These Retirees Are Sure to Regret Delaying Social Security Too Long

For many retirees, claiming Social Security at 70 will be the best option to maximize lifetime benefits. However, that is not the case for all seniors. In fact, there’s one particular group that will absolutely regret claiming Social Security benefits late if they had the option to do so earlier. Here’s why.

These retirees should not delay Social Security benefits until 70

Social Security retirement benefits become available once you are 62. For many people, though, putting off a benefits claim until 70 has a big payoff. A delayed benefits claim results in a monthly payment that is higher than their standard Social Security check.

Ending up with more lifetime benefits is also likely if you delay until 70. That’s because people now live longer than they did when Social Security was created, so retirees have a better chance of collecting their higher benefit for long enough to do more than just break even for years of waiting for payments during the delay.

However, it only makes sense to delay until 70 if doing so increases your monthly Social Security check. Otherwise, you’d be giving up money for nothing.

For people who are collecting Social Security retirement benefits on their own work record, benefits do increase until 70, because once you have passed your full retirement age, you can earn delayed retirement credits until that time. These increase benefits by two-thirds of 1% per month after FRA.

Certain Social Security recipients can’t do that, though. If you are receiving Social Security spousal benefits, your benefit maxes out at 50% of your spouse’s primary benefit. It doesn’t matter if you wait beyond FRA and delay your checks until 70. You won’t be able to make your benefit bigger by doing so.

Now, you can increase spousal benefits by waiting until reaching your FRA to start getting checks, instead of just claiming at your earliest eligible age. But, once you’ve hit your FRA, there’s no more money being added to your monthly check due to the delay.

Don’t delay your spousal benefits claim unless you have to

Since you don’t increase your Social Security check by waiting beyond FRA to get spousal benefits, there’s no reason not to claim these benefits as soon as you hit your full retirement age. You can claim at FRA and start using these benefits to supplement your income so you can take less out of your retirement plans.

However, there is one situation when you may have to wait: You cannot claim spousal benefits until your spouse has claimed their own retirement benefits.

So if you are claiming on your spouse’s work record and you are older than them and hit your FRA first, you still have to wait for them to claim their retirement benefits before you can start those spousal checks coming in.

Say, for example, you reach your FRA when your spouse is just 62 because they are younger. If they want to wait until 70 to max out their own retirement benefits, you’d be stuck waiting a full eight years longer to get your spousal benefits to begin.

Since Social Security benefits are protected against inflation and guaranteed to last for life, you and your spouse will need to carefully coordinate to decide which claiming age makes sense for each of you, given how these rules work.

Your higher-earning spouse still may want to wait until 70 to claim, even if that means you have to delay getting spousal benefits for longer, because doing so maxes out the bigger benefit, plus makes survivor benefits bigger.

There’s a lot to think about when making these claiming choices, so be sure you understand how your decisions will affect each other’s benefits and your chances, as a couple, of getting the most lifetime income from Social Security to make the most of this important benefits program.