Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How do you usually celebrate your birthdays?

Rick Rosner: We don’t go out or gather with others for New Year’s or my birthday. Carole likes to mark my birthdays, however. For Hanukkah, she gave me a gift certificate to Michael’s Crafts since I’m running low on some glues.

Jacobsen: Glues?

Rosner: Yeah, you need the right glue for the right job. E6000 is excellent, Gorilla Glue is great, and Super Glue works well for certain tasks. I’ve got at least five different glues, depending on the project.

I must also sign up for Medicare for my birthday in four months. You get penalized if you wait too long after turning 65, so that’ll be on my to-do list.

Carole will probably get me another gift card to Popeye’s Fried Chicken. Popeye’s chicken is better than Chick-fil-A’s, but Chick-fil-A uses too much sugar in its breading, which I don’t like.

Popeye’s can get expensive. Popeye’s closest to us charges over $2 per tender. It’s around $18 to $20 for eight tenders. But there’s a sketchier Popeye’s about eight miles away in a rougher neighbourhood where you can get four tenders and a biscuit for just $4.

If Carole gives me a Popeye’s gift card, I’d have to decide whether driving to the cheaper location is worth the gas. It’s a conundrum.

Jacobsen: What about other gift cards?

Rosner: Carole has a credit card that generates gift points. She recently redeemed points for a $30 gift card to The Cheesecake Factory. So, we’ll be going there at some point—though probably not for my birthday. For my birthday, she’ll pick a nice place for us to go.

They offer discounts if you’re part of their birthday club. Benihana also gives you diarrhea. It’s like prepping for a colonoscopy. When you prep for a colonoscopy, you drink a nasty liquid with salts—like sodium or magnesium salts—that pull water into your intestines through osmosis. That clears you out completely, giving you quick and intense diarrhea.

Benihana is super salty, and for me, at least, it has a similar effect. But honestly, it’s worth it because the food is so good.

Jacobsen: That’s quite the endorsement! 

Rosner: I’ll sign up for Social Security. In the U.S., payroll deductions during your working years fund Social Security, a government pension you can collect in your older years.

The earliest you can start is at age 62. Every year you wait to collect, your monthly payments increase by about 8% until age 70. If you start at 70, your monthly check is twice as much as if you started at 62.

It’s all based on a break-even age of 82. If you think you’ll live past 82, waiting to collect pays off because the largerchecks accumulate over time. But if you think you won’t make it to 82, it’s better to start collecting earlier.

I might start collecting early for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve had stage 1A cancer a couple of times. The doctors say it doesn’t affect my life expectancy, and I assume they’re right—but who knows?

Second, the U.S. government is in chaos. Social Security could change at any time. Your payments aren’t affected by how much money you have saved, but some politicians have floated the idea of means testing. That means reducing or cutting benefits for people with substantial savings or those still working and earning wages.

The government is $34 trillion in debt, and some people—let’s call them a-holes—want to mess with Social Security to address that. So I might start collecting now to lock in some payments before they start screwing with the system.

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Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org

Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com

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