Social Security related - Life Expectancy reduction

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Social Security Spinoff

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Self sustaining scallop farm

Graph looks suspect. I would not think Hispanics have longer life expectancy than Whites.

The implosion of social security may be one of the best positives that could ever happen to America.

If people would just take the money social security takes from their paychecks each month and invest it themselves, they’d be far better off, and no longer be dependent on the whims of bureaucrats and politicians if their retirement will be there when they need it.

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Arias and her colleagues calculated life expectancy using a technique called a period life table. This involved the researchers imagining a group of 100,000 hypothetical infants and applying the death rates observed for the real population in 2021 for each year of those infants’ lives.

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This is really, really bad methodology. Mortality rates for infectious diseases go down over time. It's why the Spanish Flu and Black Plague are still technically running around, but no one gives a shite. Ignoring that natural progression creates extremely bad data.

If that’s accurate why don5 you start SS benefits at 62? Statistically makes sense with this model.

The footnote says hispanic people may be of any race.

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The footnote says hispanic people may be of any race.

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Hispanic just shows what politics has come to.

It’s a way to lump people together for political purposes. It’s like they just figured out not everyone from Spanish speaking countries is one race. But now we get to divide the Hispanics up into groups.

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If that’s accurate why don5 you start SS benefits at 62? Statistically makes sense with this model.

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I went ahead and looked up my numbers.
If I take the benefit at:
62: $2473, or $29,676/y
63: $2666, or $31,992/y
64: $2877, or $34,524/y
65: $3136, or $37,632/y
66: $3385, or $40,620/y
67: $3628, or $43,536/y
68: $3773, or $45,276/y
69: $4063, or $48, 756/y
70: $4499, or $53,988/y


So, just quick math:
Waiting one year earns you an additional $2316/y, but it cost you $29,676. To break even on this delay, it would take you 12.813 years.
The difference between 62/65: $7956/y
Cost: 3x $29,676=$83,088 (your 62, 63, and 64 years, because you’ll get paid your year 65 money), $83,088/$7956= 10.4 years to break even
62/70: 8x$29,676= $237,408/(53988-29676)=9y to break even.

If this question is being asked, though, then another way to think about it is that you don’t need the money at 62 (otherwise, you are taking it at 62), and it’s possible you planned your retirement without anticipating social security at all.
If that’s the case, you can potentially assume $83,000-$237,00 cash in pocket to be invested in some reasonable way. Let’s just assume that’s true, so you put the $29,676 up each year until age 70. A return of even 5% annual moves the number to around $300,000, which if I am calculating the right way becomes basically impossible to overcome due to the compounding effect. This is, of course, assuming you don’t touch the SS benefit, but that would have to be true to consider taking it at 70, anyway. If you did stop contributing to that account, take it all out, and continue then to live on the base benefit, you could overcome the benefit around age 82.5. There are obviously so many variables that you could change the scenario a little and get wildly different results, but if it’s an option, it basically never makes sense to take it at any age other than 62, short of the scenario where the benefit at 70 is enough to live on alone and you have enough money to make it from 62-70 but not any longer or something sort of like that.


That, or, some sort of guarantee that you’ll live to a certain age, which I’ve never seen put in writing and executed.

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it basically never makes sense to take it at any age other than 62, short of the scenario where the benefit at 70 is enough to live on alone and you have enough money to make it from 62-70 but not any longer or something sort of like that.

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I decided to take it at 62 and invest the entire amount. I invested into a 401K/IRA my entire working life. I decided it would be interesting to see the extent to which I could grow SS benefits as an after tax investment vehicle. I'm about six years into it and the fund is approaching 180K. But taking distributions from an IRA and investing SS money does increase taxable income over those who may defer some IRA distribution for the SS money.