[74-911]

If we only knew how long we would live ?? My parents both died in their 50's, her parents in their 80's. Grandparents from 75 to 97 so who knows ??

My wife and I both started SS at age 66. She retired at age 55, myself at 60.
She has a nice pension, nice SS check and accumulated a substantial 401K which has been rolled into an IRA.
I have no pension but get a nice sized SS check and also have a substantial IRA rolled from a 401K,

We realistically should have no financial issues. Having a pension my wife is better off than I am in that regard.

The biggest mistake we made was not converting more of our traditional IRA's into Roth IRA's when the rules were changed in 2011 IIRC. I converted a lot into Roth IRAs but should have taken more of the tax hit then and done a lot more and it is to late now.

We both had to start RMDs last year and as a result we are having to pay more for Medicare and now 85% of our SS is taxed as ordinary income (such a deal).

I am surprised at how few people realize that SS be can be considered taxable income and the amount of income required to trigger taxation is small and was not indexed.

There is no best answer as to when to start SS but it can be much more of a complicated decision than a lot of people realize...