Expecting to collect from Social Security?

Maybe you should think again, and read this article.
I’ll turn 65 in 2024. I don’t expect to collect a dime. The only reason I pay FICA without complaint is that it helps keeps my mother and my in-laws afloat. The system will be bankrupt (and/or hopefully changed over to a free-market alternative) before I get old enough to benefit.
I do not believe that it is the government’s business to ensure my retirement. Aesop had it correct in “The Ant and the Grasshopper”. Those who make provisions for lean times survive. Those who do not, end up on the streets or mooching off of their grown children. I have little patience for people who whine about being on fixed incomes when they had the ability to store a little up for years before they retired.
My father never got to retire. He died 15 days after he let his contractor licenses lapse (and lost a lot of SS income over the years between 65 and 77 because he chose to continue working). Someone out there is living on his dime for all the years he worked between 1941 and 2002. Thank God he and Mom had the forethought to put money away (and that Mom had a teacher’s pension from the state).