Best Age to Take Social Security - 62? 65? 70?

If you are still working fulltime and you retire you get a reduced payment because of penalties but when you reach full retirement age they basically give back the amount withheld for the years you continued to work. Not in one lump sum but added to your new monthly amount at FRA! You should know that! So you dont actually LOSE it, its just delayed.

The best age to take S.S. is when you are still healthy enough to enjoy it.

I’m 61, collecting survivors benefits now, I’ll wait until 70 to collect my SSi

Even though my 401 will be very healthy in my 60s (well above what the national average/median is), I am taking SS at 62. That's because I will have an 11yo child. So they get 50% of my FRA ! They'll get that for 88 months. Plus, my wife will get "Child-in-care" and receive 50% of my FRA for about 50 months till they reach 16yo. So while I am taking about a 2k hit from 62 to 70, combined I am making about 35% more than what I get at 70. When my wife's child-in-care ends, I'll make just $120 less then what I'd get at 70. Yes, before I am on medicare at 65 I have to get coverage (plus my family) But we are still ahead of the game. So for me, it's 62.

Depends of course on the person. Different people look at "retirement" in different ways. I was foolish and believed people (pretty much everyone I knew) said SS wouldn't be there when I was 65. So I figured I'd better get my act together. When a person prepares to finance their own retirement the age range 62-70 no longer means anything. Turned out I was ready at 45 so I stopped working at a salary job. Didn't mean I wouldn't be productive. I like being productive. So I did hobbies that could bring in money. Slow flipping houses was my main money maker. This meant I didn't millions of dollars saved. I also found I liked living simply so I did that and my expenses fell a lot (down to $600/mo). If I were to take SS today it would be $3080. But I don't need it. I look at SS as insurance, which is what SS was set up to be. Most people seem to look at SS as a 20-40 year vacation. If I wait until 70 I get $3800/mo (today's dollars). That's better insurance imo. Taking SS early and investing it would be silly for me. I'm not Warren Buffett. If I wait until 70 I earn 8% interest and I get COLA. I don't think I could come close to beating that return. Plus I'm retired. Investing is a job and it's a job I don't like. I've had no investments (other than house) for more than 25 years. When everyone else is stressed about stock market crashes I don't care. Or stressed when to sell when markets are up. And all those hours of watching the market and researching. Not fun for me so I don't.

The best age to take social security is the age you take it

Please correct your video. You stated that SS goes up 8% a year between 62 and 67. The actual early penalty is 1/2% per month you start collecting before your FRA. That is 6% per year. You may be thinking about the delay credit you get for claiming after FRA. The delay credit is 8% per year after FRA.

Thank you for this and all your videos!

Also don't go by the generic rate SS calculator gives you. You need to sign in with your SS and get real numbers huge difference from generic calc.

I just subscribed to your channel, very good video, thank you. I work for the Postal Service and what I heard from this video my postal pension won’t count as income to affect my social security Thanks again Marco

In reference to the penalty withheld, don't you get that money back after you reach FRA? Meaning basically it's deferred until FRA?

A break-even analysis is basically useless when talking about more than 10 years into the future, because as you pointed out, it does not take into account that you can invest this money. The breakeven point also does not take tax impacts into consideration. I hate the term full retirement age. It is not really the age at which you get your full retirement benefits, since you can wait until 70 and get more. In my opinion, everyone gets their full retirement benefit no matter at which age they start benefits. They get 100% of what they are entitled to collect based on the rules. Full retirement age is just a nonsensical statement. For those born after 1960, they can just call age 70 full retirement age and then show a chart that displays reduction percentages if you start before this.

There is no reason that most people shouldn't try & get the full Obamacare subsidy & that is how you get cheap health insurance for those 2 or 3 years until Medicare kicks in. Remember Obamacare ONLY looks at income not assets. I plan on essentially living on Cash for a couple of years until I turn 65. Obviously if you are high income this isn't going to work but when when we retire we essentially don;t have income anymore anyway other than social security if we take it (I won;t apply until 65).

I took it at 70, retired at age 80 and am now 83. If we knew how long we would live, the choice would be easier.

We would never know for sure which age is best to retire; therefore one of us claimed at 62 and one claimed at 70. We played both ways. We hope we do well by the average 😂❤

What about Rental income?

70... I work maybe 10 hours a week, my job is easy, no reason to retire...

Retirement is now more difficult than it was in the past. I just switched up my Roth IRA to 50% SCHD, 25% SCHX, 25% SCHG, and my Roth 401k is 70% vanguard S&P 500 index, 20% vanguard growth index, and 10% vanguard international index. Seeking best possible ways to grow $350k into $1m+ before retirement in 3 years.

I’m divorced from a railroad worker so as per our Quadro and divorce agreement I’m getting half of his tier one Railroad Retirement instead of Social Security I’m also getting other things as well but I’m putting off taking Social Security until I’m probably 70 years old🎉

I’m thinking 64