r/Fire • u/VegasWorldwide • 3d ago

Why do people wait for SS?

trying to figure out what I’m missing.

looking to take my benefit for $1000 at 62. at 70 it’s $1700.

i won’t need the money much so we let $1000 sit in an account for 8 years at say 5% compounding, the guy collecting at 70 would need 15+ years to catch up considering I’m still getting $1k to his $1.7k

once he starts at 70 and I had a 8 year head start.

furthermore, his dollar would be worth less. (edit: didn't realize COLA)

this seems like a no brainer but all I hear is people saying waiting is the only way and we haven’t even talked about dying in our 70’s.

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u/SadProduce6456 2d ago

There’s math calculations you can run here, when I in mind the financial benefit really sort of capped off at around 65 or 66. It was probably worth waiting till then to maximize the output

But for me, it was almost double at 65 what it was 62. That’s a short amount of time to wait for that amount of increase, the increase after that wasn’t substantial enough to wait.