Your break-even age isn't the number that matters. These 3 are.

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]The numbers that matter most to you and to your household are not your break-even year. It's not even your life expectancy or your expected lifetime benefit. They're the following. Number one, how big is your income gap once your final paycheck actually cashes? And how much of that gap do you want covered by guaranteed lifetime income that's going to last as long as you do? Number two, how likely is it that one of you will outlive the other for a meaningful number of years? And how do you protect the income floor for whoever ends up alone? Number three, how wide is your tax planning window between the years of retirement and the first year that you have to start taking your RMDs? And what does claiming your Social Security benefit early versus late do to your ability to utilize it? Those are the numbers that should tell you what's right for you, and they're the numbers that a break-even calculator cannot fully assess.