As I touched upon in the last video, there can be a right and a wrong time to take social security payments. The amount you get varies on your age when you first elect to take the payment. For years the age to receive maximum payments, “Full retirement age,” was 70. However, it was recently pushed to 67, enabling people to receive full benefits sooner.
Overall, there is no universal ‘correct’ time to take your social security. You’d do best to take a moment, sit down, and determine your own needs. If you have enough income from other sources of retirement planning, then you may be fine to wait until you’re 67 to receive full benefits. If you see that your income may be a little short to cover all your expenses, then you can take social security benefits as early as 62.
Watch the video below, part 11 in the series, for some more insight on social security.
Transcript
So when should I take my Social Security? I get that question quite a bit, and it’s actually a quite a complicated one.
If you don’t need to take your Social Security, don’t. That’s the best thing to do is just let it continue to to build when you do need to take it.
There’s a whole bunch of formulas. Now you can take it early, starting as early as 62, or you can wait until you’re fully vested or a full retirement age, which now has been pushed to 67, so you can take it at any time. But the full benefit will come if you wait until 67.
So my advice to most people is to sit down with a planner. Take a look at, again, your revenue and your expenses and determine, “When can I maximize the amount coming out in order to fully take care of that benefit?”
But if I need income now, that financial planner will be able to share with you the formula that will show you how much you’re losing by taking it out early.
For more answers to common retirement planning questions, check out the rest of the Question Mark: Retirement Planning series.