Social Security is far more complicated than most people realize. In fact, it is so complicated that even PhD economists are losing tens of thousands of dollars because they don’t know how to maximize the benefits the system owes them. As for ordinary mortals, forget it. The vast majority of people are missing out on enormous sums of money because they don’t know how to navigate Social Security’s complexity.

Help is on the way. It’s in Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security, a new book by Laurence Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller, and Paul Solman. In a nutshell, the authors identify just about every mistake you are likely to make and tell you how to avoid them.