... premature claiming of your Social Security Benefits. Financially, pays to wait until age 70 for about 90% of seniors.

{{ To put it bluntly, people are making expensive choices. “The median loss for this age group in the present value of household lifetime discretionary spending is $182,370,” the researchers found. For that amount of money, you could almost buy a Mercedes AMG-S63. Or, alternatively, pay a few medical bills. (The math for delaying benefits isn’t quite as favorable now as it was in 2022, when that “virtually all” study came out, because of a rise in the interest rate that goes into the calculation.)

I’m interested in two things. One is why people make this choice when it is so often a mistake. The other is why our system makes it so easy for them to make this mistake. I feel about premature claiming the same as I feel about state-run lotteries, which prey on the desperate and the dreamers. I don’t claim early and I don’t buy lottery tickets. The mistakes other people make indirectly benefit me by decreasing payments and thus my tax burden, and that seems unfair. }}

free link

nytimes.com - Social security age

Of course, some people say, "I can take it at age 62 and invest the money in the stock market", but that's not a guaranteed 8% return. Nobody is more pro stock than I am (my asset allocation has been 90% plus stock since 1997 and it's 96% today at age 68), and even I see the benefit of waiting until 70.

intercst