Phat Unplugged

Second Facebook post
Thinking of anxiety again. I know no one that has known me for the last 30 years will believe that at one time I was painfully shy. Maybe those of you that knew me in my youth remember that I was very shy and reserved. Please pipe in if you remember that me. I need someone to support my contention that I was shy.Looking back at that I see that the shyness was a manifestation of my anxiety. In college and later I dealt with it by being a bit more extroverted(other people may use the term "loud and obnoxious"). I think these were different sides of the same coin.That is all ok. Without it I would not be who and where I am. I like who I am and I like where I am. The road had some bumps and an occasional bridge outage and collapse, but here I am. Scars and all.Treating my anxiety is allowing me to enjoy what I have. It is also a lot better for my son, who also is a bit anxious. Nature? Nurture?

If you wait until age 70 you'll get 24% more. For example, if by retiring at age 66 and 10 months you would get $40,000/year, if you instead waited until age 70 you would get $49,600/year. To the extent one can know these things, this is a good idea if you project a long retirement, a bad idea otherwise.--Percy

Well, except for the fact that he supports the politicians who are voting to do away with Social Security and Medicare because they don't know the difference between socialism and social programs, and because they are just fucking assholes!

If he votes GQP he better take it now.

I turn 62 in July. I am taking it then. We don't need the income to live. I haven't had a real paycheck job in 20 years, so my payment wont be huge anyway. We can sock it away and work toward my wife retiring in 8 years when she turns 55.
Everyone has different needs and desires. I wonder if Phat can work til 70. With his physical and mental health issues he should take it as soon as he can. He would have to live to 82.5 to make up that difference.
3x40=120
120/9.6=12.5
Please check my calculations.

I took my Social Security at 62, but I kept working, so I could only collect partial SS, I think it was 4 or 5 months per year that they sent checks. Since I was still paying in it caused my retirement date to advance as if I had actually waited later than 62 to retire. Then I think I did also get some kind of larger payout when I finally did quit working at 70.

Or because it's just business.As I recall the figures, 15% of wages goes to payroll taxes (FICA) in order to fund Social Security and Medicare. The employee pays half of that (7.5%) and the employer pays the other half. If it's a large company then payroll taxes can take a sizeable bite. It seems to me that that is the reason Republicans keep trying to kill Social Security and Medicare, because that's what their owners want.An interesting corollary grift during the Trump Administration was when Trump declared a moratorium on paying payroll taxes, a deferment. For the rest of the year (about 4 to 6 months as I seem to recall) businesses could choose to defer those taxes (ie, it was voluntary for the companies). He tried to sell it to the public as benefiting them by "giving" them more take-home pay, but what he didn't tell them was that in the beginning of the next year they'd have to pay twice the normal payroll tax, thus reducing the amount of their take-home pay. The only one to benefit was the company who could report larger earnings or have extra money to work with (eg, invest). The companies who chose this would profit from the extra money so that having to pay it the next year wouldn't bite as much (if at all), but the employees would have spent that extra money instead of investing it and so would be made to suffer for Trump's "largess".Kind of reminds me of G.H.W. Bush's "worker tax break" which was only reducing the amount withheld for federal income tax, but without reducing our income tax. We still had to pay the same income tax, but now we had less withheld with which to pay it. So the nasty surprise for many was that they not only wouldn't get a tax refund, but they actually owed money and suddenly needed to come up with the cash.Going further back, there was Reagan's much touted "huge tax break" which in my case (a young engineer with a family just starting out, so definitely lower middle class) nearly doubled my federal income tax.Needless to say, every time Republicans start promising to reduce our taxes, I become very afraid.

Yep.We have been able to avoid those GOP tax scams.Our Family Finance Officer (FFO), my wife, sees to it that we over pay, so no surprises. And she has always invested our tax refunds. She has to file quarterly tax returns and payments because we now have payouts from multiple deferred comp accounts (401K & IRA). Back when we set them up we really didn't have an idea of how much annual income they would generate, it all seemed like pie in the sky back then.

Good question. IIRC I never addressed the problem for twenty years. I felt entitled and even went so far as to assume that God would bless me! My first real attempt to stop lasted a little over 1 year. I relapsed when my Mother went into assisted living and I rapidly lost control, spending $10,000.00 in six months! That was sadly my savings and I picked up the pieces and started again. I never lose control for more than a day or two but I still gamble far too much. The bottom line is that fantasy never works. It isn't real. It's been 4 months now, with a couple of 1-2 day relapses. I see a counselor.

So it has not been 4 months. Every relapse resets the clock.

If income tax is deducted from IRA/401k dispersals, and if more is deducted than is owed at the end of the year, as is the case when there's a refund, then no quarterly tax returns or estimated tax payments should be necessary.--Percy

Inflamatory YouTube videos. Gambling. Conspiracy theories. You're an adrenaline junkie.--Percy

We have 3 pensions that have automatic taxes withheld but I don't think she has the 401Ks and IRAs set up that way. We have other income that has no withholding also.

I preach this to my younger friends. Start a tax deferred account, even with just a little, and invest in mutual funds; each year, split your raises between your pocket and those investments. Relatively painlessly, you will reach a secure retirement.We did that. Now we're rolling over as much of that tax deferred money as we can each year into a Roth account, again with mutual funds. If we don't, in later years ALL our minimum required distributions will fall into a higher tax bracket.Of course, Congress keeps fiddling with the applicable laws. I sort of enjoy the gamesmanship, but I take advantage of tax avoidance and deferral opportunities as soon as I can: those Congress critters are shifty.

As long as the total withheld exceeds the total tax owed then no quarterlies should be needed.Also, the IRS is way understaffed. I always underpay, TurboTax always insists I have to file quarterlies next year, I always ignore it, and I never hear a peep from the IRS. One year I underpaid by around 30%.--Percy