Interesting take on SS

[davismills]

Don't Wait Until 70 To Retire. Here's Why. - Forbes

 

[explanade]

Um he says at 5% return, 66 is the age. But it looks like the line for 62 is higher.

 

[samclem]

Um he says at 5% return, 66 is the age. But it looks like the line for 62 is higher.

Forget SS, I was hoping he'd tell us where to get that 5% real return he assumed. He doesn't mention inflation, so the only way his "model" makes sense is to assume he's talking about real interest rates.

And for a guy who tells us that the assumptions critical to the whole decision, I wish he'd told us about them. Like the whole "SS going bankrupt" thing, and the money stopping. That isn't how it works--SS payments from workers continue to come in after the "trust fund" bonds are spent.

Shame on Forbes--the article and implied precision promise much more than they deliver. And again the "crossover" without the context that makes it useful. It ain't about the ultimate dollar amounts, it's about the utility of the dollars paid.

 

[donheff]

No highlights? We all have to read the whole article just to find out whether it is worth reading the whole article?

 

[Bestwifeever]

Interesting take on naked links without a little summary: they don't get clicked on.

Okay, from the article:

I found myself wondering, abstractly, when should I retire? And close behind that thought came this one: when should I start taking Social Security? Somewhere along the way, I got an MBA in finance and marketing at Chicago, the quant school. We did a lot of modeling there, and so I decided to model social security, using a wide range of assumptions. I looked at three key ages: 62, 66, and 70; four interest rate assumptions for cash-flow discounting: 1%, 2%, 5%, and 10%. And two important assumptions about the solvency of the U.S. Social Security Administration. My only tool was a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

 

[growing_older]

No highlights? We all have to read the whole article just to find out whether it is worth reading the whole article?

No, you don't have to read the whole article. Guy makes a bunch of wild assumptions, does a partial analysis of SS payouts under those assumptions, congratulates himself on his use of cash flow discounting in the math. Seems to have no real understanding of what he's doing or why. But he got an article in Forbes. Woo Hoo.

 

[RunningBum]

LOL, he didn't even show any numbers. Just lines on a graph, with the X axis as the interest rate, and the Y axis as "Higher Value" with an arrow pointing up. Tried to find the "interesting" part of his take, but I got nothing.

 

[jimnjana]

No, you don't have to read the whole article. Guy makes a bunch of wild assumptions, does a partial analysis of SS payouts under those assumptions, congratulates himself on his use of cash flow discounting in the math. Seems to have no real understanding of what he's doing or why. But he got an article in Forbes. Woo Hoo.

thanks for saving me the time in reading the article.

 

[ronin]

And retiring and when to claim SS aren't necessarily the same thing. But I didn't read the article so maybe the author touched on that.

 

[Katsmeow]

Link did not work for me and search found the article but then when I tried to go to article the link did not work.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

No, you don't have to read the whole article. Guy makes a bunch of wild assumptions, does a partial analysis of SS payouts under those assumptions, congratulates himself on his use of cash flow discounting in the math. Seems to have no real understanding of what he's doing or why. But he got an article in Forbes. Woo Hoo.

That was my take. I had to read it three times yesterday because I thought it must be me simply not understanding the assumptions at first. Usually I find many good tidbits in Forbes articles. But in the final analysis I was surprised this one got past the editors.