<p>How do some of the others here feel about this? Most of these profs seem to believe they or you are going to live forever. The sad fact is getting past 80 will be an achievement and is not the really a good assumption–at least for men. Also I think there is some additional value to those early retirement yeras vs the last years as you are likely to be able to do more and enjoy more than when you go north of 80. I’m done at 62 or 63 depending. After that I’ll work some if I feel like it.</p>
<p>It depends upon if you have other income. If your total income is over a certain amount, SS gets taxed. It’s a very complicated formula to figure out and the answer of when it is financially best to start taking your social security differs for everyone.</p>
<p>I plan to take SS as soon as I qualify. The entire system is in trouble for us baby boomers, and I suspect that at some point the government will change the rules for people above a certain income &/or net worth.</p>
<p>Money matters aside, health insurance is one of the keys. If not eligible for Medicare till age 65, unless possessed of quite a bit of largess, or a still working spouse, the insurance will keep many of us working.</p>
<p>I’m encouraging my wife to keep working. seriously that’s the one fly in the ointment. I will be looking at some high high deductible insurance if it’s out there in case of dire emergency. Anything else will be cash.</p>
<p>Hopefully they will raise the cap on social security taxes for those earning more than $97,000 a year, Social Security will be adequately funded, and we won’t have to be thinking about getting our money out early while it is there to be gotten. I am tempted to wait and take out more but I agree it’s a gamble.</p>
<p>patient: there are three gambles. 1. The break even is abound 80 (i.e. if you live longer than 80 you get more), and 2. if SS will around in its present form. 3. Would you need more money after 80?</p>
<p>Well he’s my stats: Grandfather lived till 100; grandfather lived till 90; grandmother lived till 89. Only one weak link: One grandma died at 62, but if I did that I would not have to worry about SS.</p>
<p>So I am figuring I will need it after 80. Fairly good odds. H is self-employed, so it’s all on me, baby.</p>
<p>For me, 80’s a crapshoot. None of my grandparents reached it–two died before 60, my dad and an uncle both died at 47. OTOH, my mom is a very healthy 78, and I recently found out I have the super-high HDL levels associated with little 100 year old ladies–so hey, you never know!</p>
<p>But I plan to live cheaply, very cheaply, and the sooner I don’t use up good years at full time paid work, the sooner I’ll be writing all day.</p>
<p>For me, as above, the sticking point is health insurance–which is why I’m all in favor of single payer national–I’ll have it at 65, but I could be more flexible to work half time, start a business, etc, if premiums for self-pay weren’t prohibitive until then.</p>
<p>(Actually H and I would both consider half-time jobs right now if insurance wasn’t an issue.)</p>
<p>But, if one is going to retire at 62 (which leaves aside the issues others have raised about whether to retire or not), to me it is all about doing the math.</p>
<p>That monthly payment if I wait until I’m 70 looks awfully attractive, as it is more than double what I can take at 62. But if I believe I “shouldn’t” take it at 62 for that reason, I figure it this way:</p>
<p>Take the lower payment starting at age 62. Bank it. Don’t spend a cent. Even at a 3% interest rate I might earn on those banked SS checks, I accumulate a nest egg on the order of $150,000. That more than equalizes the difference. </p>
<p>Like I say, my math is rusty. So maybe someone can check it for me.</p>
<p>jmmom–there was a linking article that suggested that the breakeven point comes around age 80, and then you make more if you had waited to 70. But I don’t know if it took into account the idea of investing the earlier amounts.</p>
<p>Under what condition could you invest the earlier amounts? Presumably you need something to live on while you are investing the SS payments. If you are not getting money from a job and also not using SS payments, it would seem that the only thing that you can do is withdraw from your savings … which defeats the point of putting the SS payments into savings.</p>
<p>barrons, I do not think I will live forever and would be happy with a healthy 4 score! Having said that I am planning to “pursue other options” at the end of this term and will be taking my SocSec early. But it is not a big deal because monthly ss will be only about 7.5% of my annual pension/investment incomes.</p>
<p>Garland, while health insurance issues do not impact me, and many details need to be considered before embarking on a single payer national heath program, I do thing that Medicare should allow people over 59-1/2 to buy in to the system. I have no idea if the cost would be more or less expensive than private for profit health insurance but at least it would provide another option to consider and might add a healthier population cohort into the program.</p>
<p>jmmom, where your logic breaks down is that the banked ss income will have to be replaced by some other income which, left invested in lieu of ss income, would increase by exactly the same amount. The break even point is always determined by calculating when ss begins being taken and how long one will live assuming total spending is exactly the same.</p>
<p>I had gone to my company’s retirement planning workshop. (In exactly 29 days I will be retiring.) The common mantra was that take your money as soon as you can.</p>
<p>Congrats on your impending retirement. Do you have specific plans with what you are going to be doing to spend your time? I have been doing a lot of retirement financial modeling myself and, while most scenarios show it to be financially doable within the near term, I’m not sure I’m ready to go cold turkey on the work issue. I would love to be able to get a job that provides provides time for travel, etc. and also a modest income (just to be sure I haven’t overlooked something in my model and also to pay for the travel.)</p>
<p>I have already won on the social security front, as far as I am concerned; my father retired when I was still in college, and in those days (before Reagan), that meant I got money from SS for three years–$150/month, when my rent was $80… AND they paid my mother enough for her to live on, until she died at 86. </p>
<p>I will take every penny I can get, as early as I can get it. I’ll invest what I can.</p>