Emotion trumping arithmetic.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/12/nx-s1-5401054/trump-social-security-claims
intercst
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It’s probably also, “get it while I can.”
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It is not going anywhere.
I wonder if Covid made a lot of late 50 year olds at that time want out.
Part of it, houses are still rising in price if you have a house that will sell for cash. People are house rich.
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Or “get it while I can use it”. Collect my money know so I can go make it rain at the club instead collect it later when I’m in an incoherent drooling puddle.
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That’s where people get the arithmetic wrong.
You want the most money over your investing lifetime. You can spend it whenever you want, you don’t need to wait until you’re 85 or 90.
Having a larger SS check at age 90, means you’ll have a smaller portfolio withdrawal at age 90. That means you can withdraw more from your portfolio when you’re young.
intercst
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If you need that relatively small early social security check at age 62, 63, etc to “make it rain at the club”, then you can’t afford to make it rain at the club. This is assuming that when you say “making it rain”, you mean something like covering all the drink rounds one night at the club for a few thousand bucks (let’s call it 100 people, 3 drinks each, and $12 a drink).
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This is important if you feel the need to die the richest man in the cemetery, and be collecting big checks while you are drooling in the corner of the solarium.
Based on my experience with both parents, and Mrs. Goofy’s experience with both parents, more important is have more money earlier, perhaps a lot more money. That’s because gaining entrance to a decent retirement community takes a substantial “down payment” and proof of ability to pay the fees for several years, and if you end up totally broke the institution will keep you in your apartment and simply garnish your SS (and any other income) until the end of your days.
If your SS check is $2000 fatter each month at the end, it’s going to go to the house, not to your own bank account, so you’ve done well by the corporate owners of the facility, and I’m sure they thank you. Meanwhile your situation is not changed at all, except you had more money earlier when you could use it.
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Using your SS to “make it rain at the club” seems irresponsible at any age.
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You’re still not understanding the arithmetic Goofy. A high earning SS beneficiary gets about an extra $100,000 for waiting and it doubles to $200,000 if you’re married. You can use that extra $100 to $200K to pay your LTC buy-in today, or go on a cruise while you’re still young. You don’t need to wait until age 90.
intercst
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If you are using the 4% rule as guidance, delaying SS backstops against sequence of returns risk, which increases the SWR. Or at least it does my case. This allows me to spend more money in the early portion of retirement.
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Yes. In terms of the maximum safe withdrawal rate, the most valuable asset class you can hold is an inflation-adjusted life annuity. And if the Federal Gov’t is willing to sell you an inflation-adjusted life annuity at a big discount to what a commercial insurer would charge for the same increase in you’re monthly benefit (by waiting until age 70 to start), it’s a no-brainer to accept the offer.
You’ll rarely see military or Gov’t pensioners wishing that they could take their retirement as a lump sum and play with the money in the stock market.
intercst
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I don’t think you read the sentence that you replied to closely enough. It DOESN’T say that the goal is to have the most money at the end. It DOES say that it is most optimal to have the most money over the investing lifetime. Those are two very different things.
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Yeah, I get the arithmetic.
Here’s some more. If I retire at (say) age 62 and live out of my bank account, I’m depleting those funds which could be in the market, earning around 10% per annum. So once the “SS annuity” kicks in, I have less in the portfolio producing wealth, but more in the annuity. I get that.
I also get that the SS annuity pays out more “in total”, but I’m more concerned with “when I can use it”, not that I rack up big checks when I’m 93 and sitting in a rest home, unable to walk the halls at WalMart (or even get to it without the short bus that goes there on Tuesday.)
So I think it’s great that I get a larger monthly check from the government, except my needs are fewer at the end except, perhaps, for Depends. If I’m in a decent retirement home, they do everything: meals, cleaning, finger painting class, etc. And if I have the money I pay for it. If I don’t have the money, well they transition me to Medicaid and they still do everything for me.
So the great “I will have the most money” theory watches the lines cross, as I get more and more, and have less and less use for it.
I wish I had the interest in producing a spreadsheet to detail this but I don’t. But rather than the SUM line at the bottom, I would want to see where the “NEEDS” line is at the same time, and see what benefits me most then . It’s not about the “TOTAL”, it’s about the “UTILITY.”
Having watched both my parents, and both Mrs.Goofy’s parents go through the late-stages of end-of-life in retirement homes, I’d say that “getting a big check at age 93” was quite far down on the list of wants.
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That is the problem with your arithmetic. 10% per annum is not guaranteed. You have to allow for bad markets and bad performance in your analysis.
The math supports the idea that you can use more “when you can use it” by delay than by turning it on early.
That being stated, the extra amount you can spend from the delaying is not likely to make or break a retirement (in easiest terms, for a married couple you can spend that extra 200k over that ~30 year period - an extra $6k a year). Might help cover an extra vacation for those with means.
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Is 70 really young? 99% of people are to old to do anything but sit on the couch and watch TV.
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I know you are being hyperbolic with that 99% figure but it isn’t anywhere close to being valid - especially for those with the financial means to both delay and to benefit from delay.
Hawkwin
Who works with dozens of clients in their 70s+ that are active and enjoying their best life.
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There is a lot of that going around. I just want to be part of the Hyperbolic but completely wrong crowd.
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Of course it’s not. It is, however, the average return over most any long period. But that’s not the most important part of my message; people who talk about “delaying” seem to ignore the fact that you are still spending money to live during the “delay” years, as though somehow the extra money you get at the end is free. It’s not. You paid for some, part, or all of it up front by depleting other resources.
That’s why I joke you get a bigger check when “drooling over in the corner of the solarium at the old people’s home”, although soon enough I’m going to have to stop saying that, as I will be one of them.
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Except this isn’t factual. You get a bigger check throughout the entirety of your retirement, not just during your drooling stage.
Look, you seem to think we are ignore some facts but the data that exists proving you wrong is substantial and peer reviewed.
Here is one from just last month:
THE FINANCIAL VALUE OF
DELAYING SOCIAL SECURITY
BY WADE PFAU, PH.D. CFA, RICP
https://www.protectedincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/IN-20_Pfau_v1.pdf#:~:text=Proponents%20of%20delayed%20Social%20Security%20claiming%20emphasize,seeing%20a%20higher%20percentage%20of%20their%20Social
One quote of note:
Most arguments in favor of claiming early tend to assume a fixed rate of return for investments matched to historical average stock market returns, providing little context to what might happen with real-world investment portfolios during the pivotal early retirement years. Many retirees will not otherwise be investing anywhere near this aggressively in retirement. And retirees become more vulnerable to the impact of market volatility in their early retirement years if they need to sell assets at a loss to meet retirement expenses. This idea is known as sequence risk, as having to sell from a declining portfolio to meet retirement expenses means that those assets are no longer available to enjoy any subsequent market recovery. This uncertain quest for upside growth means giving up a valuable, lifelong, inflation-adjusted income stream.
To generate the returns needed to beat the benefit of delaying Social Security, there would need to be a high tolerance for risk and an aggressive asset allocation, not to mention plenty of discretionary wealth. We found evidence using the historical data that it is uncommon for investment returns to beat the implied benefit of delaying Social Security for long-lived retirees even with aggressive asset allocation strategies.
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You are quoting someone who is looking at all the risks of stocks but none of the risks of SS. None of us know what will happen with SS. It is possible that they will make the benefit smaller and take away the whole gain you made waiting for SS. If they could squeeze more out of SS to get bigger tax breaks for the 1% they will do it.
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