“Since the day I began looking critically at Social Security, it seems like an unsustainable, liberal Ponzi scheme to me.”
I hear you. I retired at the end of 2016 and will be receiving my first SS check in about a week. I don’t have a great deal of confidence that I’ll even recover what I and my employers have paid into it. We’ll see.
Started drawing at 62, almost 15 years ago. Several friends laughed and decided to wait until 67 to maximize their benefits but died shortly before they began receiving their first check. They and their employers had paid into the scheme slightly more than 50 years and those that died have essentially received nothing back on their “investment”.
Would love to see someone audit the Social Security fund.
I am not completely sure what my wife thinks when I say to her: “We should not count on having any Social Security income when we retire. We have to plan as if we aren’t going to have it.”
My wife generally handles the investment and retirement focus, and I am quite happy with that because I couldn’t find any of that less interesting.
I don’t know if she thinks that it my right wing inner self that says those things, but I honestly believe there will come a day when the government is going to a) Have means testing for Social Security, and b) Appropriate retirement accounts, giving government retirement credits of some kind in return.
I just don’t have any faith in politicians fixing a system that is, in my eyes, fundamentally flawed anyway.