Clients with a million dollars saved for retirement are likely in a solid position, especially if they have a fairly modest lifestyle.

What advisors often overlook, though, is the critical role Social Security plays as a backstop for worse-than-expected portfolio performance or higher-than-expected expenses. Social Security is often the largest inflation-adjusted lifetime income stream on the balance sheet, even for households with a few million saved. For that reason, the decision to claim early for a reduced benefit or wait longer for a higher benefit is one of the levers that can either permanently raise or lower a household’s guaranteed income floor. All too often, however, the claiming strategy is more afterthought than careful calculation.

“Social Security claiming gets less attention than it deserves in planning for wealthy clients,” said Ray Harris, founder of Social Security Claiming Experts in Chicago. “It’s not because advisors or clients don’t care, but because claiming sits in an awkward place. It’s not AUM. It’s technical. It’s full of exceptions, and many clients assume it’s simple until they’re in it.”

Make a Plan

Clients often focus on scary headlines about Social Security’s finances, but they fail to grapple with the mechanics, especially how spousal and survivor benefits work. They don’t bother ensuring earnings record accuracy, nor do they do the math and calculate their potential lifetime household benefits based on different claiming ages.

“The affluent rely on it less as a percentage of income, but Social Security plays an outsized role in their plan’s durability,” Harris said, particularly for the surviving spouse and for sequence-of-returns protection. “Building an effective strategy is less about finding a secret trick and more about preventing irreversible mistakes and aligning Social Security with the broader plan.”

Other key considerations include:

• Identifying missed eligibility (especially in divorce or remarriage cases) that clients and advisors don’t uncover until someone asks the right questions.
• Preventing execution failures regarding account access, identity proofing and spousal filing order so a good plan doesn’t collapse at implementation.

Firms looking to step up their game can focus on creating a repeatable workflow, Harris said, making Social Security planning consistent, documented and defensible.

Monday Morning Quarterback. “This is why the specialist gap matters to wealth firms,” Harris said. “Advisors are expected to quarterback retirement, but Social Security rules are exception-driven and can create liability when handled casually,” Harris said.

Ultimately, it’s not that wealth firms don’t care, he said. “It’s because the incentives and training don’t match the complexity and liability.”

Do you know how many federal income tax brackets there are? Seven, strictly speaking, with the lowest-earners paying 10% on income in the first bracket and the highest-earners paying 37% in the top bracket.

Financial advisors often consider these brackets as clients amass wealth, but things get much more complicated when it comes to optimal retirement income planning, says Stuart Ritter, insights director at T. Rowe Price. Getting the most out of clients’ accumulated nest eggs requires consideration of 16 de facto tax brackets. The added complexity stems from five-tiered Medicare surcharges, potential taxes on Social Security benefits and more. It’s not easy for advisors to master retirement income planning, Ritter said, but those who do can help clients keep more of their hard-earned wealth.

“The good news for advisors today is that they can rely on some powerful tools and calculators to help address the complexity,” Ritter told Retirement Upside. “Income planning is complex, but it’s not as difficult as it once was when you had to do everything by hand with a calculator.”

Income Planning in Practice

For clients on Medicare, proactively managing their income to minimize the program’s Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount is critical. Often abbreviated as IRMAA, it’s an escalating surcharge Medicare adds to clients’ Part B and Part D premiums when their income exceeds progressive thresholds.

IRMAA isn’t a penalty, Ritter explained, but rather a pricing structure that ties higher incomes to higher premium costs. If the client’s income stays below the first threshold, they’ll pay standard premiums and nothing more, but even going one dollar over a threshold can trigger significant additional costs. 2026 IRMAA brackets are based on 2024 income and apply at the following income levels:

• Tier 1 surcharges apply between $109,001 and $137,000 ($218,001 to $274,000 joint), triggering $81.20 in added monthly Part B premiums and $14.50 for Part D.
• Tier 5, the highest, applies when income reaches $500,000 ($750,000 joint), adding $487.00 in Part B premiums and $91.00 for Part D.
• Separately, Social Security taxes apply when a client’s adjusted gross income plus nontaxable interest and half their benefit amount exceeds just $25,000 ($32,000 joint).

For affluent retired couples, IRMMA surcharges can approach $7,000 per year. Meeting these costs might not break the bank for a given retiree, Ritter said, but they can be surprising (and distressing) if not proactively addressed.

Ups and Downs. “Steering your clients wrong on this stuff is a great way to lose credibility,” Ritter said. However, advisors can help plan around the surcharges, for example by timing Roth conversions for lower-income years. “Real-world data shows us that retirees’ spending varies a lot over time, which gives us the opportunity to be very strategic when drawing income from tax-free, tax-deferred and taxable sources.”

A little privacy, please.

The Great Wealth Transfer could see $124 trillion in assets change hands over the next two decades. While that’s exciting news for spouses, children and charity organizations, it will also create plenty of opportunities for cybercriminals to swoop in and do what they do best, said Lorne Maltenfort, a director of private wealth planning at Wells Fargo. Without stronger privacy controls on retirement and investment accounts, advisors risk lasting reputational harm. “If a [cyberattack] happens to you, it’s going to be public and it’s going to be permanent,” Maltenfort told Retirement Upside. “Once privacy is out of the bottle, it’s almost impossible to put back in.”

Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe

Firms should treat privacy and security as enterprise risk, stress-testing systems multiple times a year and updating defenses as threats evolve, Maltenfort said, adding that measures can include jurisdictional planning, independent trustees and family-wide verification protocols.

He pointed to revocable trusts as a key tool. They keep assets between account holders and beneficiaries and avoid probate, where records become public and vulnerable to fraud. Public filings can enable scammers to impersonate heirs or file false real estate claims. “From an asset perspective, it’s easy to locate who owns what assets if there’s no legal shell around them,” he said.

For charitable giving, anonymous donations or donor-advised funds reduce exposure, while public naming can increase risk. “It’s about how comfortable you are putting your name out there,” Maltenfort said, adding that some clients prefer to put their name on a donation because it represents an extension of their wealth, business and mission statement. “If it’s large amounts of money, that’s a signal to cybercriminals.”

Who Has Access? As the Great Wealth Transfer gets underway, there has been more interest in who can access retirement accounts. Advisors want visibility across client assets, including retirement plans, while custodians limit access to reduce credential-sharing risks, and the threat of attacks stemming from third-party vulnerabilities. Some firms have resisted direct advisor access to 401(k)s, which fintech firm Pontera has called out.

Maltenfort said that even when advisors are given discretion with an account, there are still security measures in place. For example, in a trust, Wells Fargo might have one person who manages investments, another who handles distribution, and another who resolves disputes among family members. “In that structure, we’ve segmented responsibilities and created privacy,” he said.