A 70-year-old baby boomer who built a successful civil engineering career spanning over 30 years discovered a new passion 15 years ago in 2011: mastering the intricately complex regulations of the U.S. Social Security system. Now president and cofounder of the National Association of Registered Social Security Analysts (NARSSA), the nation’s largest Social Security advisory firm, she is confronting an issue with President Donald Trump’s fiscal policies.
Shedden stated that the Big Beautiful Bill failed to benefit Social Security, concurring with forecasts that indicate insolvency is approaching more rapidly as tax reductions hasten the impending crisis.
She emphasized to that the demographic trends confronting the program are stark. The worker-to-beneficiary ratio has collapsed from over 10:1 in the mid-1900s to just 2-3:1 today. Consequently, the schedule for exhausting the program’s surplus trust funds has accelerated, shifting from 2035. After 2032, payroll tax receipts, benefit taxation revenue, and trust fund interest will be insufficient to fund full promised benefits.
Nevertheless, she maintained that the predicament can be resolved.
“I consider myself an optimist. Having studied Social Security for more than 15 years, I recognize its complexity, but that complexity also means there are numerous rules and calculations that allow for many small adjustments,” she remarked.
Resolving the issue ultimately requires political determination, which Shedden acknowledged is uncertain, particularly as the situation is obscured by growing economic disparity. The Big Beautiful Bill has enabled a tiny elite to accumulate greater tax benefits and wealth while providing little advantage to lower- and middle-income households.
Political discourse frequently adds another layer of complexity. Shedden referenced Trump’s recent State of the Union suggestion to eliminate federal taxes on Social Security benefits. Though this may seem attractive to retirees initially, she cautioned it would be disastrous. Revenue from these taxes flows directly back into the trust funds, she noted, and removing them would only expedite the need for benefit reductions. Additionally, she observed that tax provisions in such legislation tend to worsen wealth inequality, mainly favoring the highest earners while delivering minimal gains for middle- and lower-class families.
The messaging problem
Shedden described her shift toward advocacy as stemming from exasperation with the broad deficiency in financial education. She discovered that even finance experts struggled to comprehend the program’s subtleties, which motivated her to earn certification as a chartered retirement planning counselor and ultimately establish NARSSA. The organization’s purpose is to educate professionals who can assist Americans in maximizing their claiming strategies through specialized software, helping retirees fully grasp their choices before visiting a Social Security Administration office.
“Communication represents a major challenge for Social Security,” she stated. The baby boomer generation typically began working as teenagers, “yet no one ever clarified that this program is essentially a massive national insurance system that we all pay into.”
“Employers match our contributions, and the system delivers four distinct types of insurance: coverage for job loss, survivor life insurance, disability insurance, and medical insurance through Medicare… This represents hundreds of thousands of dollars during each person’s retirement,” she added. “For couples or high-income individuals, it frequently exceeds one million dollars based on longevity.”
This multifaceted structure fuels her confidence that Social Security can be preserved, she noted. Initially, the regulations offer various alternatives. Shedden referenced a report that outlined numerous feasible legislative remedies in January 2025. Conducted jointly by AARP, the National Academy of Social Insurance, the National Institute of Retirement Security, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the study proposed modifying the maximum taxable earnings threshold, which previously encompassed 90% of American incomes but now covers only about 80% because wealth is increasingly concentrated among the top 6-10%. Potential approaches include levying payroll taxes on income above $400,000 or abolishing the cap completely, similar to Medicare. Another possibility involves gradually increasing the employee payroll tax rate from 6.2% to 7.2%. Notably, raising the full retirement age—which Shedden stresses constitutes a benefit reduction—lacks broad support.
Shedden also highlighted the 1983 bipartisan commission that rescued Social Security, when former Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan established a collaborative environment to forge a compromise. When questioned whether a similar bipartisan effort could occur now, she conceded: “Well, not at this moment… I believe anyone involved in crafting that solution would achieve historic significance.”
In the final analysis, Shedden said she perceives Social Security not merely as a government initiative, but as an enormous financial resource that delivers guaranteed, inflation-protected lifetime earnings. It furnishes essential safeguards, encompassing disability, survivor, and medical coverage.
Equipped with knowledge and historical perspective, this baby boomer chief executive is committed to guaranteeing the program’s stability for future generations.
“This program has existed for 90 years,” she observed. “It forms the foundation of retirement security for most Americans. It isn’t disappearing. It cannot go bankrupt.” Unless, of course, it somehow does.