A worker can choose to retire as early as age 62, but doing so may result in a reduction of as much as 30 percent. Starting to receive benefits after normal retirement age may result in larger benefits. With delayed retirement credits, a person can receive his or her largest benefit by retiring at age 70.
A rule of thumb for retirement withdrawals is the 4% rule. This rule suggests withdrawing 4% of your retirement investments annually, adjusting each year for inflation, to fund a 30-year retirement. Let's assume you're interested in how to retire at 62 with $500,000 saved and you expect to live 30 years in retirement.
You might think that waiting for bigger benefits is better, but that's not always the case. There is no definitive answer to when you should collect Social Security benefits, and taking them as soon as you hit the early retirement age of 62 might be the best financial move.
The short answer is yes. Retirees who begin collecting Social Security at 62 instead of at the full retirement age (67 for those born in 1960 or later) can expect their monthly benefits to be 30% lower. So, delaying claiming until 67 will result in a larger monthly check.
Can You Collect Social Security at 62 and Still Work? You can collect Social Security retirement benefits at age 62 and still work. If you earn over a certain amount, however, your benefits will be temporarily reduced until you reach full retirement age.
Perhaps not surprisingly, age 62 is a popular age for retirees to claim Social Security, with more than 25% opting for this choice. After all, there's definitely some appeal to getting what feels like “free” money from the government as soon as possible. And, for some retirees, this is the best choice.
However once you are at full retirement age (between 65 and 67 years old, depending on your year of birth) your Social Security payments can no longer be withheld if, when combined with your other forms of income, they exceed the maximum threshold.
So, if you have a part-time job that pays $25,000 a year — $5,440 over the limit — Social Security will deduct $2,720 in benefits. Suppose you will reach full retirement age in 2022.
If you retire at 62, you'll need to make sure you can afford health insurance until age 65 when your Medicare benefits begin. 5 (If you have a disability, you can qualify early.) With the Affordable Care Act, you are guaranteed to get coverage even if you have a pre-existing condition.
But if you can supplement your retirement income with other savings or sources of income, then $6,000 a month could be a good starting point for a comfortable retirement.
If you're just curious about the average age people retire, the answer is simple: 62. We get why you'd want to know what age most people retire. You can use that as a benchmark and work backwards to figure out how much time you have left to work and save until you can think about retiring.
You can get Social Security retirement or survivors benefits and work at the same time. But, if you're younger than full retirement age, and earn more than certain amounts, your benefits will be reduced.
While it's true that the last 3 years you work may affect your Social Security benefit amount when you claim, those years alone are not what determine your benefit dollar amount. Rather, your benefit is determined using a formula, which includes the highest earning 35 years of your lifetime working career.
So yes, to collect just over $4,000 per month, you need well over a million dollars in retirement accounts. To be safe, we'll round that up to $1.5 million for the rest of the steps.
At age 65: $2,993. At age 66: $3,240. At age 70: $4,194.
That adds up to $2,096.48 as a monthly benefit if you retire at full retirement age. Put another way, Social Security will replace about 42% of your past $60,000 salary. That's a lot better than the roughly 26% figure for those making $120,000 per year.
You report the taxable portion of your social security benefits on line 6b of Form 1040 or Form 1040-SR. Your benefits may be taxable if the total of (1) one-half of your benefits, plus (2) all of your other income, including tax-exempt interest, is greater than the base amount for your filing status.
between $25,000 and $34,000, you may have to pay income tax on up to 50 percent of your benefits. more than $34,000, up to 85 percent of your benefits may be taxable.
When they looked at the sample of 2,956 people who had begun participating in the study in 1992 and retired by 2010, the researchers found that the majority had retired around age 65. But a statistical analysis showed that when people retired at age 66 instead, their mortality rates dropped by 11%.
You may be eligible to collect Social Security as early as 62, but waiting until age 70 yields greater benefits for most people.