I'll be 66 in July, got on medicare last year, and I'll start collecting my pay this year since the income limits are gone. To those who would advise me to wait until I'm 70 because of the higher pay, nope. IMO that's one of the best scams going. First, life holds no guarantees! Second, and most important, I've done the math many times, and just now since I have the current numbers right in front of me. If I wait till I'm 70 I'll get a 38.6% pay increase over taking pay now That sounds great, but is it? First, I get zero pay for 4 years waiting for the increase. But should I start collecting now, in 4 years I'll already have been paid over 100,000! Right now I can just put that pay in the bank, like it never happened. Fast forward 4 years: if I waited I'm now at $0 and just starting to collect my pay + 38.6%... but if I collected early I'm now at +$100,000 and keep adding my regular pay. Running the numbers, the total payments of the wait method won't surpass the pay-now method for 121 months-! Not until I'm 80 years will I actually start making more money. It's my opinion that I'll need the higher income earlier more than later.
Done with the SSI part
This is the year we've planned on "semi" retiring since we started buying our retirement necessities (read: toys ) 14 years ago. "Semi" retiring because being self-employed for 46 years and the powers that be killing off every retirement plan we ever started over those years have left us no choice but to work until we forget how. That, and I'd get bored silly if I didn't have something to do every day. Our financial situation for now is good. The pandemic is whittling down our workload, which is an issue we've trying to figure out how to do, now it's happening by default... every cloud I guess-
A big decision to make is whether to get a reverse mortgage. My thoughts about this is simply to have the mortgage make its own payments plus utilities, not looking for any other extra cash per month. Later down the road we can take out more equity if needed... Our main debt load is the house, all work equipment is paid for, no cc debt, and all other debt will be paid off by this time next year. A reverse mortgage paying for basics means our income will cover our lifestyle without touching our savings.
That's the story.
The house is worth about $320k give or take. Current balance is just north of $130k. Mortgage interest is very low at the moment-- Is a reverse mortgage a good or bad idea at the moment? Or at all?