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Originally Posted by rjm1cc
I would assume I am going to live forever so making sure I break even on the distributions would not be part of my decision process.
You SS benefit will increase for each year you delay. I look at this as purchasing a fix annuity that has a CPI built in. You can not get a better annuity deal. The cost of the annuity is the payments you are not getting and you will be spending down your current investments. But your SS will last your life and your investments may not.
Also look at file and suspend. At normal retirement age (I think both have to reach this age) the higher income earner files for benefits and suspends (never gets the benefits) and then the spouse files on the account and gets the benefits. This could leave the other spouses account to continue to grow. If the spouse dies after starting to collect at age 70 the survivor gets the higher benefit.
This can get quite complicated so you might want to hire a fee only financial planner to help with this question. If you do make sure the person understands the entire process. I think their is a web site that address this but I can not recall how to find it.
Without knowing all of the details, I would spend your investments now and postpone SS. But remember when you both reach retirement age you can qualify on your spouse account (not sure but I think you both could collect on the others account) and it will not reduce your delayed benefits.
I have done the file and suspend so it does work although it took a few months of work to get the SS administration to properly process the paperwork. They are not too knowledgeable on the paper work process.
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On the fixed annuity analysis.
An individual's or couples' health and general financial situation are extremely important.
Just like Medicare, SS is a very complicated decision.