Cut through the confusion about when to begin taking social security.
Edited September 9, 2025
In the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment, children were given a marshmallow and told they can eat it now, but they’ll get an added treat if they have the patience, the will power, to sit with that treat in front of them, without eating it, for an excruciating fifteen minutes.
Choosing when to begin taking social security benefits is a grownup version of that experiment. We can start as early as age 62, but many of us, perhaps most, will end up with a greater total benefit if we start later.
Table of Contents
Initially, our discussion will assume you want the greatest total benefit. Later we’ll discuss some perfectly good reasons to begin taking social security earlier than the time that maximizes your total benefit.
To keep things simple, we won’t get into claiming strategies of married couples. Also, we’ll assume you were born in 1960 or later. If born earlier, the details change but the main points remain the same.
The benefit schedule
Social Security uses your earnings history to calculate the benefit you’ll receive if you begin taking payments at age 67. That’s called your primary insurance amount, or PIA.
You can begin taking social security before age 67. In this case you’ll receive more payments, but you’ll get smaller payments. If you start at age 62, the earliest age permitted, you’ll receive just 70% of your PIA.
You can also begin taking social security after age 67. You’ll receive fewer payments, but larger ones. At age 70, the time payment increases stop, you’ll receive 124% of PIA.
These changes in your monthly benefit are permanent. If you begin taking social security at age 62 and live to age 90, your benefit at age 90 will still be 70% of what you would have received that year if you started your payments at age 67.
You don’t have to choose one of these three times. You can start your benefit any month between the month you turn 62 and the month you turn 70. The reduction or increase in your benefit will be on a sliding scale taking into account the number of fewer months, or added months, you receive payments.
Breakeven point
Suppose you’re considering two different starting dates for social security, and want to know which one will provide the greater total benefit. The earlier choice gets a head start, with months or years of payments before the later one gets going. But then the later one gradually gains ground because its payments are larger. The breakeven point is when the later one catches up. If you live beyond the breakeven point, choosing to start your payments later produces a larger total benefit.
Breakeven points vary somewhat depending on which two claiming years you compare. As you can see from the chart, though, they occur a little before or after age 80. That’s good enough for our purposes.
Life expectancy
The choice that produces the maximum benefit in total dollars depends on how long you’re going to live. That piece of information is beyond our current abilities, even with AI. Yet we can determine the timing that’s likely to be optimal using information about life expectancy.
Life expectancy statistics for populations have important uses, but they have limited relevance when preparing a strategy for a single individual. What you really want to know is your life expectancy.
Numerous websites offer to help with that. They ask a number of pertinent questions, such as height and weight, health conditions, and habits such as smoking and alcohol consumption, then produce a life expectancy for someone with those characteristics. There’s even a website that lists what they consider to be the best 10 life expectancy calculators. I tried this one and this one, and found them easy to use.
If your health is reasonably good, even just average, you’ll probably find that your life expectancy is well beyond 80 years, where the breakeven points occur for claiming social security at different ages. In this case, on a purely financial basis, it makes sense to delay, perhaps even until age 70.
Certain health problems or unhealthy habits could give you a life expectancy around 80. At that level, there’s no clear way to maximize your benefit, so you can just do what feels most comfortable. More serious issues could give you a shorter life expectancy, and in this case it makes sense to begin taking social security early.
You don’t have to maximize
Information about how to maximize your total benefit can be helpful in making this decision, but other factors can also be important.
- You have a strong desire (or need) to stop working, and can’t afford to do so without receiving social security payments.
- Receiving payments now will allow you to fulfill your dream to travel the world or join a punk rock band while still young enough to enjoy doing so.
The point is that we’re all different, so no choice is objectively right or wrong.
How much cost
Yet you might like to have an idea just how many dollars you might forgo when you claim social security early. The following figures are based on a primary insurance amount (at age 67) of $1,000. Adjust based on your own PIA. For example, if you qualify for a $2,400 per month benefit, multiply by 2.4.
- If you live to age 85, starting your benefit at age 67 rather than age 62 adds $22,800 to your total lifetime benefit, and starting at age 70 adds another $7,200.
- If you live to age 90, starting your benefit at age 67 rather than age 62 adds $40,800 to your total lifetime benefit, and starting at age 70 adds another $21,600.
Is the personal benefit you receive if you begin to receive social security earlier enough to justify leaving amounts like these on the table? Only you can judge.
Related
Social Security Change When You Work an Additional Year
Earnings Test for Early Retirees