This is an interesting (and timely) conversation. My mega-corp provides Financial Engines with our 401(k), and last night I discovered their Income Planner > Cash Flow Income & Expense Details report. I ran it the first time with our projected SS payments beginning at 70. It lists yearly tax detail, expenses (adjusted for inflation), Minimum Required Distributions, withdrawals needed yearly to meet your expenses, and projected shortfall for each year. According to this report, if we begin SS at 70, we'll be leaving our kids about $1.8M, each. If we begin at 62, they'll each get $1.3M.
Now I need to go back and see how they'll fare if we only get 75% of our SS. Great insights in this thread!
If you have access to Financial Engines, this is a pretty cool report to generate.