Very nice.
My old age delay excuse is I'm always in the planning stage, for every project. Then, once I get started, I stumble onto another improvement idea/aspect/plan, so I end up altering the design as I build.
As someone, here, posted long ago, "Project Management":
Sonny
--------------------------------------------------- Le>> LOL some us are really really old. LOL I'll be 60 this year.
---------------------------------------------------- Greg Guar> Wow. That *is* old. A whole three years ahead of me.
--------------------------------------------------- Rookies!
Will hit 77 in July.
There are several in the '80's decade of their lives on the wrec.
Lew
I was reading this morning about a man that was celebrating his 111th birthday. Born in 1903.
Asked his secret to a long life the list included the usual, no alcohol, stopped smoking, etc. The one I found funny and at the top of the list was NO Kids. ;~)
Then I got to wondering and putting things into perspective. He was a year younger than I am now when I began first grade. So this guy was 35 when you were born Lew. My mother was a grand mother when she was 38 so it would not be a stretch for him to possibly have been a grand father when you were born and he is still ticking.
Geez Lew I thought you were older. That's not so old.
I saw that on Yahoo this morning. He is currently the oldest male in the world, the oldest female being 116. He said, the notoriety is "not quite like winning the Nobel Peace Prize." --Bill
On Tue, 06 May 2014 09:44:38 -0500, Leon
Nah, you're just a teenybopper. :)
My wife can't find a job so has decided she'd rather be retired, though doesn't have the income. ;-) She can take SS but we're trying to decide whether it's better to wait. It's not like we need the money.
I "retired" in '06 at 54 but went back to work after 9 months. I like what I do, though would rather not do so much of it. ;-) When we moved to AL ('08), we decided we'd buy a house that we could pay off it five years. It was a good plan, until I lost that job and had to move again (and lost $25K on the house). We'll have the new house paid off in a year (~30K left). We could have had that paid off, now, but decided to buy a couple of cars (literally drove the wheels off my truck and the 'stang was pretty ;).
Same here. We often finance at 0%. We rarely have more than one going at a time and usually have it paid off in a couple of months. We don't buy all that much with CCs, perhaps $1K. We should use them more.
Something to consider, we will probably take my SS at 62, IIRC I determined that I have to live to 78 to benefit more by waiting until 65 vs 62. So basically it takes 16 years to end up getting more money. We will probably wait to take my wife's SS as that will be a greater amount and if either of us dies one of us gets the bigger amount of SS. So in her case we may wait until she is 70.
True enough. But I prefer to see it as a case of "never too old to learn something new". Being a novice at something, even at our "advanced" age, can be a pleasurable thing.
I built a few things at long intervals in the past, but I can feel it becoming a hobby now, albeit one that produces (unadorned but always sturdy) furniture for the house. My wife has seen the benefits of this hobby too. About 500 books, 450 CDs and now some of the larger crockery have found new and more efficient homes over the last year. Living room furniture next, I think, starting with a couple of book/display shelving units.
Full retirement for me was 66 so I started taking the SS but still working. It is a 14 year payback if I waited to 70 to collect. Looking at family history, I'd not benefit.
I cut my work hours back but get the same salary and the SS sure makes for a lot of "fun" money.
Exactly, I'm hoping that SS will be gravy.
I've been studying the various strategies. The best I've seen is for the higher earner (higher SS payments) to hang on as long as possible. The other can retire early and collect their SS whenever. When the higher earner turns 66 (in my case), he files to collect SS, then suspends payments. The other can then get the spousal benefit which is half of what the higher earner would make, minus the spouse's SS payment (plus the payment the spouse was receiving before). Then at
70, the higher earner starts collecting, no matter what his income.If she started collecting today, we wouldn't catch up until we were
76, but the payments when we need it would be substantially less (~$700/mo). We're weighing the alternatives.As you say, if either of us die, it wouldn't matter if she started now or later. It is a big factor.
Last summer I had to buy a new truck (they wanted absurd money for used and the wheels rusted off my Ranger). Until our other house sold (contract for April-1), we were a little cash poor so financed the truck for eight months, or so. The finance manager said that with our credit, we could buy the whole damned lot (he later disclosed, though he wasn't supposed to, that it was 840). He kept trying to sell us another car. As we about to leave with the new truck, he said that he'd just gotten a Mustang convertible in, in the same color. My wife
*liked* it. ;-)Using other people's money (zero-percent financing) boosts credit scores quite a bit. ...not that there is a difference between ~720 and 850.
I have not even looked yet, but I really didn't understand the above, why would you file to collect, then suspend?
It allows the wife to collect from his benefit now. By suspending his, he can activate it later and collect more. Up to age 70 the benefit increases every year.
Because your spouse can then collect "spousal benefits", which can be
1/2 of yours (50% of yours minus 100% of hers). She can't claim it until you've filed, though. As long as you suspend, then your benefit continues to rise as you pay more in.
Thanks, got it.
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