You can continue to work after retirement, even if you are collecting social security benefits, but be aware that if you have not reached your full retirement age your working income could affect your benefits.

If you were below full retirement age for the entire year you worked, Social Security will deduct $1 of benefits for every $2 you earned over the annual limit. This limit is $12,480 for 2006.

If you reach full retirement age during the year you worked, Social Security will deduct $1 for every $3 you earned over the limit for the months before you attained full retirement age. This limit is $33,240 this year.

Once you reach full retirement age, you may collect full benefits with no limits on your earnings.

If you don’t know your full retirement age, you can check it here.

Starting in 2007, monthly premiums for Medicare will be tied to income. This new rate plan will be phased in over the next three years and will raise premiums for higher income seniors. Premium surcharges will be largest in the highest income brackets ($80,000 for individuals and $160,000 for couples) and by the end of the three year phase-in, the wealthiest seniors will be paying three times as much premium as middle-income seniors.

Some experts fear this will cause higher income seniors to leave the program and rely on private insurance, leaving only the poorest seniors in the program.

As we age our bodies start to react to the wear and tear of life. One morning we realize that groaning we hear as we get out of bed is coming from us. The aches and pains become old friends, suddenly we realize the great satisfaction our fathers got from making those same groaning noises and we find them equally liberating. But one thing that doesn’t get worn out or stop working as we age is our sense of humor.

Comedian George Burns, who lived to age 100 and only stopped performing after a fall two years earlier in 1994, was better known in the last 20 years of his life than he had been at any other time. George Burns became the symbol of aging well: keen wit, sharp mind, active and involved in life and still working at what he loved best.

Simply from a great respect for the man, the performer and because his material is still as funny as it was when it was new, I present these examples of his ageless humor (pun intended).

“Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.”

“By the time you’re eighty years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.”

“You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.”

“When I was a boy, the Dead Sea was only sick.”

“People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit.”

“I was always taught to respect my elders and I’ve now reached the age when I don’t have anybody to respect.”

“I’m going to stay in show business until I’m the last one left.”

“Age to me means nothing. I can’t get old; I’m working. I was old when I was twenty-one and out of work. As long as you’re working, you stay young. When I’m in front of an audience, all that love and vitality sweeps over me and I forget my age.”

~ George Burns ~ January 20, 1896 – March 9, 1996

An updated report from the Federal Forum on Aging-Related Statistics shows that labor force participation rates are increasing for older men and women.

The report shows that among men aged 65 to 69, the participation rate increased from 25% in 1993 to 34% in 2005 and the percentage of women in the same age group who were still working rose from 14% in 1985 to 24% in 2005.

For Americans over 70 the rates continue to rise as well and have done for at least a decade. 10% of men age 70 and older were working in 1993, in 2005 the rate was 14%. The participation rate for women age 70 and older increased from only 4% in 1987 to 7% in 2005.

The Federal Forum on Aging-Related Statistics is comprised of 13 federal departments and agencies which collect, provide, and use data on aging designed to serve policymakers, the media, and the public with an interest in information on the well-being of older Americans.

Older Americans Update 2006