I am 65 years old and will reach my full retirement age of 66 in March of 2018. I was out of work for about 2.5 years at the beginning of 2002 or so. During that time I constantly searched for a job, but due to a few health problems I had at the time I was limited in what I could do. I had no one to help out so I had to basically live on credit cards for most of that time. (I know... horrible!) By the time I was able to find a job it paid only $30,00 - a little over half of what I had been making. And I had about a $35,000 credit card debt from having no income for 2+ years. Since I was making so little and had such huge amount of debt, and still live alone (so have all the living expenses by myself) I still owe about $17,000. Numerous times I thought about seeing if I would qualify for bankruptcy, but morally didn't think it was right. I didn't want to ruin my credit score just in case there ever came a time when I could buy a little house. Now I'm beginning to think I was so wrong. I do have a decent credit score (about 808 in May), but that doesn't do me any good now. I have been having a lot of various health problems and have only worked a little over 20 hours a week since last December. My job will also be phasing out probably the first quarter of next year. So.... I feel I will have to retire in March, when I am 66, if I even make it working till then. The problem will be that I will still have that much debt, and my Social Security will be about $1500/mo. (of course Medicare will come out of that) I have absolutely no idea what to do. I am currently renting so I don't even have a paid off home to live in. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated !!!

Hi,

You don't mention a marital history, so I don't know whether or not you have any options other than filing for your retirement benefits at some point. If retirement benefits on your own record are your only option, then your decision is pretty basic. You can either start your benefits sooner at a lower rate, or later at a higher rate. If you waited until age 70 to start drawing for example, your benefit rate would be 32% higher than your age 66 rate. We generally encourage people to try to maximize their lifetime monthly benefit rate, but it sounds like your financial situation may not permit you to do that.

You may want to consider using the maximization software available on this website in order to compare your options and decide on your best strategy. And, if you had any marriages that lasted for at least 10 years, using the software may be particularly helpful.

Best, Jerry