Full Retirement Age: When You Get 100% of Your Social Security

Why does the statement show several different monthly amounts for the same person? Because the Social Security benefit is a sliding scale pinned to one age. Everything else is that one amount, adjusted.

The age itself

The Social Security Administration sets full retirement age by birth year. For anyone born in 1960 or later, it’s 67. For earlier birth years it’s lower, stepping down by two months a year through the late 1950s and reaching 66 for people born between 1943 and 1954. The monthly amount paid at that age is the primary insurance amount, worked out from your 35 highest years of indexed earnings, and every other claiming age is a percentage of it.

Claiming earlier or later

You can start as early as 62. With a full retirement age of 67, that costs 30%, for life. You can also wait. Each year you delay past full retirement age adds 8% through delayed retirement credits, until 70, when the credits stop and there is nothing more to gain by waiting.

Neither change is all or nothing. The reduction is worked out by the month, so a start at 64 or 65 costs less than the full 30%, and delayed credits also build month by month, so someone who waits until partway through the year after full retirement age earns part of that year’s 8%. You can pick any month between 62 and 70.

The gap between the earliest and latest claim is $1,080 a month. That comes with a trade-off in time: the person who starts at 62 collects for eight more years before the 70-year-old gets a first check, and whether the larger check makes up for those missed years depends on how long you live, which nobody knows in advance. The Social Security claiming calculator shows the break-even ages for your own amounts.

Where it matters beyond your own check

Full retirement age sets the boundary for the earnings test. If you claim before it and keep working, benefits can be withheld when your earnings go above a yearly limit, which the Social Security Administration publishes and changes each year. The withheld months aren’t lost for good. At full retirement age the benefit is recalculated to credit them back, and from then on the test stops applying.

It also sets spousal benefits. A spouse who claims a benefit on your record before their own full retirement age gets a reduced amount, and delayed retirement credits don’t raise spousal benefits, so waiting past full retirement age helps the spouse only indirectly. Survivors have a separate schedule. The course on how to timing your Social Security claim works through the household decisions in order.

Where it shows on your Social Security statement

Log in to your “my Social Security” account and open the statement. It gives your full retirement age and monthly estimates for claiming at 62, at 70 and at your full retirement age, and the current version also shows the ages in between. The estimates assume you keep earning at about your recent level until you claim. The earnings record is on the same statement.

What people get wrong

The most common mistake is thinking full retirement age is 65. That was true for people born in 1937 or earlier. Today 65 is the usual Medicare age. Claiming Social Security then means a reduction.

Another is believing the early reduction goes away at full retirement age. It doesn’t. A benefit started at 62 stays reduced for life, apart from cost-of-living adjustments. A third is waiting past 70 in the hope of more credits. They stop at 70. Benefits may also be taxed, as set out in how Social Security is taxed.

Related terms

Primary insurance amount is the benefit at full retirement age. Delayed retirement credits are the increases for waiting past it. The earnings test can withhold benefits from early claimants who work. More on planning income sits under retirement.