Ken Himmler.com

When it comes time to collect your Social Security benefits, the longer you wait the more you will collect. Of course  you can start collecting Social Security anytime after age 62, but for each year you wait, your payments will increase by 7% or 8%.

"Payments increase about 7% for every year between early retirement age – 62 – and your full retirement age. So if your full retirement age is 65, your payments will increase 7% for each year between 62 and 65, and then an additional 8% for each year between 65 and 70," says Laurence Kotlikoff, a professor of economics at Boston University and co-author of Spend ‘Til the End.

For those who can afford it, waiting to tap into Social Security benefits is definitely a more lucrative bet. However, some people are taking advantage of a provision that allows them to earn even more from their Social Security benefits. Called a do-over, the recipient taps into their benefits at age 62 and invests the funds in a safe investment that earns a decent rate of return for several years, then they pay the money back and pocket the interest earned.

Do-overs were included in the Social Security Handbook to allow those who jumped the gun and started taking benefits at age 62 to correct their mistake. All they have to do is file IRS form 521, pay the benefits they’ve already received back – in full, but with no interest, penalty, or adjustment for inflation – and start taking the larger benefit as if they had waited all along.

Over the last few years, do-overs have become more well known as an investment strategy of sorts. But now the Social Security Administration wants to put a stop to the practice.

"Social Security has sent a proposed regulation to OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] for review that would establish a 12-month time limit for the withdrawal of a retirement benefit application. The proposed regulation would also permit only one withdrawal per lifetime," explains Mark Lassiter, a Social Security Administration spokesperson.

In other words, you’ll now have only one year to change your mind and return your benefits, which makes it less of a strategy and more of a way to correct your mistake. One can assume that was the intention of form 521 all along.

Read more on this important subject in recent AOL Daily Finance article here: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/social-security-administration-seeks-to-put-an-end-to-do-overs/19613383/

What is RSS? I�m regularly asked this question and thought it might be worth putting together a page to define RSS and hopefully shed some light on the topic.

Do you want to keep up to date with the latest posts on KenHimmler.com?

In the �old days� of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to �bookmark� websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems with bookmarking

• You as the web surfer had to do all the work
• It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once
• You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks
• You end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don�t update very often

RSS Changes Everything

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS flips things around a little and is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.

RSS stands for �Really Simple Syndication�. Many people describe it as a �news feed� that you subscribe to.

I find the �subscription� description helpful. It�s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your �RSS Reader� every time your favorite website updates.

How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it�s good and how to use it.

Let me say right up front that I�m not the most technically savvy guy going around – but even I can use RSS. At first I found it a little strange to make the change from bookmarking to RSS but I found that when I started that I just couldn�t stop.

How to Use RSS

Get an RSS Reader – The first thing you�ll want to do if you�re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.

There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features – however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you�re starting out (I use Google�s Reader) – as I say there are many others to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.

Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you�ll see that unread entries from the sites you�re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you�ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item – marking the last one as �read�.

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.

Note: other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.

Find Some Feeds to Subscribe to – there are two places to look for a site�s feed:

1. On the Site
2. In Your Browser

On Site Subscription
Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, �counters� with how many �readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more.

They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen:

Thanks to my son TJ the wonderful photographer at age 11

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Well besides the sweltering heat of 93 degrees we had a great time on the boat today. We had two great speakers, Cristine Olson from T.I.F.F. and Bruce Riley from Identity Shield. Christine shared her heartfelt story about her daughter and her life mission to make sure no other family has to go through the same ordeal. Thank you very much for sharing with us and creating To Inform Families First � I hope everyone takes advantage of this and goes online to put in your information.� We would really like your comments on the value of this to you. We also heard from Bruce Riley from Identity Shield.� I personally think he had a great presentation and informed all of us on the fastest growing crime “Identity Theft”. We will be hearing more from Bruce on this subject in the near future. Lastly, I spoke about the dreary economic outlook and told everyone about the upcoming webinar on Recession Splitting Strategies. We will be holding this on Thursday July 31, 2008 at 6:30 PM. There is only space for 100 attendees so if you want your spot let us know because it will be on a first come-first serve basis. The formal invitations will be going out next week but if you want to reserve a spot send an email to ken@iamllc.biz�and we will put your name on the list. The way it will work is that you can either call in to hear the teleconference or you can log in to watch the video presentation along with the teleconference. Again it was great seeing all of you on the boat and enjoy the pictures and videos in following posts. Ken�

PS We have been told by our email service that a lot of the emails for the invitation to the boat were kicked back. In order to make sure you are getting our emails you have to add our email addresses to your white list or your approved email list. Since we typically send from different addresses to ensure delivery please add *@iamllc.biz�� and *@kenhimmler.com� The * is the shift 8 key. This should help to make sure you are getting our emails. Lastly, if you want to get this blog to be automatically sent to our email click on the link in the top left corner and you will begin to get these posts.