The three numbers are your optimized Social Security filing strategy, your Color of Money Score, which shows how much of your savings is exposed to market risk, and your plan’s probability of success under a Monte Carlo stress test. Together they tell you whether your income survives a bad market, which an account balance cannot.
Which spouse should file for Social Security first?
“Wait until 70” is the advice most couples have heard. It leaves three questions open: which of you files first, whether a spouse files on their own record or moves to a survivor benefit later, and how those choices play out over 25 or 30 years. Robert also disagrees with the opposite habit, claiming at the first date available. The survivor keeps the larger of the two checks after one spouse dies, under Social Security’s survivor rules, so a higher earner who claimed early leaves the survivor a smaller check for life.
The couple in the video, a composite Robert calls the Andersons, ended up with a three-step order. The higher earner files at 70 on their own record. The lower earner files on their own record at 68 and 8 months, then moves to the survivor benefit at 80 and 6 months, when the model assumes the higher earner has died and the larger check passes to the survivor. Against the least favorable order open to them, the model showed $352,678 more in lifetime household benefits. Part of that gain comes from delayed retirement credits: benefits grow about 8% for each year you wait past full retirement age, up to 70. Robert presents the couple as a hypothetical composite for illustration. Your own figure depends on both earnings records, your filing dates and your health.
What is a Color of Money Score?
It starts with the 11 questions in the Color of Money Risk Analysis, which record the risk you say you want to carry. Robert then sorts every account you hold, 401(k), IRA, brokerage and Roth, into three colors. Green money is safe and liquid. Yellow money carries moderate risk. Red money has full market exposure, the money with the most room to grow and the most room to fall. Robert says most couples he works with are surprised to find their accounts carry more risk than their own answers asked for.
In the video’s composite, 92.63% of a couple’s investable savings, a little over $1 million, sat in red money three years before their target retirement date. He does not tell couples to give up growth investing. The risk you took while saving is how most couples built what they have. The problem is what the same exposure does once withdrawals begin, because a market drop in the first years of spending does more lasting damage than the same drop a decade later. That is sequence of returns risk. The proposed allocation brought this couple’s score from 93 to 62: 38% green, 62% yellow and no red, arranged around the spending they need in the first five years. Robert labels this example a hypothetical composite too, and your own allocation should follow your goals, your timeline and the risk you can carry.
What does a Monte Carlo probability of success tell you?
Robert runs your plan, meaning your assets, your spending and your income sources, through thousands of simulated markets, with good and bad years arriving in every order. The result is the share of those runs in which the money lasts as long as you do. The same composite couple’s plan scored 57%. Out of 1,000 simulated futures, they ran out of money in more than 400. He then added a harder case, an extra 30% fall in the stock portion of the portfolio in the first year of retirement, and the existing plan dropped to 25%.
The proposed plan combined the new Color of Money allocation with some guaranteed income sources alongside the market investments. Under the same 30% first-year fall, it scored 99%. The video presents the analysis for illustration: it does not project or guarantee future performance, and it does not account for current market conditions. Robert sums up the gap as two questions. A portfolio answers, “How is my money invested?” A retirement income plan answers, “Will this money outlive me, no matter what the market does in the meantime?”
What should the two of you do next?
Ask to see all three numbers for your own household, with both of you in the room, whoever handles the accounts. Robert opens that conversation with a different question: “What is important about your money to you?” For most couples he works with, the answer has little to do with the balance. They want to avoid becoming a burden on their children, and to know the surviving spouse will be fine whoever goes first. A Retirement Income Roadmap is built around those answers, and his 30-minute retirement clarity call is the place to start if you want the three numbers run for your household.
Common questions
- What is the Color of Money Risk Analysis?
- An 11-question assessment of the risk you want to carry. Robert compares your answers with a sort of every account into green money (safe and liquid), yellow money (moderate risk) and red money (full market exposure), then shows you where the two disagree.
- Is a 57% probability of success a bad result?
- It means the plan ran out of money in 43 of every 100 simulated market futures. Advisors set different targets, but a plan that fails that often leaves little room for a bad first year, which is why Robert tests the first year on its own.
- Does waiting until 70 maximize Social Security for every couple?
- Waiting raises a benefit about 8% for each year past full retirement age, up to 70. A couple also has to decide which spouse files first and when a survivor benefit takes over, and that order depends on both earnings records, your ages and your health.
If the decisions on this page are ahead of you, the two of you can work through them with Robert Boeck before any of them becomes permanent.
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