I'm getting up there in years. 64 years and 5 months. I was looking on my Social Security account today and it says I would qualify for 2774 a month if I took it right now. It says I would qualify for 3385 if I wait until I'm 66 years and 10 months. And I would qualify for 4331 if I hold off until I'm 70.

Here's my question for you guys that know about it. Can I really draw Social Security at 64 years old and keep working? (I love my job and want to stay there as long as possible) I thought I had to wait until I was 65.

I took a picture of what the website chart says. Not sure if you can read it.

Keep working will make sure I will get mine for a few more years. Not unless you get hit by a train. Good luck.

You have to work until you reach your full retirement age if you want to keep working. They penalize the cshit out of you if you retire and work full time

That’s it in a nutshell.

Also they gig the begeezers out of you if you delay Medicare past 65.

If you are on Soc. Sec. you have a limit to what you can make per year until you are past a certain age. There is a chart for every birth date to let you know what that age is. You will get penalized for every dollar you make over the limit. If you like your job, stay until at least 66. Work out something with your boss an maybe you can get back to work after a year or two, or get S.S. now and work part time for a while. All of this info is on the Government website.

I’m about your same age, within a month or so. Our financial advisor told my wife and me to wait until we are 70 years old before taking Social Security.

70.

Wow, that’s a pretty big incentive to delay SS benefits. Shucks, you like the work, so wait. Maybe you can negotiate a better schedule with more time off in the meantime. Good luck.

Thank you sir!

Take the 66 year- - -10 month option unless you've got one foot in the grave already and want to party a little before you croak. Any other choice will end up costing you money every month for the rest of your life. Work part time to stay under the cap until you get old enough to go back to an income level without any penalties. I did that and don't regret any of the decisions I'v made about "retirement". Now I only run two businesses instead of working full time and also doing my own thing.

Statistics show people get more ultimately if they take SS as soon as eligible, but that doesn't work to an advantage in all cases.

How long will you live?
Will SS become means tested, if so when and who gets cut off?


Know the answers to those questions and you can pick the correct time to take SS.

Do you have other means of retirement income other than SS?

Edited to add I started drawing SS at 62. Get your investment back before the Marxists give it all away to illegal aliens.

It depends on your birth year.

I’d say in a lot of cases if you really don’t need SS then go ahead and retire and take it now. If you need the SS income then might be best to wait in some cases.

One size doesn’t fit all. In my case, taking my SS at 62, along with my pension and an incentive from my company, allowed me to retire at 58. Those extra years of freedom were, as the commercial says, priceless. Yeah, I get less every month, but I get enough and to spare to live as I wish.

Think about what you want to do, and how age, sudden illness, or infirmity may affect those plans. All of us know someone who retired and died shortly after, or otherwise ended up in a situation they didn’t foresee, and didn’t want.

You can begin drawing anytime they say you can, but if you have not reached your full retirement age and continue working then your benefit amount will be docked some amount depending on what your earned income is each month (until you reach your full retirement age). OTOH, if you wait until you reach your FRA, you can draw your SS benefits without being penalized for your earned income no matter how much that is.

I'm retired, will be 62 at the end of the year and do not need it to live. That said, I am thinking 64-65 to start taking it.

Very good advice.

Get what you can while you can, this is the 9th inning for the USA.

I worked three years after I turned 66, had it going into savings, still do since I retired. I’m lucky I have two other pensions, able to save mine.

I took mine at 65 and 4mo. I was kind of forced into it for work reasons. My full retirement age was 66 and 6 mo. I wouldn't go backwards till I'm 84. I will roll the dice. I think close to 2 thirds take it at 62

.

My wife is a CPA of 30+ years and she advised me to start SS as soon as I was eligible. In her experience she had seen too many people that held out to collect more but didn’t live long enough to make it pay off. I took her advise.
She is also collecting SS and still working full time.

I retired at 59.5yrs with a pension.I took my S.S. at 62yrs.Everyone's situation is different.My pension is a bit higher than my S.S.,so once I started collecting it,S.S. became a bonus to my income.If your S.S. is going to be your only source of income,by all means if you are able to keep working,work as long as you can.I would also recommend trying to be debt free when you do retire.Also you have to pay taxes on your S.S. as well as pay for Medicare once you reach 65yrs,so keep those things in mind because it's going to reduce your S.S. income by several hundred dollars.

I turn 70 this month but my phone interview isn't until November. I'm guessing I'll get around $3000 a month.

kwg

I hope to work past my full SS retirement age of 66 1/2. Taking benefits early would not be worth much due to the earnings penalty.

In our case, I’d like to max out the monthly benefit by drawing late. My wife will likely outlive me and, as a surviving spouse, can then draw my (larger) amount rather than her own. One size does definitely NOT fit all when it comes to this decision.

At what age did your wife begin to draw SS benefits? It seems that her earnings as a CPA would slash her benefits if she were to draw early. 🤔

My mom took it at 62 . She was told that she would get less but it would take 18 yrs. to come out even. She figured she would worry about it when she turned 80 yrs. old. She is now 85 and would have been better off waiting. However, I dont think this takes into consideration that if she invests it she may come out ahead and may never come out ahead if she waits. it is hard to say what will happen, however, she is getting 5% on the money she gets . As for me, I am taking it as soon as I can and that is 62. At 63 , I will get my carpenters pension but it is only $800 a month. As of now, I am getting $2,200 a mont in dividends in my personal investments so I should be ok, but I will never live much better than a bare minimum life style, and I dont have to.

I started at 66.

I waited until full retirement age to take mine.
At soon to be 71, I enjoy everything I do - and the money is pretty good.
Should pay off the ranch this spring, that'll help.
Kids should get it without any "encumbrances".

Most important question:
Do you have family, grandkids, children, siblings?

My dad turned 60 in June. He had a mild heart attack that got his attention before fall.
In fact, he went back to work in December. Boss told him, "If you don't feel like working, let me know! You can layoff anytime you need to."
In January, he and I talked.
I encouraged him to go ahead and retire.
"If I retire at 60, the job pays 25% of Medicaid and I pay 75%. If I wait until I turn 61, I pay 25% and the job pays 75%."
Pop would have turned 61 on August 1st. He had a massive heart attack and passed in June!
He used to brag, "When I retire, I'm gonna wet a hook in every lake in Texas!"
My youngest was 18 months. My wife was pregnant with our second. He never got to know that one.
My sister had two boys and a girl that though grampa hung the moon.
I nearly died in a head on car wreck in 1991.

I am a VERY strong advocate of retiring as soon as you can.
Memories made with family is way more important that money.
I was able to retire early.
No, we don't have a lot of money, but anytime I want to spend time with family or friends, I can!

Forgot about T.G.!
Right out of high-school, he went to work for a power company.
Over the years, he bought and paid for a house, a farm, his kids education,etc....
At 52, he figured that he could retire. He could have worked until 60 or 65, but thought of the "life" he would miss out on!
He does stuff with his grandkids that most of us only dream of.......and has now for nearly 20 years!

If you're good with Excel or just a pencil and paper, work out how much you'd make annually based on your benefits for each year if started at ages 65 through 70. You'll find that you're many dollars ahead to take a somewhat lesser amount earlier. Just a few calculations can tell you the optimum age to start based on your situation.

Just as an example, say someone starts drawing $3,000 per month at age 66. That's $36,000 per year. By age 70 they'd already have made $144,000 - which could have been invested to increase that.

If they start at 70 let's say they make $3600 per month or $43,200 annually. Based on a difference of $7,200 per year, and already being behind by $144,000, they'd have to live another 20 years just to have the same total amount of money they'd have if started at 66.

This doesn't take into account income tax (f*cking tax on a tax, f*ck the government!) or Medicare deductions or COLA raises, but in any scenario you work out, sacrificing a little less per month earlier will put you many thousands of dollars ahead until you are in your mid-80's or well beyond.



Again, everyone is different. Based on when I started, my break even point would have been age 87 after which age I intend to invest in red sports cars and 23 year old girlfriends until I put myself into an early grave...

^^^^This!!^^^^

I've know people in the past that continued to work, not realizing that retirement would pay them more than working! 😖

Man, do I ever agree.

I had my quarterly meeting with my Fidelity guy today. Productive as all get out. I opened a 529 for my grandson (16 mos) and once my grandaughter (6 weeks) gets a SSN I will open the same. A chunk of our SS will likely head to those accounts.

It's this right here that damn simple. I went at 65 and 2 months 1 year short of full ss retirement age. Once your on Medicare at 65 there is no reason not to retire. By working an extra year to full retirement age would have gained me another $120 a month ss benefit. But you look at the 40,000 in benefits forfeited for that year it takes a lot of years to gain that back. That was 3 years ago, still glad I hung it up.mb

a lot of my friends did not make it to 70. they try to get you to wait until 70 by tempting you with the increase of the payments. truthfully they probably hope most people die before 70 to save them the money. anyway after 70 you could be not able to really enjoy the money due to medical issues

A 62 y/o American man has a life expectancy of 20 years. This, of course, is an average. An objective look at one’s health status and family history will give a good basis on which way to bet. A functioning crystal ball is, unfortunately, quite rare. 🫤

You will find only the newer younger advisors tell you to wait. Just what you would expect from years of government schooling .They want you to die w/o ever getting a dime. Then the gov. can give it to an illegal on welfare.

IMO "Financial Advisors " are about as relevant as "Home Inspector's" are to mortgages..

Find an Accountant you can trust, and an Estate Attorney

the average life span of a US male is 77 some live longer most dont. Boomers lol they think they will live forever I guess it is human instinct

I didn't take my SS until I was almost 65. I was thinking I'd maybe take it at 66 or possibly later. I was in no real hurry. The reason I was waiting was because I didn't really need the money. So my plan was to wait to get a higher monthly payment. I went to the SS and Medicare office solely to register for Medicare.

In a stroke of luck, I got a gentleman around my age as my advisor. JFC, I wasn't there to discuss SS benefits at all. I was strictly there to sign up for Medicare. But while I was talking to him, he asked me "Can I show you a couple math calculations on the computer"? I said "Sure".

Well, he laid it all out to me that it was foolish for me to wait to collect SS and that I was just leaving money on the table senselessly. He had showed me that my break even point would be 79.5 years before I would recover what I had already left on the table. Don't remember the exact amount, but it was several tens of thousands of dollars. Right then and there, I told him "Sign me up".

Thankfully, after discussions with my brother, he decided to take his SS at 62. He's in good shape with his retirement. From all the overtime he worked as a lineman for the power company over the years, his pension from the company, and his wife's SS, in addition to their Investments, he and his wife are doing fine.

If you are comfortable working with MS Excel, you can create a simple spreadsheet that will clearly answer your question in about 10 minutes. Eight columns:
Column 1, years 2023 through say 2063
Column 2, your age at the end of the year
Column 3, annual SS income if you start SS now. Just copy paste on down from 2023 to 2053.
Column 4, Running cumulative total of Column 3
Column 5, starting in appropriate year, annual full retirement amount. Copy pasted to bottom.
Column 6 cum of column 5.
Column 7 starting in appropriate year max annual SS amount.
Column 8, cum of column 7.

Now look to see how old you will be when the value of column 8 surpasses column 6. That is your BREAK EVEN point for waiting. For me it was mid to upper 80’s. No one in my mother’s family ever made it to 70. For me, no brainer…

After full retirement date you will not be penalized for wages earned. If you want, you can work full time and draw full SS after age 66 & 10 months.
At age 64 the annual earnings limit is $21,240 for 2023. After $21240, SS will deduct from your benefits $.50 for every dollar you earn.


My choice: I turned 66 and four months Nov 2 of 2022, which was my full retirement date. I put in, and reciecved SS benefits on that date. I worked through the end of Feb, 2023 with no penalty, just to see a few SS checks hit the bank before retirement from the job.

I’m just guessing but if you can draw that much you really shouldn’t need it. These guys are correct on break even years. Wait long enough and you might not draw any at all. Edk

Ed, that's basically the position I was in at 65. My recommendation to you is don't leave that money on the table. If for nothing else, you can use that money to further secure the financial future of the young folks in your family. Or, as my brother did, you can use some of the money for an extended fishing trip in Alaska with the younger fellas in the family, or a long vacation hunting in the woods in the Northeast or somewhere else you haven't been before.

Jim, that is wise advice if a person is not earning wages. BUT, if a person is earning $75,000/year it is a far different situation.
$75,000 minus 21,240 leaves $53,760 divided by 2 equals $26,680.

$26,680 is the amount which will be subtracted from your SS benefit for the year. $36,000 minus 26,680 leaves you less than $10,000 in SS for the year. But you have taken benefits for the year, so are not eligible for the full benefits you would have earned if you had waited until FRD to begin benefits.

That is why I waited for 66 4 months (my FRD) to begin benefits.

She started drawing at 62 and she is now 67. I don’t know how it’s affected her benefits but if it affected them too much she would never have done it. She knows numbers and is also a tight wad.

If you need the money now, take it now.

If you don't need the money now, take it now.

If you can get by for now and will REALLY need more money later, wait.

I started at 62 and have no regrets. My full retirement age is 66 years 8 months. When I did the math if I'd waited until 66 years 8 months I would have to live to almost 80 just to break even. I'd be 90 before it would add up to a significant difference.

There are no guarantees we will make it to even 66, let alone 80 or 90. Based on my parents and grandparents mid to late 80's are common in my family. But even if I knew I'd live to 85 I'd still take it now when I'm young and healthy enough to be able to travel and do some things. My dad died at 89, mom 87. But once they got into their 80's they weren't able to get out and enjoy much life.

That does seem a little surprising. It seems that her benefit would have been reduced quite a bit while she worked. Still, as you say, she’s a CPA, so I’m sure there’s some angle that I don’t understand. Thanks for the reply.

Perhaps she is self employed and handles income differently than a typical wage earner?

I don’t regret waiting until I was 66 to begin taking mine. I guess time will tell if I’ll come out ahead. My SS is penalized 500 a month, because I have teachers retirement.

Retired at 60 started drawing at 62. Just extra money for us. Numbers lined up at 59.

Good Luck

You can put your data into this calculator to see what might be best for your situation. https://opensocialsecurity.com. You have to look at your situation, health and family longevity history and that of your spouse and make a guess. One thing to consider is that on it's current track, social security will deplete it's trust fund in the 2037 or so and will only be able to pay about 75% of advertised benefit unless changes are made to the program.

COLORADO LUCKY DOG: The VarmintWife just went through this and after professional advice she started collecting her social security benefit the first month she qualified for it,
She also kept working (against my urgings!) FULL TIME and the S.S. people simply withheld her monthly S.S. check until the penalty for collecting and keeping working was met (three first months checks of the year were withheld, as I recall, for a couple of years!). Then after those three months she collected both the full S.S. checks and her salary from here job! Then after a couple of years there was NO penalty for her working full time.
My advice "start collecting S.S. benefits" the instant you qualify - I base this on many friends and acquaintances that died before they ever collected a single S.S. retirement check!
There are tables that specifically define how long you have to live if you wait for max benefits to catch up with the benefits you get from an earlier retirement. And theres this, good luck in your dealings with the lazy, arrogant and often stupid sons of bitches and daughters of whores there at your local S.S. office - you'll need it.
So theres that.
Best of luck to you with whichever option you choose - but again WE were/are VERY happy with the VarmintWifes choice of collecting S.S. checks ASAP and paying the minor penalty for that relatively short time while she kept working full time.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I retired at 63, started collecting Oct. 2013. No regrets. Only you know your financial situation. Just get a good financial advisor.

I am probably within a month or two of the OP in age. I'm also looking at this. I punched out of the corporate world six months ago and do consulting on a contract basis. My wife makes decent money in her business.

I am considering filing for SS in a few months when I turn 65. I'm a CPA so I have run the numbers and it doesn't make a difference until my early 80s, cumulatively. Both sides of my family aren't known for their longevity.

I don't want to work full time so as long as I don't make a lot I'm good. If I decided to work more I would have twelve months to change my mind and repay benefits I suppose.

If you wait until your full retirement age to draw you can make as much as you want to without hurting your SS.

I did something similar to this. Signed up at 62, no regrets.

The Goobermint set up that "You'll get more if you wait" scam because they know full well that a significant percentage of people won't live to that magic age.

Using your numbers but not counting any salary penalties, you'd get just under $200,000 between now and age 70. It would take you almost 11 years at the 70yo rate to make up that money.

What could you do with $200,000 over six years? More to the point, what would you get if you decided to wait and died a month before you turned 70? Zero.

My mom worked some sort of job for some 40+ years.
When pop passed, she got his private retirement "survivor benefit".
When she turn 65, she attempted to draw her SS she paid into for umpteen years!
SocSec informed her she could either continue drawing Pop's "survivors benefits"...OR...draw SocSec! She COULD NOT draw both!
Mom passed at 98.

She never drew one red cent of SocSec after paying in for nearly 40 years!

Tell me THAT isn't highway robbery!
I'm still po'd about it!

Make your financial advisor do the math in front of you and see if you come to the same conclusion. In almost all cases it is questionable at the very least to wait until 70. For example. Full retirement age is 67 for anyone born after 1960. It is true that the payments would increase at an 8% per year rate until 70 if you wait that long.

But here is the rub. It would take approximately 12 years to breakeven if you wait until 70 to make up for the 3 years of SS that you passed up and that is not taking in account any time value of money. Bottom line is that you are not ahead "dollars wise" until you are 82 and I don't think hardly anyone that is 82 can say they could do the same things at that age that they could at 67.

Then you look at the average life expectancy in the USA. It is approximately 77 ish. Now tell me the value of waiting until 70?

Your wife is wise.

That doesn’t seem fair

The math should include investing the SS payments received until full retirement age, if you want to compare apples to apples.

If you’ll draw 2,500 per month on the early take schedule, that’s close to $100K added to your nest egg. If invested in the stock market, it should average at least a $750/month return by itself.

You might end up with more money per month AND a nice bump to your net worth.

I am well aware of that.

I'm 80, At my age 65 was the year I could collect my full SS, Retired at 58 and held off collecting SS at 62 mainly because I didn't need it.
and continued working .
During the pandemic, my income doubled and for some reason that increased my SS a nice bit after collecting it for 12 years, don't know why but it was nice.
Finally slowing down, my SS is my Mad Money now.

I am 62 as of last month and am going to sign up to start collecting in November. I Am retiring from my job in 2 weeks.
I figure to enjoy retirement while able to enjoy some of it. While I feel like going and doing things. I have other income and have been saving and investing for 42 years. We'll be good.

I spent two days on the phone and one day at a SocSec office!
THEY were relentless!

Doesn't seem "fair"?
SocSec and Gov't don't understand "fair"!

I took mine early and glad I did. Its a crap shoot trying to guess if you will ever live long enough to break even, by waiting till 70. And that's if there is even a social security by then.

I don't recall seeing any real mention of income in these discussions regarding when to start collecting SS. My income is significantly higher now than in the past and much more than SS would be. I am 59 and hope to buy a house soon. My wife and I have been renting since moving to Arkansas a year ago but so far haven't found the right place to buy. I feel like I should work at least until the mortgage is paid off so that might put me at full retirement age of 67 or so.

I don't think that for me it would make sense to retire and go on SS at 62 with a mortgage payment and make about 35% what I am making now.

If you live to be 90, it will probably be nice to complain about how you wish you had waited to take SS until you were 70.

Are you still coming out to kick my ass or what?

Unless you live to be 90, you will get about the same total dollars if you take it at 62 or 70 . Anything over75 or so is gravy. Govt. is betting you won't live past that 75 or so.

Actually they are hoping you die before you can collect a dime.

That indeed is the bottom line. You can take SS the moment you are eligible and collect a quarter million dollars or so guaranteed, or risk dying and collecting nothing at all.

A lot of good advice on this subject on here. I started collecting as soon as I turned 62. Didn't need it but figured it was best to start getting something back, being that I had been paying into SS since I was 16. Same for my wife who turned 62 in 2020. There's no guarantee that any of us will wake up tomorrow and It doesn't seem right that our government gets to keep what we all worked a lifetime for, but that's the way it works.

This thread pushed me into "opening" my SS account. I turn 62 the end (29th) of coming December. Rethinking, I believe I will begin collecting the beginning of 2024. Thanks to the OP (and others) for getting me off of my azz and to move on it.

I took mine at 62 last year. Who knows how long we will live. 😜
Nice little gun fund and fun check rolling in from the Gov every month is never a bad thing.

^^^Thus^^%

The earlier you take it, the less you get per month. But you get it earlier and can invest it for longer. So it depends on how long you're going to live and how much you can earn on an investment. In my case the answer was to take at at 66. YMMV.

As all these posts indicate, it depends on every person’s situation and needs. If you need it now, take it. If you don’t need it and it’s just extra play money, you can do whatever you want. If it is a needed chunk of retirement income, I think that the analysis gets more complicated. This is especially true for married people. When one person dies, the other loses one of the payments, so income goes down while expenses may not go down a proportional amount. It sometimes is a good idea for the higher earning spouse to max out the benefit by waiting, so that either s/he has the higher amount when the lower SS spouse dies or the lower earning spouse gets the survivor bump to the higher earning spouse’s benefit when the higher SS spouse dies. It also means that the couple has to look at the actuarial tables for both people, not just one.

In addition, the actuarial tables are an average. As noted earlier by WMR, you have to look at the actual remaining life expectancy of the person claiming the benefits rather than the overall national average life expectancy of 77 because that average includes people who died when they are one day old. Even then, the remaining life expectancy is just an average, and some people will exceed that. I saw one chart that showed that my wife has a 50% chance of living to 95, and a decent chance of living to 100. I figure she will outlast me by many years because she is still running marathons and doing HIIT workouts and is very healthy. (Knock on wood.) She has the lesser SS benefit, so she took it at FRA, but she kept working and invests the SS money. I am going to wait until I am maxed at 70 and take the extra 8% per year. She would prefer more of an automated income stream with less being pulled out of the investments. It’s a little more nuanced than just looking at the break-even point.

People should also consider that a lot of state and private pensions they have do not have COLAs, so the value of that income stream goes down over time, while SS gets COLA adjusted on the entire amount, even if it does not represent the actual cost of living increase.

The largest percentage of people (25-ish percent) take SS at 62 under the “get it while you can” and “I won’t live long because [insert reason]” theories. That may or may not work out. For every person I know who died young, there is someone who thought they would die young but didn’t, and now they’re hurting. The unknown variable is life expectancy, over which we have no control.

Choose wisely.

Could be your Dad did not pay into SS .Rail road workers do not . How ever I do not see how that would affect her ability to collect on what she put into SSI . Lawyer time.

I retired at 56 with a full pension . I collected SSI at 62 .Just gravy on the meat. I flipped my 401 K into a IRA and let it sit until I was 70 . Ice Cream on the cake .

You must have one hell of a crystal ball. Be 72 in February and my crystal ball must be broke, can’t even tell me if I will wake up in the morning.

In my opinion, some key, "Real World", reality checks to give serious thought to...



And just as an aside -- If they choose to, ex spouses can draw SS benefit of former spouse's account as long as they were married at least 10 years and not remarried since. The more ex spouses one has who qualify, the more possible claims on former spouse's SS account.