Sometimes, the laws seem to all be gunning for you with one unfair stunt after the other. Let's say that you've worked your whole life and at about 62, you have decided to finally claim your Social Security income and settle down to a long and fruitful period of quiet retirement. And then, comes the great recession of 2008. You're pretty sure that the nest egg that you've nurtured for 40 years and only seen grow is going to be safe. You just take a look at it out with curiosity, and you find that it's been practically wiped out. The value of your home has been wiped out too. You realize that you are going to have to get back into the field, find some new work. It would be the best thing to do to try to rebuild your retirement nest egg any way you can. Have you noticed how these things attack you from all sides when they get started? The moment you get back on the job market, the government switches off your Social Security income. It considers you no longer retired.
The problem is that you chose to retire at 62. You certainly can claim a Social Security income before what the government considers a regular retirement age - 66 for anyone born in the 10 years after 1943. But if you get back to work, you won't be able to claim it anymore. A sad truth that hundreds of thousands of people claiming the Social Security income - of tens of millions of dollars each month - discovered last year. And the year before. If you are planning on claiming your Social Security benefits earlier than the cutoff age, you have to realize that you are leaving yourself wide open and vulnerable.
People who are 60 or 62 and who lose their jobs in a wave of layoffs often think that they can retire prematurely to claim their Social Security checks so that they can have a little something to fall back on until they find new jobs. They actually question you about this when you apply early for your Social Security income. They ask you if you plan to stay on the workforce, and how much you expect to earn ( and they call the IRS to ask later on this what you were making matches what you predicted). This year, if you are working after retirement, and you expect to make anything higher than ,160, expect to start to lose some of your benefits. Whatever you make over that, you lose 50% of it in your Social Security income.
Still, the government isn't as heartless at might appear at first glance. Whatever benefits you lose in this way, the law does make sure that you get it back through higher monthly benefits down the line. For almost as long as Social Security has existed, retiring at 65 has been considered the gold standard. If you tried to claim retirement benefits earlier than that, you always accepted a permanent reduction in your benefits. This year though, they've advanced that age by one year. Retire before 66, and you had better have a good reason for doing it.
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