If you want to retire early, you have to look at Social Security a lot differently. And here's why. Social Security is based on your 35 highest years of earnings. So, hypothetically, if you retire at 55 and you work at 20, and that's when you begin your earnings, it's pretty simple. You work at 20. You retire at 55. There you go. You got your 35 highest years of earnings. Don't have to worry about it. But a lot of you are going, hey, we're considering an early retirement. And, you know, real earnings didn't start for us until 23, 24, maybe even 25. And we want to retire at 50 or 55. And so if I start working at 25 and I stop working at 55, well, I've only got 30 years of earning. So how does

my social security benefit change if I've got five big zeros there? So if you're going to go

do some planning projections on your end, social security, when you look at your statement,

it's going to assume you're just continuing to work. So that benefit number that you see there,

it's not entirely accurate. Now, don't freak out

because it doesn't get impacted, I think, to the degree that you think it does. It's still a difference. I'm going to explain it today through an example, but I don't want you worrying about it to the degree of, hey, should I just keep working two or three years just for this Social Security benefit? Okay. So let's work through an example.

I have a quick review of the week, and then we are going to, of course, hop in in this review.

I'm just pulling up on my... benefit. Okay. So let's work through an example. I have a quick review of the week, and then we are

going to, of course, hop in in this review. I'm just pulling up on my phone right now. I know a lot of

you are watching on YouTube, and a lot of you are, of course, just taking this in on iTunes. So

wherever you are gathering this information is good with me. It'll always continue to get posted on both.

That's a question I'm often asked. This one comes from Terry Shea, who says, lovely show.

I'm excited every single week and more excited when you post on a Friday in addition to your

Monday episode. Thanks for all your help, especially on the tax and estate planning. You're very welcome, and I love doing what I do. Now, all of you know this by now, but I want to make sure that you retire with total confidence, and none of that head trash. And that thing in the back of your head going, hey, am I not going to be okay if markets do this? Or if, for example, my withdrawal strategy doesn't become effective, if I'm taking too much out, all that is head trash. And so having a good plan that lets you sleep at night, let your spouse sleep at night, make sure that you are optimizing and that your children are getting optimized as well. That's why we love what we do. So with that being said, let's hop in. I've got a few fun examples. I'm just going to go right into it because this is important.

So specifically with Social Security, it looks at your 35 highest years of earnings, and I'm going to pull up a quick study that I did, and I essentially wanted to know, let's assume

that you collected $100,000 a year every single year for 35 years.

Your full retirement age benefit at 67, assuming this example,

would be $2,893 versus if you collected 100,000 year for 30 years, so five fewer years,

the benefit would be $2,685. That's just full retirement age, so the gap continues to widen

if we're collecting at 70 and it's less wide, of course, at

Shorten, of course, at 62.

So in this example, let's just call it about $2008 difference there from deciding 35 years

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