When Should I Start Collecting Social Security
1. Timing is everything
A key factor in determining what your Social Security benefit will be is your age, your full retirement age! The Social Security Administration gives you a range of ages within which you select the age at which you want to start receiving your Social Security benefits. There is a specific age, known as your Full Retirement Age, which you should determine using the resources available from the Social Security literature. If you start collecting before your Full Retirement Age you will obtain fewer benefits per month than if you wait until after your Full Retirement Age. Currently, the range of ages starts at 62 and ends at 70. According to the Social Security literature, your best bet is to wait, if you can, until you are 70 years of age.
2. How long are you going to live?
Obviously, if you are not well, if you are overweight, if you smoke two to three packs of cigarettes a day, if you drink lots of alcoholic beverages or if you take drugs in order to get to sleep at night, you might be concerned about living until you are 70. On the other hand, if you are dramatically undernourished, get dizzy after climbing a short flight of stairs, have difficulty in breathing, you might be concerned about surviving until you are 62. So the decision is yours as to when you should apply for your Social Security benefits.
Regardless of the state of your health or your current age, you can get an idea of what your retirement benefits might be by using one of the following Social Security Calculators:
a) 'Social Security Quick Calculator' at www.ssa.gov/oact/quickcalc,
b) 'Retirement Estimator' at www.ssa.gov/estimator or
c) 'AARP's' at www.aarp.org/work/socialsecurity/social-security-benefits-caculator.
3. Are you married?
If you are married, you may want to tread carefully while you consider your thinking about when you want to start collecting your and your spouse's social security benefits. Obviously, if both of you are healthy, you have passed the child-bearing years and gotten your kids through college and you are looking forward to sharing the rest of your life together, then having the two retirement benefits paying out together promise to provide both of you with enough financial resources to enjoy your life together and to do some of the things that you always wanted to do such as travel, learning new skills, going back to school to get that college degree that you put off while you had kids to take care of.
On the other hand, keep in mind that women are more at risk of being poor in their old age when you, the husband, may be dead or ill with some debilitating disease.
4. Are you working?
Social Security benefits are partially protected from federal taxation. On the other hand, if you get SSA benefits and also hold a job and make your salary, the SSA may/will reduce your benefit by $1 for every $2 you earn.