I'm 62 and started taking Social Security on my birthday this February. My husband and I owned a mom-and-pop real-estate company which, with the downturn, began costing us more to keep up than we were making. We are both still licensed but have shut the doors to our company.
I'm writing mysteries set in the real-estate community as a way to fill my free time and make a little money. My husband will be 66 in September but we will try to put off having him take benefits for as long as possible. Our original plan was to wait until he turned 70 to claim benefits, but I doubt we'll make it.
We're playing all these interesting little games, and we're not sure what we're going to do. We've owned our house for 20 years and it has a lot of equity in it. At some point, we could probably sell it.
With that good chunk of change, it will be a good time to pay back what we've taken out of Social Security, and then re-file for much higher benefits at age 66 or even 70. It's a little known quirk, but the system allows you to pay back everything you've taken out, without interest, and re-file for full benefits at a later age.
We consider ourselves fortunate because we have been planning for retirement for some time. We just didn't plan on it coming this soon.
