I always thought this would be simple ... but, after reading experiences and thoughts from this and other fora ...
I was going to initially simply wait till 70 ... because it was simple and offered the "it's more money."
Wife and I both 65 ... will be in the 24% bracket in 2019. Income from military pension and corporate pension, with some paid for rentals. Old IRAs and 401K transfers from megacorp with about 25% Roth.
Couple of things hanging on me re SS:
1. Things could change wrt solvency - low probability
2. Things could change wrt means testing - more probable
3. The SS "crisis" is getting closer - and, our start date could fall right when it hits - some probability
4. Psychology of "not saving" - yeah, weird thought, but we have done it for so long we still discuss ... perhaps wistfully?
We only have control of 3. and 4., above ... since 66 is next year, we can mitigate 3., by taking SS at FRA. This would also help with the psych of "saving" since we would likely dollar cost average into a mix of equities and bonds.
Hard .... grrrrrr...