This week, I’m talking about the What To Do Before You Retire In 2021. 

Today’s must-do checklist item you’ll need to tick off before retirement is to decide when you’ll start taking social security. 

If you think you should start taking social security the same month that you retire - think again. For many of my clients that’s actually not the best decision and when we ran the numbers, we found that they were much better off waiting until 68, 69, or 70 to take social security. 

Since social security is likely to be a meaningful proportion of your retirement income, you should only decide when to start your social security payments after careful thought and analysis. 

If you’re in good health, and you retire at age 62, it might even make sense to wait until age 70 to start social security payments. To plug the gap, you might decide to withdraw a higher amount from your assets in those early retirement years or work part time. 

Since most of us are now living into our 80s and many of you can and should plan to live into your 90s, waiting to take social security will help to maximize your lifetime income from social security, and make sure you’re not stuck with a permanently reduced monthly income because you started social security before your full retirement age. 

The difference in lifetime income for someone who lives until age 90 is massive - several hundred thousand dollars in many cases - if you start taking social security as early as possible vs. waiting. 

And the higher your social security monthly benefit amount will be, the higher the lifetime income is the longer you wait. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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