Social Security & Medicare

my own SS until I turned 70, which maximized my own benefit. I believe that option is no longer available.

I depended heavily on the book Get What's Yours by Laurence Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller, and Paul Solman. It outlines all of the basics of SS and then some. It was how I learned I could claim on my ex husband's SS and delay my own claim until I was 70.

Alas, some of those rules have changed.

I think the single best thing of that book is how they emphasize that it's important to maximize, insofar as you can, your payout. So many people get focused on collecting as soon as they possibly can, and never think about the fact that they will probably live a whole lot longer than they think they will. For example, most 65 year old men will live nearly another 18 years, and a 65 year old women will live another 20 and a half years. That's a lot longer than people tend to think. For one thing, they look at life expectancies from the year they were born, and don't understand that those numbers include infant and child mortality, and once you get past any given age, be it one year, five years, sixty years, or more, you will continue to live a whole lot longer.

I keep on seeing various things on line that encourage people to collect SS as soon as possible. For some people, that's a good strategy. For others, not so much.

My specific case is this: I'd been out of the workforce some 25 years while raising children. My SS payout was going to be quite small. Then I got divorced, moved to another part of the country, and re-entered the workforce. I made decent money, but the important thing is that I added about six more years of employment to my record, wiping out that number of zero income years. My predicted SS payout doubled by doing that.

Keep in mind that your SS amount is based on your 35 highest years of earnings. So working as long as you can benefits you. And again, for me, getting back into the workforce for several years made a huge difference.