This shouldn’t be news to anyone: If you want to max out your Social Security Administration benefits, wait until age 70 to start receiving them. You’ll get 70% more a month.

But a 70% increase in benefits doesn’t seem to be enough. The majority of people can’t sign up soon enough.

[ad#Google Adsense 336×280-IA]Considering the amount of money most preretirees have saved, except for those whose health won’t allow them to work, virtually no one should consider the earliest out.

If you make the national average of $69,000 per year*, at 70 your monthly check increases by about $1,100 a month, from an average of $1,300 at 62 to around $2,400.

If you’re worried about paying your bills, that alone should be reason enough to stay in the workforce for five more years.

Still, 62-year-olds line up to give away $1,000 a month.

Plus, if you’re able to make the maximum contribution to the SSA for the last five years you work, that’s another $2,000 to $3,000 a month.

Well, if that kind of money isn’t enough to make you rethink your situation, here are a couple more good reasons to delay retiring.

You’ll live longer and feel better.

All the research supports staying active physically and mentally as a way to have a longer, healthier and better retirement. Working keeps us in a social loop and gives us a reason to get up every day.

The couch-to-meals-to-couch loop is just a shortcut to the ER.

And if you have more money coming in after you check out of the work world, you will eliminate or at least reduce one of the biggest stressors in life: money problems.

You don’t want to spend your golden years trying to find the money to repair your car, your roof or your air conditioning.

Working five more years also gives you a chance to add to your retirement account.

At our ages, virtually all of us are out from under the cost of raising children. So we should be able to max out or increase contributions to our 401(k)s and IRAs. Any amount will help!

When 65 was set as the national retirement age, most people didn’t live to 65, and the ones who did checked out very soon afterward.

Heck, at the time the SSA was set up, the average retirement age was 70 in some cases. Seems backward I know, but most people who could worked well into their 70s.

Unless you have done extraordinarily well funding and managing your retirement accounts – and I’m talking at least a million – the idea of getting out at 62 is insane.

Good investing,

Steve

[ad#IPM-article]

Source: Wealthy Retirement

*Figure per U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 American Community Survey