I took mine at 62 but we had a few other reasons. My wife is only eligible to get half mine as she is short of the 40 quarters but she is also 5 years older than I am so was 67 when I turned 62. She receives half of my full pension as if I were her age. Weird but this is what we are getting. Given the political pressures constantly talking about getting rid of SSA benefits, means testing, or trimming, I felt it prudent to take what I could at the earliest time possible. With national debt exceeding $30 trillion and if interest rates go up at all the government cannot pay the interest let alone the debt on the massive debt which continues to grow. Only austerity is left as a tool unused by the government to try and reign in this insane spending. Austerity will begin with SSA and Medicare and it is only a matter of when not if as both political parties are saying similar things. The payroll tax rollback is a direct attack on both SSA and Medicare designed to force failure and early changes. I don't trust either party to keep the interests of the people in mind so I expect the worst. Working for the government for 40 years taught me that as well. I was very adept at forecasting doom and gloom in the military through dark times (post-Vietnam) and later when funding shifted towards buying expensive toys (F-35, etc.) and/or expensive personnel training programs (SOF). Left understated are the Veteran's benefits and programs which are woeful and extremely neglected yet are becoming massive problems with permanent disabilities, especially mental health which isn't cheap. All of that is woefully underfunded so more debt is coming. The same for the COVID-19 relief. The toll on the economy is still forthcoming and will affect benefits at some point. It has to.
Additionally, I spent part of my career working on a project in the early -70's looking at longevity of retired military and it is bad. Back then in 1972 the mean age of death was 47 for a military retiree. It has; of course, gone up since due to massive lifestyle and training changes but the military life still takes a huge toll on longevity. That actuarial program actually was the driving force behind the big changes in the military lifestyle but I already see many rolling back to the way it was before a sour operational tempo doesn't permit the luxury of nice easy training. Now soldiers have back to back combat tours and it is "normal" now to have 6 or more years of combat before retiring. I think each year of combat reduces your life expectancy by as much as 10 years depending on injuries and experiences. There is probably an upper limit t the damage but it is huge. We have never seen soldiers before with this many years of combat stress so it is a whole new ball game. But, even training itself takes a huge toll which is hard to estimate. Having spent my entire adult life in the military with several years in combat zones AND having been exposed to the data, I am fully aware of the statistical issues. I was also Special Forces for several years as well as being a helicopter pilot before becoming a microbiologist and my work with high consequence biothreat agents in ABSL-4 conditions sure doesn't help. On top of all of that no male in my family has lived past age 82 and my father and my grandfather on my father's side both died at age 76. On my mother's side they do a bit better but 82 is the max there. The women, on the other hand, often live to be 100 and my mother died this year at age 95. So, given our genetics and lifestyle paybacks you have to factor that in as well. The government runs these numbers and is pretty good at minimizing financial liability. This affects how they set up programs and is in part the driving force behind efforts to reduce benefits or change retirement age. So, given I have an arguably poor chance of living past age 76 and the program itself is always in constant jeopardy we decided to take it as soon as possible. You situation is different as is everyone's.
The other things which was very unexpected to me is our entire financial plan for retirement turned out to be amazingly wrong. We live entirely on our pensions and even then can't spend it all. We saved and have over $500k in cash sitting idle. We have $850k in various IRA's and equity accounts which my wife Day Trades with. She is earning roughly $90k a year just Day Trading and all of it is sitting in the accounts. Because we retired to Hungary which has excellent and cheap medical care our medical expenses are lower than what we would be paying for our Part B premiums which I declined so have lost my military retiree medical coverage which is useless overseas anyways. Hungary also has no property or death taxes. Our living expenses are more or less constant and under $3k a month including a full time employee. So, we could have waited and received more money but it isn't a real factor as it turned out. Things may change though and I am somewhat apprehensive that all of my pensions could disappear should the US go bankrupt and implement the Great Reset thus cancelling the entire debt by closing the Federal Reserve and it's 5 private banks making the debt magically go away except all those treasuries everyone bought will become valueless. It would be a disaster to the world's economy and explains why so many countries are stepping away from using American dollars. If they decide to do something like that then all other programs will be reset as well. Will it happen? I doubt it but I am fearful it might. Fearful enough to start moving all our cash into Swiss Franc accounts here in Europe.