Depends on your health. If you think you’re only going to live to 75, I’d take it early. If I think I’m going to live to 95, I’d wait. It also depends on your savings. Can you hold off on collecting it?
With my family history and advances in medicine, I'm working with the assumption that I'll live to 102.
Depends...which worries you more? Missing out on the money you paid in...or living in a possibly perilous financial state very late in life? And if neither are worries, what trade-offs do you want to make?
Well said. Regardless of when you start drawing SS, you're making a guess about your timing /lifespan. Which potential loss can you best live with?
Maximizemysocialsecurity.com, created by Larry Kotlikoff is $40, and opensocialsecurity.com, created by Mike Piper, is free. Both have books, which may be available at your public library.
Interesting! This might be just as good as my suggestion to get an expert opinion!
I got in just under the wire (born in 1953) and applied for the restricted application when I reached my full retirement age. I will receive half of what my husband’s retirement at full retirement age was and let my benefit based in my earnings continue to grow until I am 70. No one at social security tells you about this. You have to do your research.
My husband and I took a "retirement class" at the local community college, and I learned this fact in that class. Of course, I'm too young -- by a good bit -- to take advantage of it. My husband and I were -- by a good bit -- the youngest people in the class, but we didn't care: we thought it makes sense to know well in advance so you can make a plan and have time enough to work that plan.
We're healthy and active now, and want to be able to enjoy traveling and life while we can.
Not to be argumentative, but people say this all the time, and I don't really get it.
No, I don't want to waste away my young-retirement /healthiest years, but neither do I want to be old-old and in poor health and unable to pay for services I need /want or unable to buy things that might bring me comfort in those years. I don't know which of those two would be worse.
I've always liked the word BALANCE in regards to finances.
@Dznypal - you might find it helpful to search the aarp website, or do a google search on receiving your first check. From the aarp website, it says that SS benefits are paid 'behind' rather than 'ahead'.
That I did not know.
That is one of the bigger risks of waiting to start taking Social Security. Sooner or later the government is going to have to cut benefits in order to keep the program solvent. Might as well get as much out of it before your benefits are cut.
I am not all that worried about SS running out of money, but I do agree that you're "safer" once you're IN the program. By that, I mean, once you're collecting. I guess we're all in the program -- but most of us are contributors, not recipients.
If you're paying 6.2% of your income into it for decades (more if self-employed) then it better work out to more than a supplement. Investing 6.2% of your income in an index fund in an IRA/401(k) would give you a pretty big annuity by retirement if you were free to invest the money yourself.
Yes, if I had 6.2% (plus my employer's matching amount) and a lifetime of working years for it to grow with compound interest, I'd expect a whopping big pile of money. I don't think SS is a particularly good steward of our money.
On the other hand, I completely understand that without the program a bunch of people would save literally zero, and that would bring some strong negatives: elderly people who were laid off would suffer, other elderly people would "hold onto" jobs and young people would have a hard time finding work, and some elderly would literally die from lack of money.
And workers had pensions back then. Average workers were not saving multiple times their salary on their own.
False. Pensions are becoming more rare these days, but at no point in history have the majority of Americans had pensions.
Actually social security was created because elderly people were actually dying from poverty when they could no longer work. So I'm kind of happy that we at least fixed that.
Money from the SS pot also goes to disabled people and children under 18 who've lost a parent.
I'll just note, pensions. Another thing Gen X and younger don't have.
False. I'm a Gen-Xer, and I have a pension. I have many younger co-workers who have pensions.
Well that is cool. I think most have been replaced by 401K plans. But I know people who cannot afford to fund their 401K and raise a family. There is a certain income level when it works, but below that level it is hard to sock away the same amount that a traditional company provided pension plan would provide.
When you look at the tax breaks provided by 401K plans, the savings work out better than you'd expect.
Consider, too, that a pension ties you to the same job for 30+ years. How many young people today would give up their freedom to switch jobs in order to get a pension in three decades? How many companies won't be around in three decades?
