From CNBC:
Many people who wind up with a smaller Social Security check because they claim their benefit early could have waited longer to file, thanks to funds in their IRA.
That’s the finding from a recently published study in the Journal of Pension Economics & Finance.
“It seems like there is a significant portion of the population claiming early even though they have the potential to finance a delay,” said Gopi Shah Goda, a co-author of the study and the deputy director and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Around 34 percent of beneficiaries who claim their Social Security before 66 – the current full retirement age for most people – have enough money in an IRA to finance the equivalent of at least two years of Social Security benefits, the researchers found. A quarter of them had enough to finance at least four years…