re: Retirement investment options and expected return

That 1 for 2 reduction only applies to earned income from a job or business, not unearned income from investments and retirement assets.

However, unearned income does result in a part of your SS benefits being taxable income, and in one of the most unfair twists in tax law I can think of, for a given amount of total income (SS + investment income), the guy who gets more SS is subject to less of it being taxable than the guy with less SS, at least at the combined income levels I am looking at.

Still works out better for me to take it early. However, if there is a jam up market performance or if that ESOP soars enough (probably a better chance of that) I may still put off SS until 70 for just "fell good" reasons. The "feel good" reasons being that my projected SS 70 benefit is sufficient to be my only income source and that waiting for it would make a large part of my income subject to an inflation adjustment. Downside is that I would be subject to larger RMD's and I can probably take the greater IRA assets I would have and do a better job than SS on beating inflation.

However, this isn't all about the math. After a while, all these numbers are just numbers on a spreadsheet. You can tweek and change percentages here and there, but none of it is likely to reflect the real situation you will face at 70, 80, 90 + if you live that long, just like you can't know how rough the ocean is going to be in a month when you plan a fishing trip. You have to get there with what you got and figure out how to catch some fish. Maybe go inland fishing that day, and just bag something for dinner. However, all these spread sheet analysis do help you figure out what you got and what you can do with it right now and maybe a little about how to steer in rougher waters. In particular, if you update your numbers as the market changes and watch the way your projections change, you learn a lot about navigation.