This is some crap. Right now, full retirement age is 66. Starting in 2021, it will go up 2 months every year until it hits 67. Ofc, with our cabal of useless and douchebag politicians (and fucking Tom Brokaw), it might get pushed up to infinity by the time we're in our 60s.

Anyway, for now, you can start collecting social security as early as 62 or delay it up to 70. If you start collecting before "full retirement age", you get a reduced percentage and you will always get that reduced percentage (30% less if you start collecting at 62). If you hold off until 70, your social security check will be 32% greater than if you start collecting at 66 - 8% for every year you hold off. This is called "delayed retirement credits".

Now, if you started collecting social security but then read about the delayed retirement credits and are in good health and don't expect to shed this mortal coil before 70, you can tell SS to suspend your benefits until you're 70, thus earning the delayed credits and getting a bigger check later on. However, if you have also signed up for Medicare Parts B, C, and/or D, the premiums for these are coming out of your ss check. If you suspend ss but don't send Medicare on time payments yourself, they will continue to deduct it from your ss, which effectively negates your suspension of ss benefits.

But SS won't tell you that. They will continue to not send you checks until 70 because ofc that part they understood correctly, but you won't accumulate those extra delayed retirement credits so your check won't be any bigger and you'll have basically lost out on collecting ss checks for those 4 years when you thought your benefits were suspended.

Was that confusing? I thought it was confusing. Why is it that in order to know basic things necessary to our lives we have to figuratively go down the broken stairs to the cellar, with a flashlight, past the "Beware of the Leopard" sign, and find the locked cabinet in the disused lavatory? I barely have enough functioning neurons to remember from the time i leave the bathroom to the time i get to my phone that i wanted to add "toilet paper" to the shopping list. I'm only 40! What do you think i'm going to be like at 67? I don't need help making things difficult!

And like fnord12 said - seems to me if someone can write a book saying that, someone in the SSA ought to have been notified and fix it. i mean, that's a "bug".

Right? RIGHT???