Last month, I had a milestone birthday. I turned 66.33 years old.
That meant that I was officially considered old enough to deserve to fully retire in the eyes of the United States Social Security Administration. The law says that anyone born in the year I was born reaches our full retirement age when we turn sixty-six years and four months old. That means that we can receive the full monthly Social Security payment that we are entitled to and it won’t be reduced no matter how much income we earn on the side.
When I turned sixty-five last year, I figured that was my final milestone birthday. I figured I had reached the indisputable age where I officially qualified as old by any measurement. And thus I was eligible to receive any compensation society bestows upon people who live this long. When I turned fifty, I was eligible to become a member of the American Association of Retired Persons. At fifty-five, I was able to claim additional perks, such as senior citizen discounts at restaurants.
When I turned sixty-five last year, I figured that was my final milestone birthday.
At age sixty-five, there’s no equivocating, one would think. But the one glaring exception was Social Security. I still wasn’t old enough for them. And their recognition is the most important of all because they are the gatekeepers of the most important old age benefit of all: that monthly check.
It used to be that sixty-five was the official Social Security age of full retirement for everyone. But then the law was changed in 1983 to raise that age. It’s one of the lasting gifts we all received from Ronald Reagan.
Today, sixty-six is the full retirement age for anyone born between 1943 and 1954. And it goes up two months per year after that until it reaches age sixty-seven for people born in 1960 and beyond.
So now that I’m 66.33 at long last, I think it’s safe for me to relax. I know there have always been, and always will be, political forces out there that aim to destroy Social Security in the name of saving it. I was worried for a while that before I reached 66.33 they might succeed in further raising the full retirement age up to ninety-six or something. Make the old people work until we drop. That’s the American way.
I’m sure that one day the full retirement age will be raised again. But I hope that for those of us who have crossed the 66.33 finish line, there will be no going backward. I hope no one will grab us all by our collars and march us back to work. We’ll all be grandfathered in, so to speak.