At what age did you begin to get your monthly SS check?

M

msincogneato

New Member
If you got it before 70, do you wish you waited? I am trying to decide when to target, myself. Thanks for input!
 

We signed up as soon as we became eligible. If a person new, for sure, how long they would live, delaying the payments "might" provide a larger payout. Looking at how much I paid in during my working years, vs., how much we've received over the past years, I wish some of our other investments had similar "growth".
 
Started @ 62 instead of 66. The deciding factor was: I didn't know now long I will live; break even year was 72. No regrets as the pensions more than cover my monthly expenses. (I am frugal and count every penny!! LOLOL)
 
Age 62 and it's been just a few months short of 20 years collecting. Don't regret it at all. Funding the span between retirement at age 54 was planned for. Actually original plan was 55 but got lucky with an offer I couldn't pass up. Soc. Sec. payments have always been used for FUN<--- that was always the plan.
 
As soon as I was eligible, which was at 62. My "break even" year was 74, I believe. There's no telling what's going to happen in, what is it, another 9 years since I'm now 65. There's talk of privatizing SS, which means ending it. The U.S. may default on its debt and cause the world economy to crash and there won't be any money for SS. The conflict in Ukraine could lead to nuclear war and the end of the world as we know it.

So waiting has a great deal of risk. And I can make better use of that money now that I'm still relatively healthy. I might be an invalid when I'm in my late '70s.
 
66 and a few months, if I remember correctly. Spouse will wait until age 70. He will be penalized with the full 60% WEP penalty so no point in taking it early or even at full retirement age (which he passed some time ago). He doesn't get a lot, but WEP will reduce it down to a few hundred $$$, and then we get to pay taxes on 85% of it....oh, joy!

In a way his SS is more trouble than it's worth, LOL.
 
I started SS 6 months before full retirement age because I retired 4 months before it and I wanted SS to start first to put a little cash cushion into my bank account. I was only going to start SS one month before I retired but a chipper young person called me from SS to caution me that the payment arrives the month after and so did I want to start one month before the date I'd put on the form. I actually had known that and did want to really start on the date I'd filled in, but, I didn't want to demoralize the person since she'd made the effort to call me, so I pretended to be happy to get the info and to yes start my SS a month sooner.

I remember trying to decide when to start and running the numbers and while I would regret the amount I was giving up (don't remember now, might have been 8k less for the expected lifespan), it wasn't significant enough to want to work longer. I wish I'd retired earlier and started SS earlier, but it wasn't financially feasible since I didn't get serious about saving for retirement until the last years of my working career.

If I'd had enough money to both retire and also delay taking SS, then I guess it would make sense to delay to age 70. My brother delayed his to the latest possible time. I think that is mostly a luxury for well-off people, tho I guess it would be useful for someone who didn't mind working until age 70, or sadly for people who have to work until 70.
 
62. I had retired 11 years earlier and at that time never dreamed I'd live this long due to a chronic heart condition that made me feel, literally like I would die sometimes. After I met my (half) siblings one of whom was my only remaining sister, she told me our older sister wanted to wait til full retirement age to collect but died at around age 63. Turns out she also had a similar heart condition.

I'm not sorry I took it early. Since I am also getting a pension, for most of these years I've been investing a good portion of my SS and according to Hugh Chou calculators, I'll wind up with more being generated from what I invested than what I'd have gotten if I waited until 67 or 70.
 
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Started in August 2022 when I finally had 30 days as a retiree.

Why? 2010 CHF High BP, benign prostate, COPD, Replaced hip. I'd have started earlier, but I wasn't 62 then. When I caught covid, I lost my job. I thank God I'd been hammering my 401K as I survived on that till I got my SS checks.

I had $6 in my checking account the day before it hit. What a race to the wire. I'll be damn lucky to see 67 FRA.
 
Full Retirement Age at 66 - 2 months. No regrets - DH was on SSDI (Disability) that already paid his FRA at age 61 and he has a small pension from his last employer. We have set up several annuities too, which we haven't taken yet.

We created a spreadsheet and looked at monthly income as we age with various options. Taking at 62 was going to be too little every month and waiting until 70 was too long and we figured we wouldn't get enough from it overall - why wait?
 
65 worked perfect for us..no point spending down any more invested assets or assets that could be invested so we could delay .

there is a big cost to delaying when one needs money to live on and lay out while delaying ss … plus no spousal benefits either until I filed for mine.

when one is spending down invested assets to live on or money that is set aside that could be invested , breakeven can be 90 ..it can be even longer if spousal benefits are not gotten while delaying.

I would never consider delaying if I had to first wait 8 years to first see a complete budget … if I couldn’t keep the same lifestyle from 62 to 70 because I had to wait to spend more , delaying would be off the table
 
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Waited until I was 70. I was grandfathered so that I could draw 1/2 of my wife's benefit while waiting.

I didn't immediately need the money, it was paying 8 % a year to wait. My main motivation was if something happened to me, my wife would have more income in case she lived a long life. If we both died soon, who cares about money left on the table. My son and DIL are both MD's and have good incomes. They would just waste it away our money on trips or expensive watches.

It was a no brainer for me.
 

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