Free replay for Medicare brokers
How to catch IRMAA before your client pays it
Five questions to run against your book, and three ways to take it further before AEP opens on October 15.
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Prefer to listen, or to read? The audio and the full transcript are further down this page. Go to the audio and transcript
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Walk it with me
Free. 90 minutes, live
A small group of brokers, working through your book and the templates together, with me walking everyone through it. Tuesday, September 29 at 12:00 PM ET, before AEP opens.
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Enter your details once. We will email the printable Book Scan and Outreach Kit, plus the webinar slide deck, to the address you enter.
The Book Scan
Run these against the people you already know. No account, no software, ten minutes.
Stopped working, or cut back their hours, in the last two years? Them or their spouse.
Lost a spouse, married, or divorced in the last two years?
Lost pension income because an employer's plan ended or was reorganized? Or got a settlement because an employer closed, went bankrupt, or reorganized?
Selling a home or rental, converting to a Roth, or taking a big IRA withdrawal this year or next? Especially at 63 or 64, when that income sets their first Medicare premiums.
Turning 65 this year and hasn't filed for Social Security yet?
What a yes means. A yes to 1, 2 or 3 is an event Social Security lists as life-changing: the client can ask, on Form SSA-44, to have the premium set on current income instead of an old tax return. A yes to 4 or 5 is a timing conversation: the income hasn't happened yet, so there is still time to plan around it, and when they claim Social Security is part of that plan. Nobody can promise the surcharge goes away, only Social Security decides that. Nobody finds out unless someone asks.
Listen, or read along
Recorded September 23, 2026. Figures are for 2026.
The whole session as audio
Select any time in the transcript to hear that moment.
The promise and who is on
Patrice Ayling: Thank you so much again for joining me today. I know how busy the Medicare brokers in particular are with preparing for AEP, so I'm glad you could steal an hour to join us today. I'm going to put everyone on mute.
Patrice Ayling: Originally we were going to have 45 minutes of presentation. I've prepared some slides, and then we're going to have a demo of how we operationalize this process, but I'm going to try to cut the remarks down to 35 or 40 minutes so we can get into a discussion, a Q&A, because I think that will be most beneficial for everyone.
Patrice Ayling: So, welcome to How to catch IRMAA before your client pays it.
Patrice Ayling: What are we doing today? By one o'clock, our goal is that you'll have three things: you'll understand the two-year look back and ways to help position your clients so they can potentially avoid it, how the Social Security claiming date moves the premium two years later so there is coordination between Medicare and Social Security, and what you can charge for providing that service.
Patrice Ayling: We do have software that helps us do that, and it's designed for Medicare brokers, so that's also one of the reasons I wanted to get on today. I invited Jacqueline Payne, because I want you to see how it works in practice, and not just theory.
Patrice Ayling: Here's who I am. I built the system, MySSAgent, and I had a 15-year corporate career in marketing. I did build the system, and more importantly, I can show you how to monetize it.
Patrice Ayling: Everyone here has their book of business. They help enroll [in] Medicare, they work on Medicare, and those Medicare commissions are capped, as you know, so this is an opportunity to position yourself with your book as the trusted advisor.
Patrice Ayling: That's really the genesis of what we built here. I also have Jackie, as I said before. She's a licensed Medicare broker. She added the [Registered] Social Security Analyst® (RSSA®) credential. Jackie, do you want to say hi to the group?
Jackie Payne: Hello, everybody. I'm not muted, yay! So, yeah, I am a licensed agent. I have 30 years of experience as a registered nurse, and access to care is important, and also knowing what that means is important. As I was doing my business with my Medicare broker business, Social Security always comes up. I thought that's a good credential to have, and I can help people, and build my relationship with my book of business before they even enter T65, and do that in a very comprehensive way.
Patrice Ayling: When we were conceiving of this system a little over a year ago, Jackie was able to uncover $147,000 in lifetime benefits for one of her clients. What was the scenario on that, Jackie?
Jackie Payne: If you're speaking about the client who didn't know she could get her survivor benefits, she had no idea that she could apply for the survivor benefits. She had recently lost her husband and didn't know she could apply for them, and do that before she applied for her own benefit, waiting till she gets her full retirement age at 67 or further down. That is something I helped her with. A lot of times when you lose somebody, you're not thinking clearly, and everybody hears about this death benefit, but they think that's the one-time thing, and that's not the case. I was helping with Medicare, and then we separately, because you can't do these things together, did an analysis for her, and she was able to access those benefits, so that was a really great help for her.
Patrice Ayling: Thanks, Jackie. The point here is you're fielding questions about Social Security formally or informally. If you get into any type of Social Security question or conversation, you understand that things come up. People don't realize that they can claim on their ex-spouse's benefit. They don't realize that they are entitled to survivor benefits. All sorts of things come up, and our position, at MySSAgent, is you are uniquely positioned to handle these things.
The two-year lookback
Patrice Ayling: Let's get into the topic du jour: IRMAA. We refer to it as the bridge, because it's your product, and it's moving your product two years out, and it's generally something that is often left unmodeled.
Patrice Ayling: Let's see what it looks like in practice. The premium we're talking about is for 2026. As you know, there's a two-year lookback, so that Part B premium was set in 2024. Today, only about 8% of people on Part B pay an IRMAA tier.
Catch one: Form SSA-44
Patrice Ayling: There are two main cases that come up. You can ask for these premiums to be reduced by using Form SSA-44.
Patrice Ayling: What happens, generally, is they retire, sometimes in their peak earning and working years, and when they go to enroll in Medicare and look at claiming Social Security in retirement, that lookback is going to be from 2024, when they may have made well above the premium tiers of $109,000 single and $218,000 joint. That is an opportunity for you to have the conversation, offer them Form SSA-44, and shepherd them through that process.
Patrice Ayling: The other piece is the widowhood case. This catches a lot of people, because generally these couples are filing jointly, and they now need to go and file single, and their income drops. Say that same couple was making $250,000 per year combined, and they suddenly are down to $150,000, the widow's income down to $150,000. That is a qualifying event.
Patrice Ayling: When we look at the SSA, there are other qualifying events, but as you know, things come up that don't qualify. A marriage, divorce, death of a spouse obviously, an employer settlement payment, loss of pension income, loss of income-producing property, work reduction, work stoppage. All these things happen to our 55-plus crowd, and all of these are qualifying events, but there are other events [that] are going to move that IRMAA tier that you can help them plan for.
Patrice Ayling: Being strategic about selling a home, downsizing, or moving to a new state. Being strategic about the Roth conversion. If there was a large IRA withdrawal, say grandparents pulling out of an IRA to help a grandchild go to college, that comes up, and that's going to move that IRMAA tier. Selling rental properties or investments for a gain, you're going to get dinged, and also claiming Social Security.
Patrice Ayling: Besides the two cases we talked about, here are additional events that can get a client caught up. The two-year lag, that's the letter coming and saying that they are subject to an IRMAA surcharge. Just knowing that it is a cliff: even $1 over the line for single or joint will activate that entire tier, and it applies for the year. Municipal bonds, not something that I think people think about every day. They're not taxed, that's the good news, but it is added back to the income that IRMAA looks at.
Patrice Ayling: Qualified Roth withdrawals, however, are not included. What has maybe been referenced as the cheap plan, the Part D, it lands on top of whatever premium plan the client picks. So, as you can see, [there are] a lot of rules, really complex, and a lot of opportunities to stay in front of your clients and help them through this.
Patrice Ayling: Now we're going to talk about MAGI. Here's where I'm going to pause and have Jackie come in and talk a little bit about MAGI.
Jackie Payne: Basically, we all know that the adjusted gross income is what is looked at to set the floor for your Part B premium, and most people fall under that line. Those things that we just spoke about on the previous slide are the things that people don't think about, and they may say, oh, no, I only make this amount of money, and you're like, okay, you're good.
Jackie Payne: Then they've sold a home, or done something like that. I've had a client who won a significant amount of money, didn't think anything of it, and that pushed him into IRMAA. So there are these things that come up, and we need to understand them so we can tease those out a little bit. Again, you're talking to your clients sooner, before they're ready to age in, so you can get this information and get a really clear picture, so you're a little more strategic about when you're enrolling them, prior to enrolling them down the line in Medicare, and then you've developed a relationship. So those are the things, identifying those things, and if we understand them as brokers, we can highlight some things that may be occurring in their life that they're not thinking about that is going to affect that AGI, the MAGI, that's adding those things in that we don't necessarily think about.
Catch two: the claiming date
Patrice Ayling: This is how the claiming decision, the Social Security claiming decision, moves that premium. What people, I think, don't understand, most of your regular run-of-the-mill Americans [don't] understand, is that up to 85% of your Social Security benefit can be taxed. The thresholds were set in 1983 and 1993, and they haven't been changed since. We know the two-year lookback, so if we're talking about 2026, then that's going to impact the Part B premium.
Patrice Ayling: Let's see. Now we can come to the point where we'll walk through it, how we handle it, and we'll pick the slides back up after we take a look.
The proof, live (the software demo)
Patrice Ayling: This is the MySSAgent platform. We have a couple sample households on our platform. Today we're going to model the couple. These are the Hartwells. When you stand up a new couple, you accept the XML file directly from SSA.gov. We're not asking for credentials, they credential it on their own. Of course, we never ask for a Social Security number, we simply take a copy of that XML file so we can run the analysis.
Patrice Ayling: This is Richard and Carol Hartwell. Of course, we got their SSA statement, their residence, state of residence, their marital status, if they're working or not. We capture the year that they might like to retire, and in addition to that, the age, and we also capture details on the spouse: is she working or not? And also the planned retirement year and planned claiming age.
Patrice Ayling: This is the analysis, and this view is just going to show a snapshot of the claiming strategy that we're going to recommend for this couple. You would have risk flags to coordinate, and you have a little summary of how the benefit looks as a survivor passes. We model longevity, and that allows them to, obviously no one has a crystal ball for how long they're going to live, but you can make some decisions about when you claim depending on, if you have longevity in your family, if your current health is optimal or suboptimal, so those kinds of levers on longevity can help you make a decision.
Patrice Ayling: We also model the net check. I've had brokers come to me and say, well, people want to know what is the amount they're going to get every month, so we take into consideration federal tax rates and try to give them a clearer picture of what they're going to get month-to-month and over the years. We also have spousal coordination, and we model the survivor benefit as well, but now we're going to focus on IRMAA.
Patrice Ayling: Let me go back. We have the ability to model a record based on one individual and the household together, a simple toggle to see everything that you need to see. We'll just put in a couple [numbers] and model that, so we get that net check, and we'll show you how much of that tax plus IRMAA is going to cost per month, and of course, the net check.
Patrice Ayling: So then we get down to the IRMAA guard, and the IRMAA tier is just a simple estimate. Again, if we go even $1 over the line for joint, yeah, if they got $2.1 million, they're going over, right? Alright.
Patrice Ayling: You can see, it pops right up for them. It shows, here's the tier: none on the single, the joint up to $218,000, we've put in $250,000. Here's the premium, and the surcharge, so that kicks in, Tier 1, and it just shows you the brackets. So that $250,000 in annual income pushed them into Tier 1 of 5, and the calculations became [are just] calculations. If you put this up, let's say they're in the $300,000 range, then it gives you also the MAGI headroom.
Patrice Ayling: We talked a little bit about selling a house, and how that is a common practice for the 55-plus crowd, but people, when they're thinking about downsizing, when they're thinking about retiring, they're not necessarily thinking about the interaction between Medicare, Social Security, and the IRMAA surcharge. Things like these, Roth conversion, capital gain[s], they all come into play, and this is a way that you can model that for the client and be the hero in their life on this.
Patrice Ayling: We give another estimate, and we give more details year-by-year. This is Richard's, and the best recommendation is to delay till 70, but of course, that's a very personal decision, and for the spouse, what happens if one spouse passes away? The joint return with both spouses, and then Richard filing single, say that Carol passes. Another thing we can do is we can help them plan for these changes.
Patrice Ayling: Let's say that someone passes away, I'll let it be 2027, you can go back here, and you can step them through exactly what they need to fill out Form SSA-44, and we're able to put the numbers in, whatever they may be, and you can download the worksheet. That's a leave behind for them, they can bring this to their accountant, and we also link to the form directly.
Patrice Ayling: That's it in a nutshell. It's not the only thing that you get, but it's a really handy tool to support your book of business, and it's an opportunity to, again, provide Social Security [advice] more formally, and also get paid for your work and what you know.
An attendee's example
Attendee: Patrice?
Patrice Ayling: Yes.
Attendee: Yeah, this is...
Patrice Ayling: Hello.
Attendee: I just want to share with the crowd that I did have, I'm getting an echo. I don't…
Patrice Ayling: You sound great to us, maybe you have...
Attendee: Alright. My thought is, I had a client who came in and got her Medicare, and then got slapped with, like, a $300, $400 IRMAA, because they sold the property two years ago. They didn't make that much, but they made half a million dollars or something two years prior, and she had to get off the ACA, she had to go on Medicare. She was really upset about that. My point is, if anyone does marketplace plans and you have a client that's 63 or something like that, that's the time to give them this program, because if they're going to sell a property, you can plug that in and see how that would work.
Patrice Ayling: Yeah, exactly, and thanks for that. Jack, did you have something to add?
Jackie Payne: No, I was saying that was a great example. That was great. We do have something in the chat. Are we doing chat yet, or do you want to wait a little bit?
Patrice Ayling: Not just yet. We'll finish up and talk through a couple other things, and then we can get right to it.
What to charge
Patrice Ayling: Per that scenario, well, I guess it's real life, right, he had a client, and they got dinged to the tune of $400 a month with their IRMAA surcharge. What does this cost? There are a couple different credentialing agencies out there. One is the Registered Social Security Analyst® (RSSA®), it's the one that Jackie brought on board. Their published rates are anywhere from $400 to $1,500, and it's a sliding scale based on the case and the amount of hours that you're putting in, but it's [at] your discretion what you decide. Are we saying that we want you to go out and get an RSSA or an NSSA? Potentially. I think education is great, and it will help you be a better broker, but that is going to take some time, and that doesn't mean that you cannot start helping your clients today.
Patrice Ayling: Today, I'm not going to ask you to buy anything, but I do have a couple of follow-on materials that you'll get after the recording, or after the webinar ends, and I'll send you a follow-up, and it will give you a worksheet on how to identify the five questions to really tease [this] out: think about your book strategically, who are the ones that you think are going to get caught by this, and proactively have those conversations. I'll also have some worksheets for you, and I will jump on a call with anyone on Tuesday the 29th, and we'll have a 90-minute working session, very interactive. You can bring your book, and we'll step through these questions and identify some early targets for you.
Patrice Ayling: There are 22 days until AEP opens, and what I wanted to do was give this group, the group that joined, a few other value-add materials. That's why you're going to get the whole kit, but I thought, okay: 22 days until AEP from the start of this webinar, 22 percent off of the license. Right now we're offering the advisor license at 22% off for the year. There are two ways to get in: you can pay monthly, or you can pay annually. The benefit of paying annually is that you get an extra month already built in for free, so you're getting not only the 22% discount, but you're getting 12 months for the cost of 11. The other piece I said before about getting a credential, we wholeheartedly encourage that. I think education is great, and I know, Jackie, you can talk about how much you got out of the RSSA® education.
Patrice Ayling: In the event you wanted to get started sooner, and you want to go into AEP with momentum, I don't want you to think that you need to go it alone, so we are here to support you on a case-by-case basis. There are going to be a lot of clients that you may get in front of, and the Social Security claiming is made simple, but there might be some clients you get in front of, a couple different competing scenarios, things that get a little bit complex, you can always come back to us, and we will help you work any overflow or that case completely to the end. We really have you covered, whether you want to go and get the education and stand up this Social Security service, or if you'd rather get started today and still want a little bit of support as we go.
Patrice Ayling: That brings me to questions. I will figure out how to open this up, and we'll take everyone off mute, and we'll probably just start with the questions, if there are any in the chat.
Your questions
RMDs and IRMAA
Jackie Payne: Was there anybody else on the call who had any questions? Go ahead.
Attendee: Alright, if somebody receives required minimum distributions (RMDs) of, say, $200,000 a year for life, they never get out of the IRMAA, do they?
Jackie Payne: I wouldn't think so, because that minimum distribution would count towards IRMAA, I believe.
Attendee: So it never goes away, like when you're 75 or 80 or 90? You always pay IRMAA?
Jackie Payne: I think what the rule is, you have to take your minimum, just at a certain age you have to take a certain amount. You can't, to avoid IRMAA, of course you're going to do that to avoid IRMAA, you're going to not take a huge chunk of money so you can avoid it, but at some point, as you get older, there is a minimum distribution you have to take. That's where you're going to your [financial] advisor every year, and you're like, okay, this is where things are at, and they help guide you through what amount you should take. Then other things are going on in your life, like you're going to sell a property, all those things come into play.
Attendee: So as long as your income is above the line, you always pay IRMAA, or MAGI, which...
Jackie Payne: Yeah, depending on which bracket you hit, then it's going to be the amount you're going to have to pay. The majority of people, as we know, in most of our Medicare clients, they're under that, and they pay the minimum amount, but it does hit some people. I've had somebody who doesn't make a lot of money, and it booted them: they sold a property, and they got booted off of their LIS for a year, if you will. So that happens on the opposite end as well.
Attendee: Yeah, I had a client who had received an inheritance from parents who passed away, and that threw them into IRMAA.
Jackie Payne: Yeah, so these are things that we can, as Medicare [brokers], this is the thing, we can do consults on this stuff to help people understand claiming, and help them understand beforehand, and that's going to build your book of business when they do age in, or when they are going to make that change. They'll be very educated, you've formulated a relationship with them, and then you can convert over. We have to keep these things separate, but at least you can start building your book and developing relationships ahead of time, and help them through this process. Now we have people who are full retirement age at 67, but they can go into Medicare at 65, and that becomes a whole other thing. So this is all impactful for that, I think.
Where do new clients come from
Jackie Payne: Anybody else? Let's see: are clients primarily already on Medicare, or are they pre-Medicare? Okay, let's wait a bit. Other than through a Medicare book of business, where do you get new clients? Are you on there? Can you clarify this a little bit?
Attendee: Yeah, I dictated that. It should read, [unclear: O-U-R] clients, primarily Medicare or pre-Medicare, and if you have a limited book of business, where else would you get clients to help with this software.
Patrice Ayling: I can take this one, if you want, [Jackie].
Jackie Payne: Sure, go ahead.
Patrice Ayling: Yeah, so what we have for the clients that are already in the funnel, this process helps as a client retention play, but I have a client who is a Medicare broker out of Colorado. One thing he was able to do was, as you know, there's Medicare 101s, everyone does them generally, he was able to have Social Security 101s. That's a new client acquisition opportunity for you: if you're already doing those sorts of things, you can have a Social Security 101, and that's going to be a captive audience, whether they need to enroll in Medicare or switch plans. Then you can stay close to them, advising on these services, and stand up a new income stream for your business around Social Security advice. Does that answer your question?
Attendee: Yes, that helps. For sure.
What exactly do we sell
Patrice Ayling: Okay, great.
Attendee: Alright, another question while I'm on here, though. Somebody earlier in the conversation, not one of the two of you, mentioned giving this to people. Do we sell a package, or what? I'm going right back to the basics: what am I looking at?
Patrice Ayling: Yeah, absolutely.
Attendee: A program that I would sell to people for them to complete and use, or would I use this to help them get through all of their questions about Social Security?
Patrice Ayling: It's both, and you can set up whether you decide to charge for your time in advising Social Security or roll it into your current book of business as a value-added service. What buying the software will enable you to do is help consult on Social Security in a way that is organized, that accounts for all of the rules in the Social Security handbook, accounts for those edge cases. You can run this service on your own. If you get into a sticky situation, you can purchase cases one at a time, and you also can refer to us, so you could refer your clients to us, and we could support them through it. There are a couple different opportunities, whether you want to run it on your own and roll it into your service delivery, or you want to stand up a new service line and take on the advising yourself. You're already a trusted advisor for them, so this is just another opportunity to support your clients while also getting paid for that work.
Jackie's RSSA credential and consult pricing
Jackie Payne: Are you a Medicare agent?
Attendee: Yes.
Jackie Payne: Okay, so why I added this to mine was, I'd get people asking, how do I enroll in Social Security? What do I do? All those questions that come up when somebody's aging in. So I was taking time out and doing that and helping people, and then, when the RSSA came out, I thought, well, especially when all the turmoil and commissions and everything started happening, I thought, well, I'm doing this anyway and spending time on this. I would like to capture, maybe, revenue for it, or be able to really have a credential behind it. So what I do is I offer a Social Security consult, and I charge $299 for the consult, separate from, it's got to be separated out. Then that way, I can help people get their online account going, and then we pull the XML, and I talk with them about if they're going to get hit with IRMAA, or their claiming options, and then they can also breathe air into it, because they may have some savings, or some things as well, that they need to put that whole [ball] of wax together, and maybe take to an advisor, or it just helps clarify for them where they're at. So I offer that as a consult for Social Security, even before they're going to get ready to do Medicare, and then, as things go down the road, they can come to me and I can enroll them in their Medicare. It's a way to meet people and help them with this part of our business that we always bump up against. Does that make sense?
Attendee: Yeah, that really does, Jackie, thank you.
Jackie Payne: You're welcome.
Attendee: Appreciate it. You mentioned, Jackie, that you also do, you have some kind of a certification over and above this?
Jackie Payne: Yeah, so I am, and there's someone else on the call who's also registered. I went ahead and got my Registered Social Security Analyst®. You pay money to be credentialed, and then you get credentialed, so you have to take a test, and it's online, you do courses and classes, take a test, then you are [a] Registered Social Security Analyst®. There's software involved in that, and there's software that we have, that we're using here, that Patrice has made a little more robust, if you will, but the analysis part of it, and learning that, understanding that, helps me guide people. What Patrice is getting at is you don't necessarily have to get the RSSA®, you can buy this, the things, and run stuff, and then if it's very simple and easy, you're good, but if it gets complex, you can always refer on to an RSSA® or somebody to handle that part of it, if they want something a little more robust and you don't want to get into that. That's what Patrice is getting at with what you would be purchasing here, if you decided to do that.
Attendee: Okay, got it. That all helps, and I guess the kit you're going to email us will give me more information, right?
Patrice Ayling: Yeah, absolutely. You're going to get a playback of the recording, you're going to get a kit to help you think through this, and you're going to have everything you need in one package to consider the opportunity.
Patrice Ayling: One thing I put up is, I just put up Jackie's calendar, so you could visualize it. I'm sure you have something like that. We have the AEP appointment, she also does ACA, Welcome to Medicare for your T65s, and then right here, consult, for Social Security planning. I just bring that up as a visual to say this is the shape of it.
XML versus PDF, and pricing your time
Patrice Ayling: So we have about 10 minutes left. With that, I'm going to see if we have any more questions. I can also jog the discussion, we can get off IRMAA if you want, and just talk about what's working for people, preparing for AEP, or any other questions that you might have. Okay, looks like one came in the...
Jackie Payne: Thank you for the presentation.
Patrice Ayling: Thank you for joining.
Jackie Payne: Thank you, honey.
Patrice Ayling: Yep, and thanks for participating.
Patrice Ayling: Let's talk about the software, we talked about not holding any credentials and still getting started. I will also include in the follow-up, one of the things that comes up a lot is, well, why don't you take the Social Security statement, the PDF. We have a whole roundup of reasons why we accept an XML over a PDF. I know PDFs are really easy for our clients out there, but if you want to talk about accuracy, if you want to talk about models that can stand up, you really do need that XML. That's something. Anything else, [Jackie]?
Jackie Payne: Well, I just want to say, on the XML front, I know we have that tool, and we can do that, but we're also able to upload the person's XML in a different fashion as well. The tool's really nice, but you can also, once the client downloads it, get it and put it right into the system, if they're unable to use the tool. Everybody has different learning capacities, so, oftentimes, I help people get their accounts together for their Social Security accounts, and as we go along, people get more savvy, though it's also an area of concern for people.
Jackie Payne: It's their Social Security, they're nervous, that kind of thing, but really, the XML basically just shows gobbledygook, if that's the word to use. It's not hard information, it's just data, and as Patrice has alluded to before, their Social Security number isn't on it, anything like that's not on it, and it's really a more secure format, too. That helps people understand why we're doing the XML as well. That's all we wanted to have, Trice. We're good.
Patrice Ayling: Yeah, and that brought up another point that comes up. If you are thinking about pricing these services, you need to be thinking about your time and what your time is worth. You also need to be thinking about the value you're going to deliver to the client, but one of the things that does take up a lot of time is just even helping your client get into SSA.gov and get that login information. That is time-consuming, and that is something that you need to consider.
Patrice Ayling: Then the second step is, once you get in, getting that XML out. So, yeah, Jackie, to your point, you don't have to use our plug-in tool, you can upload it. Once you obtain it, you can upload it, but thinking strategically, if you're going to do all this work and you're going to bill for it, you need to account for your time, but don't put it as a line item on an invoice, like, helped provision the SSA.gov account, because they can go to a field office to get that support for free, they can call to get support for free. We all know that they don't, or won't, or can't, or whatever, call SSA, or go to the field office, so you know that you're probably, for a majority of your clients, going to be helping them get their SSA.gov account together. I don't say that to put it on the invoice, but just to remind people that if you're going to take this on and you're thinking about pricing, you need to account for your time in helping them do that.
Jackie Payne: Yeah, and in helping them do that, it builds trust, it builds a rapport with your client already, and then, if you need to use video conferencing with them, or what have you, on some future enrollments, that kind of thing, then you can get that done and work with them, and you understand how they operate a little bit. That's probably coming from a nursing perspective for me.
Jackie Payne: I don't mind helping and doing that, and then it's just going to build for things in the future, so it's okay if I take my time, because I feel like it's just going to help things be quicker in the future.
DIY versus assisted tiers, and closing
Patrice Ayling: Okay, well, oh, so one last question from the chat. Are you finding that more people opt to try this for themselves, or do most people want assistance from an agent?
Patrice Ayling: So, it is, our DIY tier, on the consumer side, it's meant to give people, it's a do-it-yourself, it's meant to give people a full analysis, it's meant to give them everything they need to go in and file, but we often find that they want to speak to a human.
Patrice Ayling: Even if it's just an hour with an RSSA, and being able to confirm the claiming strategy, ask questions, get their questions answered, that's like a middle tier, and then there are folks who need hands-on support, and they would then opt for the Do-It-For-Me tier, where they would have that support and assistance until they file. Does that answer your question?
Attendee: Yes, thank you.
Patrice Ayling: Okay, well, I want to thank everyone for joining today. We only went a couple minutes over. You'll have the playback, recording, the deck, the kit, and everything you need. Hopefully I'll be able to get it out to you today, so take a look out for that, and remember that I am also going to have a free session for us on Tuesday the 29th, and it's going to be 90 minutes, and it's designed to be a working session. So, hope to see you again soon.
Attendees are not named in the recording or the transcript.