Investment and Financial Planning Resources
When Should I Start Social Security?
One of the most common conversations we have with clients isn't about markets or mutual funds. It's about when to turn on Social Security. And it's often the most contentious one, too.
"Are you just telling me to wait so you benefit?"
We hear a version of this question a lot, and we understand why. When we recommend waiting until Full Retirement Age (FRA), or even age 70, to claim, it can look like we have something to gain from it. We don't. Our recommendation has nothing to do with how long you wait. It has everything to do with running the numbers for your specific situation: your health, your other income sources, your spouse's benefit, and how long your portfolio needs to last. Waiting is often the math-driven answer, not an advisor-driven one.
It's a fair question to ask any advisor, and you should ask it. But the honest answer is that our compensation isn't tied to your Social Security start date in any way. The incentive some clients suspect simply isn't there.
The friends-and-family effect
The other thing we run into constantly: a client comes in fairly set on taking benefits early because a friend, a sibling, or a former coworker told them "everybody should just take it at 62, get it while you can." That advice usually comes from someone's personal experience, not from an analysis of your specific numbers. It's understandable. The idea of "getting your money back" while you're younger and healthier is appealing. But it's advice built for someone else's life, not yours.
The break-even math nobody talks about
Here's the piece that gets skipped in almost every hallway or backyard conversation about Social Security: the break-even age.
If you claim at 62 instead of your FRA, you'll receive a smaller monthly check, but more of them. If you wait until 70, you get a larger check, but fewer of them. Somewhere in your late 70s or early 80s, depending on your specific numbers, the cumulative dollars from waiting catch up to and surpass the cumulative dollars from claiming early. After that point, waiting wins every year you're alive.
A significant portion of the clients we work with still choose to claim between 62 and 64. For some, that's the right call. Health concerns, an immediate income need, or a shorter family life expectancy can make early claiming the smart move. But for many others, it means leaving a meaningful amount of lifetime income on the table, often without ever seeing the break-even comparison laid out for their own numbers before deciding.
Two scenarios that make it real
Numbers on a page are one thing. Here's how the decision actually plays out for a couple, using round, hypothetical figures for illustrative purposes only, and not representing any actual client's benefit or outcome. Individual Social Security benefits vary based on earnings history.
Say a husband's benefit at FRA (67) would be $2,400 a month. Claiming at 62 drops that to roughly $1,680 a month. Waiting until 70 grows it to roughly $2,976 a month.
Scenario 1: He claims early at 62. He passes away at 75.
His wife doesn't just lose her husband. As the surviving spouse, she may generally be entitled to step up to his benefit, but only at the level he actually locked in. Because he claimed at 62, that's the reduced $1,680 figure, not the $2,400 FRA amount and nowhere close to the $2,976 he could have had at 70. If she lives to 90, she could spend 15 or more years receiving a survivor benefit that's permanently smaller than it needed to be, because of a decision made decades earlier.
Scenario 2: He waits until 70. He passes away at 75.
Same tragedy, a very different hypothetical financial outcome for his wife. Her survivor benefit could step up to the $2,976 he had locked in, roughly $1,300 more per month than in Scenario 1, for as long as she lives. Over 15 years, that difference alone could add up to well over $200,000 in additional hypothetical income for her, funded entirely by five extra years of patience on his part.
Scenario 3: They both live to 90.
Here the math speaks for itself even without a survivor benefit involved. The couple who waited passes the break-even age sometime in their late 70s or early 80s, and every year after that, the "wait" strategy could pay out more in cumulative income than the "claim early" strategy. By 90, the gap can represent a substantial amount of extra lifetime income, on top of the built-in inflation protection that comes with a larger starting benefit.
These scenarios are why we don't treat the claiming decision as a simple "which check is bigger right now" question. The real comparison spans decades and, in a marriage, it spans two lifetimes.
The piece that almost never comes up: IRMAA
Here's a wrinkle that rarely gets mentioned in the "take it early vs. wait" conversation at all: Medicare's Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount, or IRMAA.
IRMAA is a surcharge added to your Medicare Part B and Part D premiums when your income crosses certain thresholds, based on your tax return from two years prior. It matters here because your Social Security claiming decision doesn't exist in a vacuum. It interacts with:
- How much you're pulling from IRAs or 401(k)s in the meantime
- Whether you're doing Roth conversions in your 60s
- Required Minimum Distributions once they begin
- Capital gains from taxable accounts
Delaying Social Security often means drawing more from other accounts to bridge the gap, which can push your income higher in those years and closer to an IRMAA threshold. Claiming early can do the opposite. Neither answer is automatically right; it depends on the full picture. But if IRMAA isn't part of the claiming conversation, an important cost or an important opportunity is being left out.
The real question
The question isn't "when does everyone else start Social Security?" It's "what does the break-even math, my health, my spouse's benefit, and my broader tax picture, including IRMAA, say for me?" That's not a decision to make from a rule of thumb or a friend's story. It's one worth running the numbers on before you file. If you haven't looked at your own break-even age, run the survivor-benefit scenario for your household, or thought through how a claiming decision might interact with your Medicare premiums, that's exactly the kind of conversation we're here to have.