You’ve heard of Tax Freedom Day, that day of the year when employees have finally earned enough money to pay all of their current year’s tax obligations at the federal, state and local levels?  Well here is a play on that concept.

Put together a “Social Security Day” seminar.  This seminar is intended to help investors and employees understand their Social Security Benefits in combination with any retirement benefits.

If you don’t feel you have sufficient expertise in the area of Social Security benefits, ask someone who does to Co-Host the seminar with you.  Your CPA or a CPA in the community would be a good place to start.

Here are a couple of suggested themes: “Retirement Income, Will You Have Enough To Maintain Your Existing Style of Living?”  or "3 Ways to Ensure You'll Have Enough Retirement Income To Maintain Your Existing Style of Living."  You will provide an analysis of retirement income combining Social Security Benefits, retirement plan assets and all other available assets.

Have a supply of Forms 7004, Request for Social Security Statement available for participants to fill out.  Help your participants fill out the 7004 and ask for an appointment.  Either when they receive their statement from Social Security or sometime sooner.  There is no reason to wait for Social Security, you can easily estimate what the Social Security Benefit will be.

The Social Security Statement includes an earnings history, totals of Social Security and Medicare taxes paid during your lifetime and an estimate of future benefits.  One thing everyone will want to do is confirm that their earnings history is correct.

The form can be found on the web at: tap://www.ssa.gov/online/ssa-7004.pdf.  The majority of Social Security benefit information is available on-line, however not all individuals are computer savvy or willing to go online to retrieve their information.

This is an opportunity for you to make contacts and establish an expertise in this area. 

The Social Security Administration's home page is: tap://www.ssa.gov/.

This year’s Tax Freedom Day is April 9^th.  Following is a link to the Tax Foundation’s, Tax Freedom Day MP3: http://taxfoundation.org/podcasts/podcast20100331.mp3.  Include this as a Freebie with your seminar notices.