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My wife and I have been doing retirement planning. She talks about wanting to retire before we are eligible to receive full benefits. Which means living off our retirement savings and holding out until age 70 to get the max benefit from Social Security.
All my life I have saved money and invested. I'm thinking about it, and I think it is going to feel strange having our entire savings decline until we start taking Social Security benefits.
Have any of you actually done this? Did it bother you psychologically to see your savings statement become less and less over the years even though you had enough money to live on? How did you feel when you finally started taking the max social security? Was it a relief or it wasn't a big deal for you?
Having done this plan, how do you feel about it? Did you feel you still have enough money past age 70? Any regrets in this type of plan?
we are doing it now . lots of folks are but you need to make sure you have the funds to stop working and delay . if you don't comfortably have lots left over then either you can't afford to stop yet or you can't afford to delay . you do not want to spend down to much as life is filled with emergency's and unexpected expenses .
Last edited by mathjak107; 03-08-2016 at 02:10 PM..
I've been saving my whole life too, and had to give half to an ex wife. (Many years ago) I can't WAIT to start drawing it down. That's the whole reason for saving in the first place! No problem using it here (but we do have pensions that reduce the bite)
If you saved for retirement, the money was earmarked to be spent for retirement. I hope you aren't running into a problem like mine. I find myself denying myself something simple and cheap just because it isn't important to my survival. Watching every penny over many years made me sick in the head about $5 purchases. Meanwhile, each year so far, I have continued to save part of pension and SS income and haven't touched my retirement saving except to pay taxes on some of it in advance of RMD.
I've been saving my whole life too, and had to give half to an ex wife. (Many years ago) I can't WAIT to start drawing it down. That's the whole reason for saving in the first place! No problem using it here (but we do have pensions that reduce the bite)
I'm certainly familiar with that divorce math.
I'm yet another one planning to defer collecting Social Security until age 70. My target age is 65 1/2. 7 years, 10 months away. I'm 100% focused on topping up the war chest of investable assets to be able to do it.
My wife and I have been doing retirement planning. She talks about wanting to retire before we are eligible to receive full benefits. Which means living off our retirement savings and holding out until age 70 to get the max benefit from Social Security.
All my life I have saved money and invested. I'm thinking about it, and I think it is going to feel strange having our entire savings decline until we start taking Social Security benefits.
Have any of you actually done this? Did it bother you psychologically to see your savings statement become less and less over the years even though you had enough money to live on? How did you feel when you finally started taking the max social security? Was it a relief or it wasn't a big deal for you?
Having done this plan, how do you feel about it? Did you feel you still have enough money past age 70? Any regrets in this type of plan?
But wasn't that the point of saving for retirement ?
My wife and I have been doing retirement planning. She talks about wanting to retire before we are eligible to receive full benefits. Which means living off our retirement savings and holding out until age 70 to get the max benefit from Social Security.
All my life I have saved money and invested. I'm thinking about it, and I think it is going to feel strange having our entire savings decline until we start taking Social Security benefits.
Have any of you actually done this? Did it bother you psychologically to see your savings statement become less and less over the years even though you had enough money to live on? How did you feel when you finally started taking the max social security? Was it a relief or it wasn't a big deal for you?
Having done this plan, how do you feel about it? Did you feel you still have enough money past age 70? Any regrets in this type of plan?
As long as you keep working, ( paying into SS) it has a good chance to work as you wish
we are doing it now . lots of folks are but you need to make sure you have the funds to stop working and delay . if you don't comfortably have lots left over then either you can't afford to stop yet or you can't afford to delay . you do not want to spend down to much as life is filled with emergency's and unexpected expenses .
You really should copy this post to a document, then pull it out and paste it whenever necessary. It applies often on this board. Not that I'm blaming the opening poster, just that it's a subject that is discussed a lot.
the problem is many folks would be left dangerously low on savings laying out 8 years of spending money while not working or collecting ss yet .
i would say if someone are going to spend 40% or more of their savings delaying then they may want to rethink that plan .
My numbers don't work if I retired at 62. I have a contingency plan where I could do it if disaster struck where I could not work but it would require lifestyle changes I'm not willing to give up.
I'm still mulling over which resources I'm going to spend in the 4 1/2 years I'm self-funding 100% of my retirement until age 70. Part of me wants to draw down my IRA/401(k) account as much as possible since that could very well be used against me in means testing for Medicare by the time I get there.
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