Posted on 09/01/2014 7:52:57 AM PDT by shove_it
Summary
When should I start Social Security? How will I receive the highest annual income? How will I receive the highest cumulative income? When will I be able to retire?
Every year, more than 2 million people turn 62. Many of those people will wonder, "When should I start receiving Social Security benefits?"
The earliest age of eligibility is 62. The benefit increases each year you delay starting, until age 70, after which point there is no additional increase.
When should I start - age 62 or age 70?
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(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
Some folks just need stuff handed to them on a silver platter or they just piss and moan — (smiling).
Might want to consider forming an S-Corp for your consulting business and make a "nominal" salary and most of your income as distributions rather than salary. That should help you avoid the penalties of making "too much" from a salaried position when taking SS.
FReegards!
The only practical reason to start taking Social Security at age 62 is if you are no longer generating revenue.
“There is one wrinkle that people waiting should be aware of. If you’re planning to wait on your own SS until age 70, you can still draw your spousal benefit without impacting your own future benefit, but your spouse has to be at full retirement age (66 for today’s retirees) and I believe you might have to be also.”
Yes, we did that exactly.
It works for us.
I’m waiting for 70 to file for my benefit.
Plus who knows if SS will be around by the time you’re 70.
Get it while you can.
“While that doesn’t matter much if inflation continues at 2-4%...”
HA. You don’t shop much, do you? LOL
I’ve been reading Seeking Alpha for awhile. This was one of the best articles I’ve seen in quite some time.
It's not as much as if you wait to 65, but I figured I deserved to see some of it before I ended up the same way.
The SS check helps out with the necessities, but if you don't have any savings, you're going to take about a 50% loss of income/standard of living.
Six years later I'm still going strong, and I'm glad I saved up for all the stuff that a SS stipend doesn't cover.
Oddly enough a relative just called, she is about to receive SS at 60 as a widower.
I said get it while you can.
I be probably registered there five or six times over the past years. Hit unsubscribe on their “spam” and they leave you alone. All in all not a horrible site.
Just curious. How much does the federal taxation of SS payments (up to 85% of benefits taxed, depending on income) weigh into your decision as to when to begin drawing it?
Who knows...? That, actually, was why I started drawing it at 63. I also cashed out my IRA at the same time in favor of a more substantial investment which was when the discussion about the Government trading IRAs for US bonds started ramping up.
I know there are people that claim inflation has really been running 8-10% for the last decade or so, but I don’t buy it. At 10% prices double every 7 years, and there’s no way prices in general have done that, although it’s easy to find some things that have.
On the other hand, I think the government-reported 2-2.5% is a crock too, and that prices have been increasing between 3 and 5 percent for some time now, but at 4%, prices overall will take about 18 years to double, which is a lot closer to what I’ve observed.
I also think that this past year price increases are escalating faster than over the past four or five years and can understand your “HA”. We just haven’t had 8-10% inflation on a sustained basis....yet.
My point is that even though SS will probably understate inflation, if it does hit 10% for a decade or so, SS payments will at least be increasing 6-8% and that by waiting you’ll have a larger amount of your retirement income increasing steadily at that rate during the inflationary period. And in the unlikely event that we go through a sustained period of 15-20% inflation, Social Security might be about the only investment most retirees have that even comes close to keeping pace with price increases. That seems to me to be a reason to consider waiting and letting the ultimate monthly payments increase.
After all every $1,000 at 66 becomes $1,320 at 70, while $1,000 at 66 is only $640 at 62, so you earn almost twice as much at 70 as at 62. If you don’t need the money either because your investments support you, or you don’t mind working some after age 62, it seems to be something worth considering at least.
I changed the above numbers after I realized something. The 8% isn’t compounded. If you’re due $1,000 at full retirement age of 66, you’ll get 32% less if you retire at 62 and 32% more at 70, so $680 at 62 and $1,320 at 70. Actually, as I look at those numbers, the $1,320 is almost double the $680. The first year you wait, you’ll go from $680 to $760, or a 11.76% increase. That diminishes all the way to age 70 where $1240 to $1320 only gives you a 6.45% increase. The 8% figure is calculated on your full retirement income at age 66, and that number is deducted for each year you decide to draw early, and added for each year up to age 70.
At least that’s how I understand it. I might be mistaken on some of it.
Get it while you can pretty much sums up.
Agreed. After all, it does belong to you.
You paid for it.
In my case, it didn't. I was just sick enough of my job that for me, retirement felt like the figurative "last plane out of Saigon", so to speak. It was in 2008 when the recession was just coming on strong, so I managed to avoid all the stress, the corporate politics, and the inevitable layoff notices. Probably added years to my life as a result
Like I said, if my wife and I hadn't been saving all our working lives in anticipation of Social Security not being there when we retired, we'd probably not have been able to do it. But I'm glad we did.
Same here.
Wants registration.
Adios.
Same here...
My understanding is if you are younger than your full SS retirement age (I am 63 so my full SS retirement age is 66), and you are still working full time you can “collect” SS benefits, but you don’t actually “receive” them until you turn 66. I was told that SS holds on to it until you reach 66. Can someone out there who knows much more than I do comment on that?
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