When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
Credit: Getty Images
In my experience, when a couple sits down to plan their Social Security timing, one thing surprises them almost every time: They don’t agree.
One spouse has read that waiting until 70 gets you the biggest possible check, so that’s the plan. The other wants the income now.
Neither of them has run the number that should be driving the conversation: Not the maximum benefit, but the spousal benefit and what happens to it if they wait.
That’s the piece of Social Security planning I see skipped more than any other. It can be worth hundreds of dollars a month, for the rest of a spouse’s life, and most people never calculate it until it’s too late to matter.
The decision you can’t undo
Social Security is one of the only truly irreversible decisions in retirement planning. Once you file, that’s generally it. There’s a narrow exception: You can withdraw your application within 12 months of filing, but only once, and you must repay every dollar you’ve received. Past that window, you’re locked into whatever you chose, for life.
That permanence is exactly why this decision deserves more than a rule of thumb. “Wait until 70” is good general advice for a single person maximizing their own lifetime benefit. It’s incomplete advice for a married couple, because it ignores a benefit that only becomes available once someone files.
The number most couples never calculate
If you’re married, your spouse may be eligible for a spousal benefit worth up to 50% of your benefit at your full retirement age, even if they have little or no work history of their own, or if their own benefit is smaller than 50% of yours.
But here’s the part that trips people up: Your spouse can’t collect that spousal benefit until you file for your own.
Consider a hypothetical couple, Mark and Diane, both in their mid-60s, with a full retirement age of 67. Mark’s full retirement age benefit is $3,200 a month, but he’s planning to wait until 70 to collect $3,968. Diane spent most of her career raising their kids and working part-time, so her own benefit at full retirement age is only $700 a month.
Most couples in this position focus entirely on Mark’s number. But Diane is also eligible for a spousal benefit of up to $1,600 a month, more than double what she’d get on her own record. The catch is that she can’t touch it until Mark files.
While Mark waits, Diane can draw her smaller $700 benefit or wait alongside him. Either way, that’s three extra years of a meaningfully smaller household income in exchange for a bigger Social Security check down the road.
Whether that trade-off is worth it depends entirely on the couple’s full financial picture, which is exactly why this number needs to be calculated, not assumed.
Running the break-even math
The other number worth knowing is the break-even age: The point at which the extra money from delaying benefits catches up to and passes what you’d have collected by filing earlier.
For someone weighing full retirement age against age 70, that break-even point typically lands in the early-to-mid 80s, depending on the exact benefit amounts involved.
If you expect to live well past that age, delaying tends to pay off in total lifetime benefits. If your health or family history points the other way, filing earlier may make more financial sense, even before you factor in what it means for your spouse’s income today.
The part everyone forgets: The survivor’s check
Here’s the piece that rarely comes up until it’s too late to plan around: When one spouse dies, the survivor doesn’t keep both checks. The smaller one stops, and the survivor keeps the larger one for the rest of their life.
That means whoever has the higher benefit, and their filing age, determines the income floor their spouse will live on if they’re the one left behind.
That’s a real argument for delaying the higher earner’s benefit, especially when there’s an age gap or a health difference between spouses. But it’s not automatically the right call for every couple, and it needs to be weighed against the income the household is giving up in the meantime, not treated as a rule that overrides everything else.
3 steps to take this week
You don’t need an adviser to start this process. You need 10 minutes and both spouses’ numbers.
Pull both statements. Log into your accounts at SSA.gov and record each spouse’s benefit at 62, at full retirement age and at 70.
Calculate the spousal benefit two ways. Compare each spouse’s own benefit against 50% of the higher earner’s full retirement age benefit, and use whichever number is larger.
Run your own break-even math. The 80s range in this article is a general guide, not your number. Free tools, such as Open Social Security, let you plug in your actual birth dates and benefit amounts to see your household’s real break-even age and total lifetime income under different filing combinations.
See the math applied to a real filing decision. If it helps to watch this reasoning play out step by step, this video walks through a similar case, including the spousal benefit tension and the break-even trade-off.
Make the decision with the numbers in front of you
Social Security timing isn’t a decision either spouse should make alone, and it’s not one that should be settled by general advice in an article you’ve read, including this one. It’s a decision that depends on your spousal benefit, your break-even age, your health and what happens to the survivor.
Do the math for your household, not someone else’s. And have the conversation with real numbers on the table before you file, because after that, there’s no going back.
Related Content
This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.
