I'd love to hear from more folks about when they started SS, and why.

I crunched the numbers until I was blue in the face and shriveled in the brain. It didn't matter. I've read different takes on what the "magic number" is: 84, 82, 85. Let's say it's 84, just for argument. That means you "break even" at 84. So if you live to 85, you've "lost" a couple bucks that you would otherwise have had. How much? Not a lot, not so much that you should worry about it for the next two decades, certainly.

Mrs. Goofy and I both stopped working in 2001 (she went back to work from 2003-2008, roughly.) But when she stopped, all income (except for investment dividends and interest) also stopped, obviously. That made me uncomfortable, so I decided to start taking SS at age 65 1/2, which was a bit over a year ago.

She is quite a bit younger than I (7 years) so she won't be eligible for a while. And when she becomes eligible, we'll probably hold off on her, since we have some money coming in, so hers can build. In the meantime, I don't have to see $4-5,000 a month fly out the door with no paycheck to replace any of it. It may not have been the most mathematically correct answer, but it gave us peace of mind to have something coming in, so that's what we did.

(For the record, my mother died at 90, my father is still alive at 92 - but then I have asthma issues, so I may not last as long. But that wasn't really part of the final calculation; it was more about "what gives us some peace of mind now.")