Yep. That's exactly what I was arguing for. :)
You argued that you could just buy an annuity equivalent to what social security is:
I bet with just a few years working I could save enough to more than duplicate SS's effect, plus buy plenty of insurance for your scenarios (and/or an annuity)
You can't. There are not any insurance policies or annuities that are mathematically equivalent to the $$$ level provided in the first bend point. That's why it's such a good deal. You'd have to spend drastically more capital to buy an annuity to get your the same.
Again, you are missing my point. You're so focused on the
money.
My focus is the
time. Sure, it's a great deal. To get more money. By trading your time. If you have way more money than time though, you don't care about that.
If you had an extra 10MM, but needed a few more years of work to get SS credits, and didn't want to trade that time, you could buy that annuity. It's a WAY worse deal money-wise than the SS based on the amount of
money you pay into SS to get it, but the annuity ony costs you money. The SS credits cost you money and years of your life ("years" could be months, or whatever.. time).
Your point that SS is a much better deal if you're only comparing the amount you contribute to SS versus the amount you'd have to pay for the annuity is true, but you're ignoring the time SS also cost. That's something that may not be worth any price.
(FWIW, I'm not arguing for an annuity. I'm just pointing out that you may have a surplus of money over time, and in that case, earning SS credits may not make sense. You point out that it's such a great deal though, but at that point, you probably don't care.)
Yeah, the vast majority of early retirees either already have them, or just need a handful of credits. Has anyone fired in less than 5 years? That'd be absurdly fast.
THere's some on here that say they ER'd between ages 25-28, they might be right around 5 years working.
(They tend to be semi-ER, when they describe it, every time I've seen details though.)
We ER'd at age 29, and that still took nearly 8 years of working, so 5 would be quite fast.
I don't see myself breaking the 10 year mark, but on the off-chance that I do, I have an infinite list of fun part-time jobs that I'd like to try at some point.
Totally. The wife has more SS credits than I, due to working through high school and college. Right now she's self-employed writing romance novels (though that won't count for SS, as it's been excluded via FEIE). It will probably be worth having her earn the rest of her credits, though it'll likely happen naturally.
That's the key, to me. You aren't earning credits for the sake of doing so (aka literally OMY, selling time for money), you're pursing what you want to do, and it happening to earn some money is fine.