Emotional intelligence is an amazing thing. Fear of loss and worst case scenario planning leads to many suboptimal decisions.
I haven’t had to make this decision yet. I pray that I’m able to coldly logic my way through it (and then don’t die along the way before I can benefit from it).
The occlusion was claudification from having the blood flow pinched off at the popliteal artery by the aneurysm, not an accumulation of plaque in the arteries of the lower leg. Prompt treatment of the aneurysm likely would have resulted in a different outcome than the amputation.
My left leg is clear of any plaque (though I do have another smaller aneurysm at the iliac artery of the left leg that they are now monitoring with a vascular ultrasound exam every 6 months.) If I had a lipid problem, you expect to see plaque accumulation in both legs.
I had a consult with a cardiologist yesterday to evaluate the possibility of any aneurysms in my upper body. He told me that the only thing they routinely scan is the abdominal aorta and I had that free Medicare screening exam done of the abdominal aorta 3 years ago and everything was fine with no aneurysm or any plaque accumulation.
He also looked at the operative report of my popliteal artery bypass surgery and said, “I’m still not understanding what happened here”.
Yeah, other than the fact that they missed the aneurysm and were treating me for a plaque problem I don’t have for 10 weeks before they did the bypass surgery.
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That was a concern over the yers as LU fell, Alcatel bought them and today Nokia is the current owner, controller of the pension plan. Along the way, they killed off management’s spousal benefits, battered them about quite a bit, but as a represented retiree, while they did attempt to buy us out, and a fair chunk of change, that would also have killed the benefits, so we rejected it. The Plan fund is healthy, fewer of us dinosaurs are left to draw on it, and even if it failed, the PBGC is there as a backstop. Folks at Alcatel, I believe had to utilize it along their retirement path…
As you note, not everyone thinks the same, way, way back on the job sites, big projects, multimillion dollars switches, projects, I learned pretty early to close out the chatter of other techs, focus on my own trains of thought, do my own analysis and it worked pretty well. Sure, listen to what had been looked at, but find the path yourself. And as an observer, it worked well for the other top techs as well, we all had different backgrounds, skills, talents, who to call, when to escalate, etc…
You can do both. I waited to take SS and still maintained a 98% stock allocation. The larger SS check is worth more than carrying a low return allocation to Treasury securities.
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Never needed to spend down savings/investments, if it had gotten tight, there were local jobs around hardware stores, in the retail side, but I never had to go there. Some of my ex- supervisors, co-workers did, until it became untenable. A group of us, had thought of doing small projects, but as I’ve noted before, the telecom industry overall was shrinking.didn;t happen other than one small job in Texas, I opted out of that one.
We paid the home off before I bailed, we’re still under CA’s Prop 13 low property tax rate, I spent a lot of time remodeling, either doing it all myself or hiring as needed… We traveled, helped the kids, grandkids, partnering with in-laws for some, it’s worked out well..
[quote=“wecoguy, post:45, topic:126246”]
I understand that. The question is why didn’t you take advantage of the extra $100,000 to $200,000 you would have gained by delaying SS to age 70, if you can afford to do so? Or were you not familiar with the arithmetic surrounding SS claiming at the time you made the decision?
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Well, tomorrow is never guaranteed, for one.
When I was in my 20’s I knew a guy in his 40’s (and very well off) who knew many people in their 60’s who regretted delaying things in life. They spent their youth planning for a future that arrived and they were in ill health or whatever and could not take advantage of the sacrifices they made. That is the risk you take when you blindly follow the math and the actuarial tables.
I don’t know when I will take SS myself. I have not decided. I can retire without SS, so if the GOP succeeds in their evil dream to get rid of “entitlements” I will be angry but I will be fine. But there are still reasons to take it early. I would be less dependent on my own savings. I have already had health scares. Etc.
Not every decision comes down to maximizing money. Even decisions about money. Too many don’t seem to understand this.
Yes, there is risk in every decision. But the people who’ve taken SS at age 62 when they could afford to wait, have collectively left $3.4 Trillion on the table as of 2019. There’s a long track record of this being a suboptimal choice, just like buying an index fund beats 95% to 98% of the investors doing something else.
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Isn’t hindsight great? Decisions were made, we didn’t go broke, we did start from zero, relatively, west the way clear, and dove onto the company offer that added to my pension, even though that took them 6 months or more to finalize, I think I was the only one to insist on the annuity option and they had trouble fulfilling their side of the deal.
It worked out just fine for us… Still glad I bailed at 62!
It’s not hindsight. There’s a long history of people taking SS at age 62 and getting less from the system than those who waited until age 70. People tend to underestimate their longevity and put more stock in “bird in the hand” thinking. As MarkR points out, that’s just the way most humans think.
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24 years ago is hindsight! That I didn’t get another chunk of change didn’t matter, it left more for others that really need the extra SS, we didn’t! We also input for those many years before taking it at 62, and would have continued if I’d remained on that or other workplaces… Fixating on what I might have done 24 years ago isn’t useful,
It’s not.
The SS administration has the data on every beneficiary going back to 1937. We know at what age they started their benefit and when they died. As of 2019, all the people who took it age age 62 left a combined $3.4 Trillion on the table because they underestimated how long they would live, or they were unaware of the benefits to delaying SS.
Honestly, this is like arguing over the efficacy of the polio or measles vaccine.
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Well, look at it this way…the deficit is at least $3.4T less than it would be. 
Most folks are not numbers-oriented (no one here, of course). Much of that money is from mathematically illiterate people who wanted their money “now”. Some had no choice due to circumstances. Most of them didn’t understand, or were like the children they tested to see if they could resist a treat now for more treats later (many children failed that test).
How on Earth do you know those people did not NEED to take SS early just to make ends meet?
How on Earth do you know those people did not NEED to take SS early just to make ends meet?
Ha ha ha, you fool. That doesn’t matter. It’s “the numbers.”
If we’re looking at tens (hundreds?) of millions of people going all the way back to 1937, we can estimate what percentage of them likely had sufficient funds to delay to age 70 and then calculate how much they lost or gained based on the age at death. You can also make the calculation based on the size of the monthly benefit – people with higher lifetime earnings also tend to have more investment assets.
For example, we know that about 12.8% of 65-year-olds today have at least $500,000 in investible net worth (Both IRA/401k and taxable accounts.) These are the people who are in a position to delay to age 70.)
We also have the same data on the much smaller population of those who waited until age 70. As a group, they’re ahead of the game.
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Read between the lines.
John isn’t talking to those of you who retired 24 years ago. He’s actually speaking to those of us who HAVE NOT made the decision - yet.
It’s dressed as a reply to you and a reproach of your decision (which, it is. Irrelevant now, but true), but its ACTUALLY a plea to the next person considering when to take SS income.
Yes! {{ 15 or 20 characters }}
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The statistic is that without Social Security, roughly half of elders would be living below the poverty line. (Relatively unchanged since before Social Security existed.) So we can infer that most of these people could not “spend down their assets” waiting to reach age 70.
We can also surmise that at least some people who appear well off, maybe wealthy, even have substantial incomes but are without substantial savings or investments. I have known more than a couple of these myself. They are the people who spend every nickel, they buy useless stuff, and wonder why they feel “poor”. A quick google ask tells me that 10%-12% of people with high incomes still have poor credit scores, so we’re at 60%+ who “can’t wait.”
Then there are those, like me, who had “reasons”, like keeping money in the market rather than “spending down” at the time. Or maybe had other similar but not identical reasons. Probably a small percentage, say 5%. I’m at 2/3 of adults who either “can’t” or “won’t”, and you just have to accept that maybe they’re not all dumb, not innumerate, they just have different circumstances than you and don’t care that you scorn them for thinking otherwise.
Sure, but we do know that today 12.8% of 65-yr-olds have investible assets over $500,000.
It’s hard to identify individuals, but you can make reliable inferences from large data sets. That’s the reason that actuaries make the big bucks and why I started reading the Society of Actuaries magazine when I retired more than 30 years ago. Who does that? Apparently almost nobody.
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