Financial planner Allan Roth featured the Open Social Security calculator in an AARP article this week.
Roth summarized the Social Security decision succinctly: delaying does not give you an 8% return (despite what some people say). Still, most unmarried people and married people who are the higher earner in their marriage should wait until 70.
He also stressed one thing that I haven’t discussed very much here: the fact that the calculator uses year-by-year probability of being alive rather than assuming that the user dies in a given year. The difference is not significant for a single person. But for a married couple, it more accurately reflects the expected outcome (i.e., with a greater duration of time between the first spouse’s death and the second), with the net result being that Open Social Security is more likely to suggest an early filing date for the lower earner and a later filing date for the higher earner than other calculators or DIY analyses might.
- Calculating When to Take Social Security: an online tool can help you make the right decision from Allan Roth
Other Recommended Reading
- The Retirement Mirage (pdf, about retirement age) from David Blanchett
- A Week in the Life of a FIRE Household from Chris Mamula
- Study: Charts Change Hearts and Minds Better Than Words Do from Christopher Ingraham
- Retirement Risk Assessment: History Is Not a Guide from Joe Tomlinson
- Strap on the Fitbit: John Hancock Will Only Sell Interactive Life Insurance from Suzanne Barlyn
- Becoming Reimbursed As Family Caregivers Under Medicaid’s “Cash And Counseling” Program from Rafael Bernard
- Freezing Credit Will Now Be Free. Here’s Why You Should Go for It from Ann Carrns
Thanks for reading!