When a United States citizen decides to retire and apply for Social Security, he or she must have taken several actions beforehand. Planning our retirement is not something we can do in one day. Therefore, if we do not choose our steps well, we will find ourselves in more than one occasion with financial and economic problems.
For that reason, controlling every element that influences the Social Security check is fundamental. Otherwise, getting a good benefit is impossible. While it is true that to get any Social Security check we will not need to do much, to get a good monthly payment we do need to plan well.
The first thing to keep in mind is that we must work a minimum of 10 years to claim the benefit. However, this may not be enough. Applying for the payment in this way will cause us to lose a lot of money.
In addition to that, there are two other factors that greatly influence our retirement. On the one hand, the age at which we apply for Social Security. On the other hand, the salary we have as a worker.
If we do not maximize those three elements we will not have the best possible retirement. Even so, there is one of those very differentiating elements that will make us lose a lot of money if we don’t give it the real importance.
Retirement age is the key to good Social Security
The minimum retirement age is 62. When we turn 62 we can ask for a Social Security check. This happens as long as we have worked the mandatory minimum number of years. As we have mentioned before, it is necessary to work 10 years to be able to get a retirement check. It is not mandatory to work the 10 years in a row, since it can be in different stages.
However, applying for a retirement check at age 62 and having worked only 10 years can be very negative. The monthly payment in this case would be very low, so we would be losing money.
So the question of when is it best to retire is answered in a somewhat uncertain way, but it is enough to make it well understood. It all depends on the individual citizen.
If we apply for check at age 62 we will be losing 30% of the money we have. This is true and can be a lot of money for a large portion of Americans. Therefore, it is much better to wait a little longer before applying for retirement. Even if it all depends on one’s own decision.