The Social Security Waiting Game: When to Claim Your Benefit

Social Security lets you start as early as 62. It pays more for every month you wait, up to 70. The monthly check at 70 can be far larger than the one at 62, and for most people the age they pick sets the base amount for the rest of their lives, and for a surviving spouse’s life too.

That makes claiming one of the largest money decisions in retirement. It deserves more than an afternoon.

Who it suits

The course suits anyone within about fifteen years of claiming. Married couples gain most, because the order in which two people claim decides what the survivor lives on, and that income may have to last for many years after the first death. Already claiming? The lessons on taxes and on working still apply.

What to have ready

Bring your Social Security statement. Sign in to your “my Social Security” account at the SSA and download it.

It lists your earnings year by year. It also estimates your benefit at several claiming ages, and it shows your full retirement age, which depends on the year you were born. Check the earnings history first. A missing year or a wrong figure lowers your benefit, the statement is where you would spot it, and the SSA explains how to ask for a correction if something looks wrong, which is far easier to sort out now than after you have claimed. A spouse should bring theirs too.

How to work through it

Take the lessons in order. The course starts with how your earnings become a benefit. Every later choice changes that number. It then weighs claiming early, at full retirement age or late, adds the rules for spouses and survivors, and closes with what happens when you keep working or when benefits become taxable.

Keep your statement open throughout. When a lesson works an example, redo it with your figures. The Social Security claiming calculator does the comparison across ages for you. Couples should sit down together for the spousal lesson, each with a statement open, since the best age for one of you depends on the other’s record, age and health. Each lesson ends with a short quiz. Check your arithmetic there first.

Yearly figures, such as bend points and earnings test limits, appear only as labeled hypotheticals. The SSA publishes the current ones each fall.

What it leaves out

Disability benefits are left out. Supplemental Security Income, a separate needs-based program, is left out as well. Each has its own rules and applications at the SSA. Personal advice is out too. Situations differ, and the SSA can answer questions about your own record.

Where to go after

For taxes on benefits, read the guide to how Social Security is taxed. To see where your benefit fits in a whole retirement income plan, take the course on building a withdrawal plan, which starts by subtracting Social Security from your spending.