3 Horrifying Retiree Money Mistakes
Most people dream of a retirement spent pursuing all the activities they couldn't do while working, not one spent wrestling with money problems. Yet if you're not careful, you could make expensive money mistakes that will end up tainting the rest of your retirement -- and in the worst-case scenario could even run you out of money. Below you'll find some regrettably common retiree money mistakes; hopefully these grim examples will ensure that you'll never fall into these traps yourself.
Picking the wrong retirement date can cause irrevocable harm to your finances. In most cases, the mistake is retiring too early -- if you quit working before you have enough savings and other sources of income to keep you going for the rest of your life, you'll either end up scraping and pinching to get by or you'll simply run out of money.
More retirees choose to claim their Social Security benefits at age 62 than any other age. 62 is the earliest that you can start getting Social Security benefits, but claiming your benefits this early comes at a price -- your Social Security checks will be permanently reduced by an early retirement penalty of as much as 30%. In fact, according to the 2017 Annual Statistical Supplement of the Social Security Administration, the average 62-year-old receiving Social Security benefits gets $1,076.70 per month; the average 70-year-old gets $1,482.40. That means that retiring early is a double financial whammy: not only do you stop saving and start spending your retirement money earlier than most, but you also end up with a smaller Social Security benefit.
Source: Fool.com
