The Benefits of Delaying Retirement
By Barry Zimmer on July 1st, 2013 in Retirement Planning, Social Security
A lot of people saw their retirement plans go off-track during the economic downturn of 2007 and 2008. If this includes you and you have to make adjustments,working longer can be the solution.
Some people people truly enjoy the work what they do, and they are in no hurry to retire. Regardless of your motivation, if you delay your retirement there are certain benefits that can be quite enticing.
The age at which you are eligible for your full Social Security retirement benefit varies slightly depending on the year during which you were born. Rather than going through a tedious explanation here suffice to say that it will be between the ages of 66 and 67 if you are not yet receiving Social Security.
You can however choose to delay applying for Social Security until you are as old as 70. If you do this you could you earn delayed retirement credits that increase the amount of your benefit.
Once you reach the age of full benefit eligibility you can work and earn any amount of money without reducing your benefit amount. This is certainly one advantage that would go along with delaying your retirement.
Your Social Security benefit is based on the 30 years during which you earned the most amount of money. As a result, if you work beyond the age of full benefit eligibility you may be making more during those final few years than you did earlier in your career.
This would increase the amount of your benefit still further when you did actually start to draw your monthly payout. Deferring your retirement could also allow you to add to your savings.
Of course there are many factors to consider in deciding to delay retirement. Some are monetary and some not. There is a developing field of practice about optimizing Social Security retirement pension benefits. As Baby Boomers continue to apply for Social Security Benefits, expect to see more media attention to this topic.