Brian J. Alleva, a quantitative analyst and researcher formerly with the Social Security Administration, has been awarded the 2026 Montgomery-Warschauer Award from the Financial Planning Association for his research paper about retirement planning for married couples, work that was published in the Journal of Financial Planning last year. The FPA announced the award today.
The research paper, published in the December 2025 issue of the journal, looked into optimal claiming strategies for married couples over a wide range of ages, covering the spectrum of relative lifetime earnings between spouses and the varieties of monthly claiming age combinations, which can start when an eligible worker is age 62. The intersecting claiming strategies for earning and non-earning spouses creates an enormous and complex array of outcomes.
Alleva, whose paper is called as “The Social Security Claiming Decision for Married Couples,” specializes in retirement income and related policy analysis. For his paper, he primarily used mathematic probability modeling and simulation, machine learning and data science techniques to examine the best benefit claiming strategies for couples.
“Retirement planning, and particularly a couple optimally syncing their retirement schedules, can be tricky to navigate,” said Dan Galli, the FPA’s president, in a statement. “Brian’s brilliant work provides a road map I hope every financial planner will review.”
Danielle Andrus, editor of the journal, added in a statement, “When to claim Social Security is a complicated, confusing decision that researchers have worked to help practitioners optimize for years. Mr. Alleva’s work is a valuable addition to that literature, providing a clear, practical analysis supporting the decisions married couples have to make.”
In a 2017 note, Alleva, on behalf of the Social Security Administration, noted that “a couple with a non-earning spouse entitled to only the spousal benefit” could face almost 6,000 possible combinations according to the month they take the benefit after they’re eligible, depending on their birth years. “For couples with a lower-earning spouse, claiming-age combinations number over 9,000.”
“The sheer number and variety of claiming-age combinations would be overwhelming if a couple were to consider each one individually,” he wrote.
Michael Kothakota, volunteer academic editor of the Journal of Financial Planning, said in a statement, “Highlighting the complexity of this one very important decision [of when to take the benefits] illustrates the multitude of decision points financial planners help their clients with, and provides real data on opportunities for rich, productive conversations with clients that will help them fulfill their lifetime goals.”
Alleva’s paper, Kothakota added, “is foundational and should be required reading for any practicing financial planner.”
The Montgomery-Warschauer award is given each year by the FPA for an outstanding article published in the Journal of Financial Planning in the previous year. The award is named after the late Henry Montgomery, who helped create the journal, and Tom Warschauer, its first academic editor. The winning paper was selected by the journal’s editorial advisory and peer review boards and the journal editorial staff. The award is in its 15th year.
It will be presented at FPA Summit, the association’s annual conference at the Gaylord National Resort in the Washington, D.C., area in November.