When to Claim Social Security: 62, Full Retirement Age, or 70

A lot, and permanently. Your benefit is built on your primary insurance amount, the monthly figure you receive if you claim exactly at full retirement age. For everyone born in 1960 or later, full retirement age is 67 (SSA). Claim earlier and the benefit is reduced by 5/9 of 1% for each of the first 36 months before that age and 5/12 of 1% for each additional month (SSA Office of the Chief Actuary). Sixty months early, at 62, the reduction totals 30%.

Wait past full retirement age and you earn delayed retirement credits of 2/3 of 1% a month, or 8% a year, for anyone born in 1943 or later. The credits stop at 70, even if you keep waiting (SSA). Three years of credits from 67 to 70 add 24%.

Two features make the difference larger than the percentages suggest. First, every one of those amounts receives the same annual cost-of-living adjustment, which was 2.8% for 2026 (SSA), so the gap between an early and a late claim grows in dollars every year. Second, the choice is almost irreversible. You can withdraw an application once, within 12 months, by repaying everything you and your family received (SSA). You can also suspend benefits between full retirement age and 70 to earn credits. Otherwise, the reduction for claiming early never goes away.

Think of each year of delay as buying more lifetime income, adjusted for inflation, with a survivor feature and federal backing. Few private products combine all four. The price is fixed and known: the benefits you give up that year.

The break-even age is when the cumulative checks from a later claim catch up with the cumulative checks from an earlier one. For a worker with a $3,600 full-retirement-age benefit, the arithmetic is simple. Claiming at 67 instead of 70 gives up 36 checks of $3,600, or $129,600. Waiting adds $864 a month. Dividing $129,600 by $864 gives 150 months, or 12.5 years after 70: about age 82 and a half. The same method puts the break-even for 62 versus 70 at about 80, and for 62 versus 67 at about 78 and a half.

Cost-of-living adjustments do not move these ages, because they raise every claiming age by the same percentage. What does move them is the time value of money. A dollar at 62 can be invested, or can let you leave a dollar in the portfolio. If we discount future checks at 2% a year above inflation, the break-even for 67 versus 70 moves to about 85 and for 62 versus 70 to about 83. At 3% it moves another year or two later.

Break-even analysis also has three real limits, and they cut in both directions:

• •It treats longevity as a bet you want to win. The purpose of a lifetime income is insurance against a long life, when the portfolio is most likely to be strained. Dying at 78 after claiming at 70 costs money you will not need. Living to 95 after claiming at 62 costs money you will.
• •It ignores the survivor. For a married higher earner, the right horizon is the longer of two lives. That changes the answer more than any discount rate.
• •It ignores taxes and portfolio effects. Delaying means spending more from savings in your 60s, which lowers taxable income in those years and raises it later. Whether that helps depends on your brackets, covered below.

Longevity is the input that matters most, and it is personal. The SSA's life expectancy calculatorgives a population average for your birth date. Your own health, your parents' ages at death, and whether you are married all move that number. For a couple, the question is how long the second of you will live, which is longer than either average. Planning to 95 is prudent rather than pessimistic.

They make the higher earner's decision a joint one. While both spouses are alive, a spouse can receive up to 50% of the worker's full-retirement-age benefit, reduced if the spouse claims before their own full retirement age. The spousal benefit is based on the worker's full-retirement-age amount, not on any delayed retirement credits, so the spouse gains nothing extra when the worker waits past 67 (SSA). A spouse with a record of their own receives their own benefit plus any excess spousal amount, not both in full.

The survivor benefit works differently, and it is where delay pays. After a death, the surviving spouse receives the larger of their own benefit or the deceased spouse's benefit, and the smaller one stops. A survivor at their own survivor full retirement age receives 100% of what the deceased was receiving, including delayed retirement credits. A survivor can start as early as 60 at 71.5% (SSA).

If the deceased claimed early, the survivor's benefit is capped at the larger of what the deceased was receiving or 82.5% of the deceased's full benefit (SSA Handbook §407). That rule is why the higher earner's claiming age sets the survivor's income. Claim at 62 and the survivor is limited to about 82.5% of the full benefit. Claim at 70 and the survivor receives 124%.

Tom is 62 and has just retired from an engineering firm. Ellen is 60 and left teaching two years ago. Both have a full retirement age of 67. Tom's statement shows a $3,600 full-retirement-age benefit; Ellen's shows $1,700. They have $2.1 million invested: $1.3 million in traditional IRAs, $600,000 in a taxable brokerage account, and $200,000 in Roth IRAs. The house is paid off. They spend about $120,000 a year, and they have two adult children and three grandchildren.

Tom should plan on 70.On his own life alone, the case is modest: the break-even is in his early 80s, and he is in good health with parents who lived to 88 and 91. The survivor benefit makes it decisive. Suppose Tom dies at 85, when Ellen is 83. If he claimed at 70, Ellen switches from her $1,800 to his $4,464. If he claimed at 62, she receives the larger of his $2,520 or 82.5% of $3,600, which is $2,970. The difference is $1,494 a month, about $17,900 a year in today's dollars, for as long as Ellen lives. If she lives to 93, the difference adds up to about $180,000.

Ellen has more freedom. Her own benefit stops the day she becomes a widow, if Tom dies first, because she switches to his larger one. Delaying her claim therefore buys income only for the years while both are alive, or if she dies first. Claiming at her full retirement age of 67 is a sensible middle course; claiming at 62 would permanently reduce her own benefit and her spousal excess, but the cost is limited.

The price of Tom's delay is eight years of checks, about $242,000, drawn from the portfolio instead. That is roughly 11.5% of their savings, spent in their 60s to buy a larger inflation-protected income that lasts until the second of them dies. The Social Security Estimator shows the claiming-age comparison for your own benefit, and the Retirement Withdrawal Calculator shows whether the portfolio can carry the bridge. Our retire-at-60 case studyran the same test and found that delaying to 70 raised the plan's success rate, even though it meant heavier withdrawals early.

Yes, but the retirement earnings test withholds part of the benefit. In 2026, if you are under full retirement age for the whole year, Social Security withholds $1 for every $2 of earnings above $24,480. In the calendar year you reach full retirement age, it withholds $1 for every $3 above $65,160, and counts only earnings before the month you reach that age. From that month on, there is no limit (SSA).

Only wages and net self-employment income count. Pensions, IRA withdrawals, dividends, interest and capital gains do not. Suppose Tom had claimed at 62 and taken a consulting engagement paying $60,000. His earnings are $35,520 over the limit, so $17,760 would be withheld, about seven months of his $2,520 check.

Withheld benefits are not forfeited. At full retirement age, Social Security recalculates the benefit to remove the reduction for the months that were withheld, so the monthly check rises (SSA). In practice, though, claiming early while still earning well is rarely sensible. You get a reduced benefit, much of it withheld, and taxes on the rest at your working bracket. If you plan to keep consulting into your mid-60s, that is usually a reason to wait.

Up to 85% of your benefit is federally taxable, depending on combined income: adjusted gross income, plus tax-exempt interest, plus half of your benefits. On a joint return, up to 50% of benefits is taxable when combined income is between $32,000 and $44,000, and up to 85% above $44,000. For single filers, the lines are $25,000 and $34,000 (SSA). Those thresholds were set in 1983 and 1993 and have never been indexed for inflation (SSA Office of Retirement Policy), which is why most retirees with meaningful savings pay tax on most of their benefit.

Take Tom and Ellen at 70, with $75,168 of combined benefits and $60,000 of IRA withdrawals. Their combined income is $60,000 plus half their benefits, or $97,584. That is well above $44,000, so the taxable portion is the smaller of 85% of benefits ($63,893) or 85% of the excess over $44,000 plus $6,000 ($51,546). About $51,500 of their Social Security, 69% of it, is taxable.

The phase-in range creates a trap worth knowing about. While benefits are becoming taxable, each extra dollar of IRA withdrawal adds that dollar plus up to 85 cents of Social Security to taxable income. In the 12% bracket, that makes the effective rate on the IRA dollar about 22%; in the 22% bracket, about 41%. Households with large pre-tax balances often pass through this zone quickly, but those with moderate IRAs can sit in it for years. It is one more reason to do conversions before benefits start.

Some states tax Social Security benefits and most do not; check your state's revenue department. Benefits also count toward the income that sets Medicare premiums, covered in our guide to Medicare and IRMAA.

Delaying Social Security turns your 60s into a period of low taxable income, and that is an opportunity. Between retirement and the first check, a couple living on cash and a taxable account can report very little income. That leaves the 10% and 12% brackets empty, and they can be filled deliberately with Roth conversions from the IRA.

For Tom and Ellen, the window runs from now until Tom claims at 70. Then there are a few more years before required minimum distributions begin, at 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Converting some of the $1.3 million each year shrinks the IRA that will later force taxable distributions. It also moves money into Roth accounts that never have required distributions for the owner and pass income-tax-free to their children. Our guide to Roth conversions before RMDs works through how much to convert.

Three cautions. First, conversions raise modified adjusted gross income, and Medicare premiums at 65 are based on income from two years earlier. So conversions from 63 onward need to respect the IRMAA thresholds. Second, if you are under 65 and buying marketplace health insurance, conversion income can reduce or eliminate premium tax credits. Third, the tax on a conversion should be paid from the taxable account, not from the converted money, or much of the benefit is lost.

The order of withdrawals matters as much as the claiming age. Our guide to which accounts to draw from first shows how the conventional order changes when Social Security is delayed. The Tax Bracket Calculator shows how much room each bracket leaves.

Start with five questions. Together they settle most cases.

On the trust fund: the 2026 Trustees Report projects that the combined Social Security trust funds can pay full scheduled benefits until 2034, and 83% after that if Congress does not act. The retirement trust fund on its own runs short in late 2032 (SSA). Any cut would apply to benefits whatever age you claimed, so claiming early to beat it mostly locks in a permanent reduction. A sensible plan tests a 17% to 22% haircut on benefits after 2032 and still delays if the numbers hold.

Before you file, download your earnings record from my Social Security and check it for missing years; errors are easier to fix while employers' records exist. Be wary of anyone who contacts you offering to "maximize" your benefit for a fee; the Social Security Administration does not charge for claiming help, and our guide to investment scam red flags covers the common approaches.