I know I am late to this thread, but I have experience.
I am 71 and have been retired for a few months short of 10 years.
At about 61 I realized that I was selling my days to the company for less than they were worth to me and retired a few months later. Took SS at 62, as soon as I could. I am very happy with this decision. Whatever "break-even" age you calculate form most of the calculators out there is very much biased towards taking SS later. The reason is that they leave out what economists call the "time value of money". Essentially, a dollar income today is worth more than a dollar income in a year and a lot less that a dollar income in 10 years. The higher the interest rate you can get on your money, the longer the break even point becomes. Plus, I would far rather be master of my own financial destiny than have the government be master of my financial destiny.
Funny thing is that the government knows all about the time value of money when they want you to pay them. If you are late on a tax payment, they charge interest. But when they calculate what your best age to take SS is they develop amnesia on that point.
Make no mistake about this point: there is no such thing as a safe haven. There are at least two types of risk with any investment (and just putting money in a bank account is an investment). If you buy stocks or any other asset there is market risk. If you put your money in fixed income investments, or a savings account there is inflation risk. Annuities are almost always a bad idea. The return on your money is paying a whole raft of people at the annuity company before you ever see a cent.
If you need a financial advisor because you do not feel qualified to manage your own money, get one who charges a fee, not one who charges a percentage of assets. Interview several before you choose a financial advisor. If you have SS and/or a pension ask him how he treats them in your asset allocation. If he does not count them as the equivalent of a fixed income investment, move on until you find someone who understands this concept. An advisor who does not understand this will subject you to much more inflation risk than you should take on.
Do not believe the fiction that SS is inflation-protected. The inflation numbers the government uses leave out a lot of things we all have to have, like food, medical care and energy, but include a lot of things we don't need to buy all the time like TVs, which keep getting better and cheaper. I got a letter from SS last week telling me that inflation increase in my payment would be O.3% for 2017, which was about $5 per month, but that the deduction from my check for medicare will increase by a little over $125 per month. This means that I lost $120 per month. Now I can probably afford this, but people who are more reliant on SS are going to be negative effected.
For us, a safe haven is having all (as in 100%) of our investable assets in stocks (mostly very low fee mutual funds) and rental property. We withdraw a fixed percentage of the stocks each month. Not 1% like RSKY, but I think 0.5% is OK. As the market fluctuates the amount can go up or down. Cash flow from the rentals is spendable income also. This is not for the faint of heart, but it works for us.
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One last point. We do not have paid-off mortgages. We have fixed rate mortgages between 3 and 4% on our home and on our rentals. Why? When lenders are willing to give this old geezer a great big, non-callable loan at 3 to 4% at a time when real inflation is at least that high, I am going to take it. Our pensions and SS will more than cover the loan on our home, and allow us to live frugally. We would have to take money out of stocks where we are getting 8 to 10% to pay off the mortgage. IMHO paying off the mortgage is not safe, it is dangerous. It subjects us to excessive inflation risk which is very real.
