixes.
But first, you need to understand the one number this whole system rises and falls on. Because once you see it, you'll understand everything.
DROP-IN - 12-04
What is that one number, Paul, and where does it stand today?
PAUL:
The worker-to-retiree ratio. That's the whole ballgame. In 1945, there were nearly forty-two workers paying in for every one retiree collecting. The system was swimming in money. By 1960, it was about five to one -- still healthy. Today? Two-point-eight workers per retiree. By 2035, it'll be two-point-three.
Picture a wagon. In 1945, forty-two people were pulling and one was riding. Today, fewer than three are pulling for every rider -- and roughly ten thousand boomers a day are climbing off the hitch and into the wagon. No system on earth, public or private, holds up under that shift unless somebody adjusts the load.
Three forces brought that ratio down, and they all hit at once. First, the boomer bulge itself. For decades, those seventy-six million people were the engine -- paying in, building surpluses. Now they're flipping, en masse, from contributors to collectors.
Second, longevity -- and this one's good news wearing a price tag. When Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, life expectancy at birth was sixty-one. The retirement age was set at sixty-five. The arithmetic was almost cynical. Today, the average American lives to about seventy-seven and a half, and a person retiring at sixty-two can reasonably expect to collect for fifteen to twenty years. The system was never engineered for that duration.
Third, declining birth rates. The generations behind the boomers are smaller. Less water flowing into the tank, more flowing out. None of this was a mystery. The demographics were predictable -- and they were predicted.
Congress did act once. In 1983, the system was weeks from missing payments, and Congress and President Reagan struck a genuinely bipartisan deal -- gradually raising the full retirement age from sixty-five to sixty-seven. It worked for one reason: they acted before the crisis fully landed. That bought us forty years. But that fix was built for a different scale of problem, and nothing meaningful has been done since.
Here's what happened after. For decades, Social Security collected more than it paid out, and the surplus was invested in special-issue U.S. Treasury bonds. That's the trust fund -- roughly two-point-eight trillion dollars at the end of 2023. Then in 2021, the program flipped. For the first time in nearly forty years, it began paying out more than it collected. Since then, it's been covering the gap by cashing in those bonds, year after year. And that drawdown has an end date.
DROP-IN – 12-05
Let's be precise, Paul. What actually happens in 2033 when the trust fund hits zero?
PAUL:
Precision matters here, because the doomsayers and the deniers both get it wrong. According to the 2024 Trustees report, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund -- the one that pays retirement checks -- is projected to be exhausted in 2033. Combine it with the disability fund and you stretch to 2035. But for retirees, 2033 is the year that matters.
Social Security does not shut down. Payroll taxes keep coming in, and those taxes cover about seventy-nine percent of scheduled benefits. But under current law, the Social Security Administration cannot borrow, cannot run a deficit, and cannot pick and choose who gets paid. It pays what it has. If it has seventy-nine cents for every promised dollar, that's what goes out. Every check, cut roughly twenty-one percent, automatically. No vote required.
Let me make that personal. The average retirement benefit runs around two thousand dollars a month. A twenty-one percent cut takes away roughly four hundred twenty dollars a month -- close to five thousand dollars a year. For a married couple both collecting, you could be looking at a combined cut approaching ten thousand dollars a year.
And here's the part that keeps me up at night. About forty percent of retirees sixty-five and older get at least half their income from Social Security. For fourteen percent, it's their only income -- every nickel. For a comfortable retiree with a pension and a 401(k), a cut like that means a tighter budget. For folks at the bottom, it means choosing between the pharmacy and the grocery store. The cut doesn't fall evenly. It falls hardest on the people with the least cushion. That's the moral weight of this issue, and we shouldn't talk around it.
So can it be fixed? Yes. And here's something that may surprise you: every serious proposal -- every single one -- comes down to just three levers. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. This is arithmetic, not ideology.
DROP-IN – 12-06
Walk us through those three levers, Paul.
PAUL:
Lever one: raise the payroll tax rate. Move it from six-point-two percent each to seven-point-two percent each -- one point per side -- and you close roughly half the gap. The cost? A direct pay cut for every working American and higher labor costs for every business in the country.
Lever two: raise or eliminate that income cap we talked about. Remember, today every dollar above one hundred eighty-four thousand five hundred pays nothing. Eliminate the cap entirely, and you close roughly seventy percent of the gap. The objection is that benefits are tied to contributions, so lifting the cap without raising benefits turns the program into more of a transfer from high earners to everyone else. Whether that's fair depends on where you stand.
Lever three: trim benefits. That can take several forms. Raise the full retirement age to sixty-nine or seventy -- which spreads the same money over fewer years. Switch the cost-of-living formula to a slower-growing measure called chained CPI. Or means-test, so high-income retirees receive less.
Every version has tradeoffs and political costs. The serious bipartisan proposals -- the ones honest economists actually draft -- blend all three: a small tax increase, a higher cap, modest benefit adjustments, phased in over twenty years. The math works fine. It's the politics that don't.
And mark this: every year of delay shrinks the menu. The 1983 fix worked because they moved before the crisis hit. By 2033, the only items left on the table are an immediate twenty-one percent cut or an emergency tax hike. Delay is the most expensive option of all.
Now -- Congress is going to do what Congress is going to do. You and I don't control that. So let's spend the rest of our time on what we can control. If you're fifty-five or older, here are five things worth understanding right now. Let me be clear up front: these are considerations, not recommendations. Everyone's trail is different.
DROP-IN – 12-07
For listeners fifty-five and older, Paul, what are those five considerations?
PAUL:
First, plan conservatively. Many advisors suggest building your retirement plan around seventy-five to eighty percent of your projected benefit rather than the full hundred. If Congress fixes the system, you've got a pleasant surprise. If they don't, you're not blindsided. Old wisdom: hope for rain, but dig the well anyway.
Second, understand the value of delaying. Every year you wait to claim past sixty-two, your monthly check grows roughly seven to eight percent, up to age seventy. Wait from sixty-two all the way to seventy, and your benefit is about seventy-seven percent larger. A bigger starting check absorbs any future cut far better than a small one.
Third, know your catch-up provisions. If you're fifty or older, the rules let you put extra money away -- an additional eight thousand dollars a year in a 401(k), an extra sixteen hundred in an IRA. And if you're eligible for a Health Savings Account, it carries triple tax advantages. Those contributions also reduce your taxable income today.
Fourth, don't leave spousal and survivor benefits on the table. A lower-earning spouse can claim up to fifty percent of the higher earner's benefit. A surviving spouse keeps the larger of the two checks. Those provisions were written into the law to be used -- strategically.
Fifth, stay informed from the source. The Trustees publish their report every year. The Social Security Administration runs the My Social Security portal, where you can see your own projected numbers in black and white. Don't get your facts from a headline or a campaign ad. Go to the well, not the puddle.
DROP-IN – 12-08
Paul, after forty years of watching this unfold, where do you land? Is the promise of Social Security broken?
PAUL -- CLOSE:
No. And I want to say that plainly, because fear sells and I'm not in the fear business. Social Security was born in 1935, in the teeth of the Great Depression, as a promise: Americans who work their whole lives should not spend their final years in poverty. That promise still stands. The program is not going to vanish. And you should know this. When Social Security was being discussed in the 30’s, discussed and debated, there were plenty of members of the House and Senate who predicted failure. In the Congressional Record, one member of the House clearly stated that the system would one day collapse and he cited, rather amazingly, that it would be a hundred years later. Well, it’s almost 100 years since Social Security began and those voices from a hundred years ago sound pretty wise and spot on.
With that said, what's failed is the arithmetic underneath it. Demographics shifted, lifespans stretched, the worker count thinned -- and arithmetic doesn't care about speeches. It's a mathematical problem that requires a political solution, and the clock on that solution runs out in about seven years.
I've spent a lifetime around people who built things -- farms, ranches, businesses, families. And they all learned the same lesson the open country teaches: nature doesn't negotiate, and neither do numbers. You can curse the drought, or you can dig the well deeper. So the question isn't whether Social Security will exist. It will. The question is whether it will be enough. And that hangs on two things: what Congress does between now and 2033, and how each of us prepares in the meantime.
Control what you can control. Plan with your eyes open. And don't bet the homestead on Washington moving quickly.
DROP-IN 12-09
COMMERCIAL – CC – COFFEE, COCKTAILS, LUNCH
Let’s take a moment to get a word in about events that are available that you may be interested in. Paul and Team Truesdell frequently speak on topics relevant to those who are within five years of retirement, who are 55 years of age or older, or those who are retired. These talks are called Casual Conversations. For the date, time, location, along with the topic and a brief description, visit Truesdell Wealth dot com, forward slash, events. On the events page, you will find in person as well as online and on demand events, such as this podcast, which will be available at your favorite podcast player such as Spotify and apple, and on Paul Truesdell dot com, where you’ll find bonus items and materials. Now, let’s return to Paul Grant Truesdell, the Elder.
PAUL -- SETUP:
Okay, let’s continue and pivot. I want to take you somewhere most people in my business won't go. It's an uncomfortable conversation, and I'll warn you up front -- it's a ghoulish one. But if you want to understand how Social Security actuaries actually think, you have to be willing to look at mortality the way they do: as a number in a ledger. The pandemic put that on full display, and my team and I were having these conversations in real time, back in the spring of 2020.
DROP-IN – 12-10
Paul, during the pandemic there was a great deal of discussion about who COVID would affect most. In the early days -- when New York State in particular was putting patients on ventilators and the death rate was climbing -- you and your team were looking at this from an economic standpoint. Is that correct?
PAUL:
Yes, that's correct. And let me say it plainly: it is a ghoulish conversation to have. Nobody enjoys it. But this is what actuarial work is -- you have to look at the numbers without flinching, because the numbers don't care about your comfort. Every insurance company, every pension fund, and yes, the Social Security Administration itself, was running these same calculations at the same time. We just had the conversation out loud.
DROP-IN – 12-11
So, in those early months of COVID, what exactly did you and your team discuss?
PAUL:
We said this: if the death rates run high among retirees, and high among people with serious comorbidities -- the folks drawing Social Security retirement and Social Security disability -- then, cold as it sounds, that extends the longevity of the trust fund. Fewer checks going out the door every month. That's not a policy position. That's not a wish. That's arithmetic, and pretending the arithmetic doesn't exist doesn't make you compassionate -- it makes you uninformed.
DROP-IN – 12-12
Wait -- in other words, taking people off the rolls is actually good for Social Security's finances?
PAUL:
Careful now -- nobody was taking anyone off the rolls. People were dying. They were being removed by the virus, not by a bureaucrat. And that assumes the federal government actually keeps good records and removes the deceased from the system in a timely way -- which, frankly, is its own problem. As we saw revealed during the forty-seventh administration, the record-keeping at the Social Security Administration is archaic at best. It has improved, but it's an enormous system, and the people working inside it are overwhelmed. There's no doubt about that.
But yes -- to answer the question directly -- when beneficiaries die, it affects Social Security's books. That's true of any pension system on earth. It's the part of the math nobody wants to say out loud.
DROP-IN – 12-13
This is interesting, Paul. Elaborate on that.
PAUL:
Well, it's not rocket science. Throughout history, most influenza outbreaks have hit hardest among the elderly and those with serious comorbidities. The 2009 swine flu was the odd exception -- it reached a wider, younger population. COVID, though, ran true to the older pattern: it concentrated its lethal force on the elderly and the medically compromised -- which is to say, squarely on the Social Security population. Roughly three-quarters of American COVID deaths were people sixty-five and older.
And remember how high the early projections ran. In March of 2020, the Imperial College London model -- the Ferguson report, the one that drove policy on both sides of the Atlantic -- projected up to two-point-two million American deaths if nothing was done. The White House coronavirus task force, standing at the podium with Doctors Birx and Fauci, told the country to expect one hundred thousand to two hundred forty thousand deaths even with full mitigation. The University of Washington's IHME model was revised constantly, and the CDC was publishing planning scenarios with enormous ranges. The forecasts were all over the map, but the headline numbers were staggering.
So based on those early projections, my back-of-the-envelope calculations said the trust fund could last well past 2033 -- into the 2040s, maybe the 2050s. Because here's the brutal truth: if you cull the herd -- and I use that ugly phrase deliberately, because that's exactly how the spreadsheet sees it -- if a large share of the population drawing income from Social Security dies off, the program becomes considerably more sound. And when you factor in the avoided final-year Medicare and Medicaid expenses -- the most expensive year of most people's lives is their last one -- it becomes more sound. That's what we talked about. Quietly, uncomfortably, but honestly.
DROP-IN – 12-14
But those numbers didn't play out, did they?
PAUL:
No, they didn't. America lost over a million people -- a genuine tragedy -- but nothing close to the worst projections, and not in a pattern that rescued the trust fund. The depletion date barely moved.
And there's a lot of controversy around COVID -- a lot of controversy that people simply don't want to touch. Your artificial intelligence, your large language models, your jaded and selectively edited Wikipedia accounts, your talking heads at both extremes -- none of them want to have the real discussion about what happened. We all lived through it. We know.
Here's what I think actually happened, from a Social Security standpoint. Instead of the rolls shrinking, they grew. A wave of Americans looked at the pandemic and decided life was short -- and they retired early, years ahead of schedule. The economists called it the Great Retirement; by some estimates, a couple million more Americans retired than the trend lines predicted. On top of that, disability claims have risen substantially in the years since. So the very event that, on paper, might have extended the trust fund ended up doing something closer to the opposite -- more people drawing, sooner, for longer.
And that's the lesson I want to leave you with. The spreadsheet can tell you what would happen if the numbers move. It can't tell you how sixty-seven million human beings will respond to fear, to loss, and to a hard look at their own mortality. The math is necessary. It is never sufficient. Anybody who gives you one without respect for the other is only telling you half the story.
As always -- this is educational content, not financial, legal, or medical advice. Talk to a qualified professional about your own situation. I'll see you down the trail.
BONUS SEGMENT -- THE GO-GO YEARS: THE TRAVEL BOOM NOBODY SAW COMING
DROP-IN - 12-15
Before we wrap this up, Paul -- are there any other economic trends you've been following? As an investment advisor, you talk with a lot of retired men and women every week. Give us a trend people will understand -- something that delivers one of those a-ha moments.
PAUL:
I'll give you one, and once I describe it, you're going to see it everywhere.
One of the industries most significantly damaged during COVID was the travel industry. We were all locked down. It was draconian. Our civil liberties were violated, and I could go on at length about that. In many ways, the response echoed the Civil War era -- and of course I'm referring to President Lincoln suspending various constitutional guarantees. Those were unusual and unique times, and COVID drew upon that same well of justification. The federal government used it to mandate what were called vaccines -- which were actually genetic modifiers. And I'll say this plainly: a vaccine has a very specific definition. A genetic modifier has a specific definition. Words have meanings, and the meanings matter, and frankly I'm tired of anyone and everyone using the word vaccine loosely. But that's a conversation for another day.
Here's the trend. Coming out the other side of the lockdowns, it took a while for people to adjust -- we talked about that during the pandemic, and we said it would. But once they adjusted, something broke loose. A lot of people moved to Florida to escape the political environment in other states. And a great many of them decided, almost in unison, to start traveling. A lot of traveling. Vacations they'd postponed for years. And the mindset driving it is simple: if I don't do it now, I may not be able to do it in the future.
DROP-IN – 12-16
Can you elaborate on that?
PAUL:
Sure. In retirement planning, we talk about three phases: the go-go years, the slow-go years, and the no-go years. The go-go years are early retirement -- you've got your health, your energy, your mobility, and you go. The slow-go years, you're still moving but the trips get shorter and closer to home. The no-go years -- well, the name says it all.
Now connect the dots. When people retire early -- and we saw a wave of early retirements coming out of the pandemic -- they hand themselves more go-go years. More years with the health and the freedom to actually do the things they spent forty years saying they'd do someday.
DROP-IN – 12-17
That makes sense. So how does that impact things -- the economy?
PAUL:
It impacts it because of the mindset underneath it. People came out of the pandemic thinking: I'm going to die eventually -- and maybe sooner than I planned. There are a lot of folks dealing with unexpected medical conditions at earlier ages than they ever anticipated. And their response has been remarkably consistent: I'm going to travel while I can.
So they're traveling -- and they're doing a tremendous amount of cruising. And notice how they're doing it: in groups. There's a safety-in-numbers instinct at work, and beyond safety, people simply like to be around people they like. Organizing and coordinating group cruises -- friends, church groups, clubs, communities -- that's a real and growing thing, and it has been for more than a few years now. The attitude is: I'm done. I've retired. I'm going to see things before I'm gone. They are working their bucket lists, item by item.
And here's where it ties back to everything we've discussed today. As the horizon comes into view -- as people start to see that big Social Security cliff out there in 2033 -- I think some of them are making a calculated decision: I'm going to spend my money now, enjoy it now, and if the cut comes, I'll deal with it by living on less later. But I am not going to keep delaying and arrive at the end having never traveled. You may quarrel with the math, but you can't quarrel with the logic of a person who's counted their summers and knows the number is finite.
DROP-IN – 12-18
Well, that makes a lot of sense, Paul. Do you think that trend is going to continue?
PAUL:
Oh, I absolutely do. The demographics guarantee it -- ten thousand people a day crossing into retirement, most of them stepping straight into their go-go years with a pandemic-sharpened sense that time is the one asset you can't buy back. And when you see a trend like that, you have to respond accordingly -- and we have as well. But we're not here to talk about that today. That's just one simple trend that's out there, hiding in plain sight. Once you see it, you'll spot it in every port, every airport, and every travel brochure that lands in your mailbox.
12-19
COMMERCIAL – TRUESDELL WEALTH, TRUESDELL TRAVEL, PAUL TRUESDELL
You are listening to The Paul Truesdell Podcast, and this is Episode five hundred and sixty four. In world where most podcasts stop after four episodes and a few make it past forty, let me repeat, this is episode five hundred and sixty four. Now, the Paul Truesdell Podcast is sponsored in part by Truesdell Wealth, a true fiduciary based investment advisor. Visit Truesdell Wealth dot com. The podcast is also sponsored in part by Truesdell Travel, a full service travel agency. Visit Truesdell dot Travel. Again, that’s Truesdell dot Travel. And for the other professional service firms, commonly known as, The Truesdell Companies, visit Truesdell dot net. Now back to today’s episode.
THE SEGMENT
DROP-IN – 12-20
Before we go, Paul -- one last thing. Earlier you used the words "genetic modifier," which is in contravention to the government's own definitions. Why is that?
PAUL:
The answer is very simple. The classic definition of a vaccine is this: you introduce into the body a small amount of the virus so the body can build up immunity -- so that when the real thing comes around, you don't take the full viral load. That's the concept generations of Americans grew up with.
Now, whenever a virus makes its way around the world, the CDC and various other organizations are racing to figure out: what type of virus is this? What strain? And we all know they don't always get it right. That's a tough business. It's why the seasonal flu vaccine some years just doesn't work -- the strain they built it around isn't the strain that actually made its way across the globe. They took their best shot, the virus zigged, and the formula zagged.
DROP-IN – 12-21
So, what was different about the pandemic shots?
PAUL:
When it came to the pandemic, people were not getting a small dose of COVID. They simply weren't. The technology worked differently, and that's my problem -- not with the science itself, but with the label. Call a thing what it is. A vaccine has a very specific definition. What was administered operated on a different principle. And when the government presses a familiar word onto an unfamiliar thing, the public stops asking questions, because the word did the reassuring for them. Words have very specific meanings, and the meanings matter.
And look -- I can see where people would throw stones at me for saying it. Throw away. I'm right, they're wrong, and sometimes a man just has to stand his ground. Whether I live long enough to see it acknowledged or not, I will be right. I'd rather be precise and criticized than loose and applauded.
Now here's why I bring this up at the end of an episode about Social Security -- because this exact disease of loose language runs all through my own industry, and it costs people real money.
DROP-IN – 12-22
Give us an example from your world, Paul -- the financial services industry.
PAUL:
I see it every single day. Start with titles. A true fiduciary-based investment and wealth advisor is a very different animal from your typical run-of-the-mill insurance agent or cookie-cutter financial planner -- the kind everybody hears about on the radio. Same suit, same smile, very different legal obligations. The words on the business card matter.
But here's my favorite example: stock ownership. People throw it around constantly. "Oh, I'm in the market." "I own stocks." "I'm an investor." The truth? Very few people actually own individual stocks. They own mutual funds. They own ETFs. They own variable annuities, business development companies, bundled financial products of every stripe -- with someone, or some algorithm, managing the bundle on a personal or impersonal basis.
And the federal government makes this same mistake all the time. It regularly publishes figures on how many Americans are "stockholders" or "investing in equities" -- and it lumps individual securities together with bundled financial products. It's a rare study that actually delineates the difference. So the headline number tells you almost nothing about how many Americans are genuinely picking and owning companies.
DROP-IN – 12-23
Well then, I guess I can say. calling yourself an investor doesn't make you one. Correct?
PAUL:
Not any more than calling yourself a marksman makes you one. If you're not doing the research -- if you're not diving deep into a company -- you're not an investor. You're a dart thrower.
Take Tesla. Take Amazon. Take SpaceX, now that everyone's talking about it. Plenty of people have money riding on those names -- or want to. How many have actually read the prospectus? How many have gone into the details of the voting-rights structure -- what control Elon Musk and other insiders actually hold versus what the ordinary shareholder holds? Very few. They haven't gone deep. They're fans. And because they're fans, they invest. That's emotional investing, and emotional investing is a different animal entirely from investigative investing.
So when anybody -- a salesman, a fan, or the federal government -- throws a word around loosely, whether that word is "vaccine" or "investor" or "fiduciary," the result is the same: people make decisions based on a label instead of the reality underneath it. That's how folks get hurt.
DROP-IN – 12-24
Let’s begin to wrap this up. Accuracy is critical in science, math, and telling a story, you fully agree with that.
PAUL -- CLOSE:
Yes, I do. I believe we need to be accurate. Accurate in our calculations and our terminology with Social Security. With Social Security Disability. With Medicare, with Medicaid, and with the whole vocabulary that surrounds them. Because that wraps us all the way back around to where we began today.
We have people on one side saying, "Oh, this is no big deal," and people on the other side saying, "This is the end of the world." Both camps throw around terms that are too bold and too nonspecific -- and neither one helps you make a single sound decision about your own retirement.
And if you're sitting there thinking, "Okay -- I need some guidance on this," well, that's what we do, all day long, day in and day out. That's the nature of our business: connecting the dots, thinking it through, and distilling it into plain language -- exactly like we've done today.
This has been an extensive discussion, and it needed to be. Because people need to know what's going on.
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Retirees and pre retirees need to plan with their eyes wide open. And we need to put people in office who are actually willing to do something about it. Bottom line. Words have meanings. Numbers don't lie. And the clock is running.
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- Sources behind the projection figures, for your show notes: Imperial College London COVID-19 Response Team, Report 9 (Ferguson et al., March 16, 2020) -- up to 2.2 million projected U.S. deaths unmitigated; White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing (March 31, 2020) -- 100,000 to 240,000 projected deaths with mitigation; IHME (University of Washington) rolling forecasts; CDC pandemic planning scenarios. Roughly 75 percent of U.S. COVID deaths were age 65-plus per CDC data. Excess-retirement estimates of roughly 2 to 3 million come from Federal Reserve research on the pandemic-era "Great Retirement." Verify current figures before publication.
- Numbers caution: Paul's "quarter to a third of the population" framing from the raw draft was softened to "a large share," since even the worst mainstream projections never approached that scale among beneficiaries. The hypothetical still lands without overstating the historical forecasts