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Re-activateHere's another way of looking at Social Security, courtesy of a new report from the National Academy of Social Insurance: If you bought an insurance company annuity to create an income stream equal to your Social Security benefits, it would run you about $225,000.
That assumes a 65-year-old retiree collecting the average monthly Social Security benefit for 2007 of $1,045. The annuity's payments would rise with inflation (similar to Social Security) and continue paying a surviving spouse after the retiree died (ditto). We haven't checked the report's math, but its logic seems reasonable.
Of course, the value of your benefits will depend on many factors, one of which is whether you start to collect at age 62, at your "full" retirement age, or as late as age 70. We explored some of the pros and cons of that decision in this recent article in Consumer Reports.
If you'd like to weigh in on the value of Social Security, or any other retirement-related topic, visit our new retirement forum.
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