Thank you for the greater detail.
So in summary, you took it early because you no longer wanted to work and you had insufficient savings to cover your expenses otherwise; do I have that correct? That would seems to fit reason 1 if so.
Doesn’t make it wrong by any means. I don’t want to work to 63 either and may make the same choice if I were to get there.
No, I really liked my job, had been at top seal for 35 of those 40 years, was also an Area Rep for the area I lived, the North coast of CA, plus Hawaii, helped resolve issues with upper management as needed, as well as handling the technologies of data systems, cellular as we spun away from the RBOCs, built. systems for the seemingly up and coming CLECs that were competing with the old RBOCs. But upper management was gaming the numbers, and eventually it caught up to them.. We had dual incomes so finances were fine… No it was just time to go, I was near 62, had an offer that added to my pension, we saw a way forward, took it! For full SS pension, my number was 67y+6 months I think, at the time, no way. was I sticking around that long…
I’m still not quite understanding either. I understand why it was time to bail from the job. I’m not understanding why you decided to take SS immediately instead of delaying.
I took it early because “it felt better.” I knew what the math was, and I could have lived out of my bank account, but I chose not to because I didn’t want to. (I did that early in life once and took it to zero; it didn’t scar me or anything but I also didn’t enjoy it.)
It was the mid/late 90’s, the market was rewarding me astonishingly well, and I didn’t feel like cashing something in so I could buy hot dogs when there was this other source of income available from the nice people at Social Security. So I took it.
In the early 2000’s I went back to them and asked them to “pause it” which you could do at the time (maybe still can, dunno) but it was too late to do the whole “I’ll pay it all back and reset the clock” deal now that I had exited prior to the dot.com melt down and was cash heavy.
I could be getting more now, but then the gains I made at the time have more than made up for it. Or maybe not, I’m not obsessed with tracking down every nickel and figuring out whether I’m over or under.
I have enough. Plenty, even. And that’s enough for me.
Sorry to hear that. Diabetic PVD?
Exactly. A win is a win, no need to obsess beyond that.
This.
Apparently I have not been clear enough in my replies.
Why not, nothing of significance to delay, lose those years of income? It’s now 24 years later, still receiving SS, pension, etc… None of us has any guarantee we’re even going to wake up tomorrow, or that we won’t be knocked off by an accident, disease, whatever, take care of today, don’t delay!
So you had sufficient savings to delay taking SS later than 62, but perhaps not all the way to age 70?
Note, we’re not questioning the wisdom of retiring at age 62. Just the decision to forgo the “free lunch” of waiting as long as you can to get the largest inflation-adjusted monthly benefit possible.
When you say there was “no way I’m sticking around that long”, does that mean you had some health issue that portended an early death, or that you weren’t going to stay in your job until age 67-1/2.
You realize that it’s possible to retire and not take your Social Security benefit right away?
intercst
If you understand the actuarial math of a lifetime, inflation-adjusted pension, you left about $100,000 on the table by taking SS at age 62 ($200,000 if your spouse is claiming on your earnings record) instead of waiting until age 70.
The good news is that all the people who take SS at 62 when they could afford to wait, are actually making the trust fund last longer, because they’re getting less in lifetime benefits from the system, not more.
intercst
No. Medical error. I don’t have diabetes, heart disease, or any of the usual comorbidities that cause an amputation. Vascular ultrasound results with a 30 mm x 34 mm calcified aneurysm at the popliteal artery above the knee were somehow misdirected. Doctor treated me for 10 weeks with balloon angioplasties for plaque in the arteries. I asked to see my full medical record, and learned that the only anomaly on the ultrasound that was done before the initial consult was the huge aneurysm, with no mention of plaque anywhere.
I asked the doctor, “Why wasn’t that big aneurysm above my knee the topic of conversation in the exam room during the initial consult, rather than the lipid problem I DON’T HAVE?”
Doctor, “Sorry, I missed the aneurysm.”
intercst
Well, it was 24 years ago, I had done my 40 @ WE/T/LU, and the decision was made. If I’d stayed with a new crop of management above me that had, likely no qualms about sending me to who know where, or stick around and be looking over my shoulder all the time. The offer made added, via an annuity, $300/m to my pension later that was folded into today’s pension, a dinosaur that I even have a pension with medical, dental, eye care, drug coverage, added to Medicare, no problem, other than finding doctors as all mine of every sort have retired… I’m happy with that decision, nobody has any guarantees of even surviving this long! Most of my old HS classmates, workmates, haven’t! Family, older brothers, sister, long gone, younger than myself…
Not going back!! 
It was right for us then, and we are way, way better off financially than whatever the SS might have been by staying longer in likely worse working situations! There is no “free lunch” There would have been prices to be paid in one form or another if I’d stayed There is only the time we have to spend with friends & family!
If anyone can get out early, take it, we only have a limited number of days on this planet, make the most of 'em!
I think that’s the misconception. If you’re a high salaried worker, you get very little benefit from working extra years to improve the size of your monthly SS check. You got that part right.
However, there is a large benefit to delaying the start of SS from age 62 to age 70 (or age 67, 68 or 69 if you don’t have enough savings to delay all the way to age 70.)
You can retire at age 62, but decide to delay taking SS immediately and spend down some of your savings to fund living expenses.
intercst
If you spend money from your portfolio at age 62 to delay SS and get a permanently larger inflation-adjusted benefit, that means you need to take smaller portfolio withdrawals where you’re over 70. This extends the life of the portfolio and allows you to spend more money over your lifetime. And note, I’m not saying that you can spend more money when you are age 90. You can spend more money today, knowing that a larger portion of your spending will be covered by an inflation-adjusted lifetime benefit from age 70 on.
Of course, as Goofy points out, many of us are wealthy enough that it doesn’t matter whether we take SS early, late, or not at all. The decision isn’t going to affect our level of spending. Still, it takes about the same amount of time to make a mathematically correct decision vs. “what feels good to you”, so why not make the decision based on the mortality table? (i.e., people in the top 10% of the income/wealth pyramid live 5 or 6 years longer than the average SS beneficiary.)
intercst
I’m a bit confused…haven’t you mentioned a history of lupus? Also I thought you posted a diagrammatic representation of the arterial flow in your leg showing quite extensive occlusion as well as the aneurysm? I’m totally NOT JAQing off, BTW, but it struck me as a interesting confluence of symptoms at the time. Especially since one of my mum’s presenting symptoms of her extensive ASCVD was intermittent claudication. I even mentioned something about it to dh, since it didn’t sound like something you see every day of the week and he’s yer man for spotting the lone zebra in a herd when everyone else is bamboozled by the hoofbeats.
If I’m imagining the past thread(s), my bad. However it seems that the systemic inflammation that goes with lupus and other autoimmune disorders causes some degree of vasculitis (I knew that) and is a big contributor to ASCVD independent of a seemingly favourable lipid profile (I didn’t know that until I got the tutorial from dh)
Not what I asked. Specifically early sequence of returns risk. If your early retirement years are in a down market take SS, which allows you to draw less from your accounts while they are down so that more shares remain to grow on the rebound. That is what I am getting at.
I believe wecoguy understands that, at least now. The answer is very simple: he didn’t need to take SS; he wanted to take it.
It didn’t matter to him that he left money on the table in future benefits. It’s a decision many make who do not fit the “need the money now” or “I probably won’t live that long” categories.
Just the way it is for many folks → take the money now. It’s a psychological payoff, akin to extinguishing my own home mortgage early, instead of adding that money to investments. I was doing both things, but it was just mentally easier for me to have a paid-for home than putting yet more dollars into Berkshire.
Pete
Another thing to point out is that 24 years ago, File and Suspend* existed, making a delay for married couples even more lucrative.
*A worker could file for Social Security at full retirement age and immediately suspend payments. This allowed a spouse to collect spousal benefits while the worker’s own benefit grew by 8% per year up to age 70.
My parents also had this when they retired. Later, the company in effect reneged and put a total dollar amount on the benefit that would drop as you used the benefit. Eventually, once you used the entire amount, and it dropped to zero, you would revert to normal medicare + part ALPHABET coverage.
During my decades, I’ve learned something interesting. Not everyone thinks like we do. Many of us here on the board are numbers oriented, and are usually, but not always, people in a STEM field. Some people “think” more with their emotions. And that’s something that will likely never change, people are just different.
The other issue is that the math that shows you should spend from your portfolio and delay SS tells you have a higher safe withdrawal rate. The downside is you spend down assets invested in the market. The safe withdrawal rate is for the worst possible scenario, so it assumes the market will crash and those assets decline. But, it’s more likely that the funds left in the market by taking SS early will appreciate giving you even more spending than delaying SS would have. That’s why many people who take SS early come out ahead, they’ve taken on more risk and have been rewarded.