**I was just wondering if anyone knows the answer? If you start receiving social security at 62 do you ever receive full benefits after the age of 66? Thanks in advance. **
I started at 62 and other than tiny COLA increases (0.2% next year), it hasn’t gone up.
To get full benefits you must start at the scheduled time. There’s no way to pay in for a shorter time and collect for a longer time and collect the full rate.
In a word, No.
No.
I started collecting at 62. I will always receive less than I would, had I waited until 65. But on the other hand, I’ve had three extra years of payments, resulting in greater accrued payments. I believe the break-even age is 72, after which my total accrued payments would have been more if I’d waited.
What they said. The gamble is whether you will live long enough to qualify for higher payments, and then how much longer thereafter you will have to live to make up any difference.
People regularly attempt to have their cake and eat it too - apply for and receive one level/type of benefit, then try to change their minds later. With relatively rare exceptions, they are generally unsuccessful.
No. I started at 63. But when my wife started at 65, getting 50% of my benefits (since she had only 6 quarters), she got 50% of what I would have received had I waited till 65.
You can get full benefits later on.
But (a big “but”), you have 12 months to change your mind and you have to pay back all the benefits you received.
E.g., you decide to start collecting at 62 because a doctor says you have Griswold’s Disease and won’t live past 67 1/2. So you start taking SS.
But a few months later, a Griswold’s Disease specialist says it was a mis-diagnosis and you’re probably not going to die soon.
You fill out a SS form, pay back any SS money you received, and file for full benefits later. (The age depends on your birth year. It’s not 66 for everyone.)
How does the survivor spouse thing work for SS?
Here in Canada, your spouse gets your CPP if you die; if he/she is collecting their own, the benefits are combined, up to a maximum of (I believe) the maximum possible single-person payout rate.
So say you collect reduced rate at 62, and you spouse has her own SS payments from her own job (a normal occurrence nowadays, I think); when you shuffle off this mortal coil, do your survivor payments combine with her current amount - to the maximum possible SS payments?
Your wife can draw either her SS payment based on her work record or 1/2 your SS payment which ever is the highest.
When you die your wife can get either her SS payment or your survivor payment which ever is the highest.
If your wife isn’t a US citizen can she still collect half of the husbands benefit?
I’m 55 and trying to plan for my retirement, and I would like to predict my SS payments in the future. I can do the calculations for how the system works now, but I’m really unsure about what will happen with the rules in the future.
I’m planning on starting to get SS at age 70, which is also the time that I’m required to take distributions from my IRAs/401ks. I think I’ve figured out that the way it works now, my minimum IRA distributions, combined with gains on my non-IRA accounts, will kick me up into the place where most of the SS payments are subject to income tax. I can handle that.
But how confident should I be that the payments themselves won’t be reduced because of this other income? It seems like means testing may be the way they have to go when all us boomers retire, but how likely do you think that is?
I realize this doesn’t have a factual answer, but I’m not looking for a debate, or the eight-pound course-of-ten arguments, just some enlightened opinions.
I’m a glass-half-empty guy, not particularly knowledgeable about SS, but for what it’s worth, here’s my opinion:
I don’t see how SS can ultimately avoid means testing, sooner or later.
Based on past experience, the can will be kicked down the road as long as possible.
You and I are young enough that I think we will be affected by means testing, even if they kick the can quite far down the road.
This makes me wonder if I will be better off taking SS early, if means testing is not in effect when I come of age.
The way SS “takes back” some of your SS income via taxation if your retirement income is “too high” is Byzantine. It’s an absurdly complicated formula if you want to calculate backwards as to how much to extract from tax-deferred accounts to maintain a given tax bracket or some such.
It can reach a pretty high rate: At the max. for every $1 of income you have to pay taxes on $2 of income. I.e., your tax bracket doubles. But how much of your SS is taxable maxes out at a level dependent on your income/marital status. So if you’re really raking it in, the inflated tax bracket stuff essentially goes away. And you’re still getting SS!
But in the wrong range, your marginal tax rate can be over 46%!
It really doesn’t take much to get into the $1 income means tax on $1.5.
It would be a lot smarter if the SS tax scheme was different. Something that slowly reduces effective SS income until it gets to 0 for the really well off. Right now it especially punishes those with middle class income.
The break even point is actually age 82 and eight months.
Also I always like to consider the *thousands *of people who die between the ages of 62 and 66 and never collect a dime. Did they make the right choice in waiting to reach 66 to collect? I’m sure they all believed they would live into their 70’s or 80s. I started to collect at 62 also because 2015 dollars are worth more than 2019 dollars. Even 2% inflation over 4 years can add up and if you believe inflation is and will continue to be 2%, I’ve got a really nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
A dollar in hand is worth two at the US Treasury Dept.
My guess is that those people who died before beginning to collect do not regret it in the least.
Means testing would be fraud.
Whatever you choose, please take care in doing so. Often your choice may be irrevocable and you can’t unring the bell.
Ok so this kind of planning is actually what I do for a living. Right now they are saying that means testing won’t happen. Right now. If you are in your 50s today it is unlikely that any means testing will be applied to you, but it could happen, but they probably couldn’t dance a change like that through without most people paying attention like they did the changes they put in place at the end of 2015.
It is very important that you have enough money set aside. Best case scenario SSI will only replace 65% of your current income.
Also, for most people who don’t need the money and who plan to have a typical life expectancy the best time to take SSI is actually 67 and 2 months, if you need it or not. Longer than that and you are actually giving up so many probable paychecks that it off sets the increase.
Missed the edit window. My point here was supposed to be that, if they start applying means testing, it’s going to be a hugely big deal and a gigantic fight. You won’t be unaware that it is coming.