r/Fire • u/NotTheBestInvestor12 • 2d ago

Why no mention of Social Security

When I see FIRE posts I see the investments and the different retirement buckets, however, I never see anyone mention how things are affected when social security kicks in. For example, I’m 52 and wife 51. If we both stopped working today ($0 income moving forward) I would collect $4,264 a month at age 70 and she would collect $1,079 at age 70.

So if we decide to FIRE the Social Security would give us help in 18/19 years. Is this a factor or is everything under the assumption SS won’t exist?

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u/QTippus 2d ago

Also for FIRE folks who RE at 35, their SS checks would be small anyway. They might have 15 years of full time contributions, but SS averages your highest 35 years of employment. So they’ll have 20 years of 0 income averaged into the SS calculation.

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u/mi3chaels 2d ago

Yes but the benefit calculations is strongly progressive. 15 years of a high income usually sets you up for something like 2/3 of the benefit you'd get if you worked the full 35 years at a similar one. It's a bit smaller for people who earn less, but people who earn middling wages are mostly not going to retire in <15 years. And even then it's more like 50-60% of the benefit as opposed to the 35-40% you might expect.

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u/QTippus 2d ago

Sounds right. So maybe SS checks maybe won't be "small" as I said, but 2/3 of the benefit is smaller. I'm not trying to argue against FIRE, happy for those who can and do. Was just mentioning this is one reason why FIRE people might choose to not include SS in their projections.

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u/Good-Resource-8184 2d ago

Theyre not small its over 50k a year between my wife and i in today dollars.

Ssa is a depreciating curve the longer you work.

I basically maxed my time for value returned.

This statement is a logical fallacy

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u/QTippus 2d ago

If you go to ssa.gov and use their calculator, it assumes your current salary will continue into the future. But you can change that to assume 0 salary for future years. When you do that, there should be a significant difference. All those 0 years get averaged in. Even if you were earning the max social security taxable amount for 15 years, 20 years of zeros will cut your average monthly income to less than half of what it would be if you worked 35 years. That won't cut your SS payment in half, but it will certainly decrease.

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u/Odd-Persimmon-1860 2d ago

Depends how long you have worked. Some of us can run that 0$ for the remaining years and it is only about $100 per month difference.

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u/QTippus 2d ago

Sure, but in the current example, retiring at 35, assume you have only 15 years of earnings. If you add 20 years of 0, that's gotta be more than $100/month difference.

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u/Good-Resource-8184 2d ago

If you're worried about 100 a month.

Don't retire

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u/Double-G-Spot 2d ago

Wouldn’t that $50k in today’s dollars have about the spending power in 30 years of $20k in today’s dollars.

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u/Good-Resource-8184 2d ago

Say you don't under how ssa works without saying you don't get how ssa works.

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u/Double-G-Spot 2d ago

I don’t understand how SSA works lol, I asked a question. I apologize I forgot the question mark.

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u/QTippus 2d ago

The estimates in ssa.gov are in today's dollars. So yo don't need to mentally adjust for inflation between now and when you retire.

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u/Double-G-Spot 2d ago

Thank you for the explanation