Investing & Retirement · July 30, 2026 · 6 min read

When to take Social Security

Key takeaways

Claiming at 62 when your full retirement age is 67 locks in about 70% of your benefit permanently. Waiting until 70 gets you about 124%.
The break-even ages land near 79 (claiming at 62 versus your FRA), 80 (62 versus 70), and 82 (FRA versus 70). Living past those ages favors having waited.
About 22% of retirees claim at 62 and only about 8.5% wait until 70. The median claiming age sits between 64 and 65.
If you claim before your FRA and keep working, 2026 earnings above $24,480 reduce your benefit by $1 for every $2. The withheld amount comes back to you at FRA.
When one spouse dies, the survivor keeps the larger of the two benefits, which is why delaying the higher earner matters beyond that person's monthly check.

As we get closer to retirement, we approach a point where many of the hypothetical questions and scenarios we've spent years thinking about become real. The idea of actually quitting your job, the first month where you have no paycheck being directly deposited into your bank account. It's a lot of change all at once. One of the biggest questions I see is:

"When should I start taking Social Security?"

This question alone is a multi-faceted decision with many variables. I'll try not to dive too deep into the math, and keep it more surface-level as a comparison between the different options. I want to illustrate the tradeoffs of claiming Social Security at different ages. The most common milestones I see people wondering about are:

(1) 62 years old, the earliest possible age to claim it,
(2) Full Retirement Age (FRA) which is 67 for everyone starting with those born 1960 or later, and
(3) delaying until 70, the age where the maximum monthly payment is attained.

Your benefit changes depending on when you claim

One of the biggest factors is that the amount you receive changes depending on when you start claiming it. The baseline for your benefits is your FRA; that's 100% of your monthly benefit. If you claim early at 62 years old, you are going to receive a roughly 30% permanent reduction in your benefits, so you're only receiving 70% per month of what you would have received if you waited until your FRA (67 for most).

On the other end of this spectrum, if you delay claiming your benefits, you receive about an 8% bump for each year you wait. So if you wait until age 70, which again is where monthly benefits stop building, you'll be receiving about 124% of your benefits.

To illustrate these percentages and make it a bit more tangible, let's assume that 100% of your benefits at your FRA is $3,000 per month, or $36,000 per year. If you claimed early at 62, when your benefits are reduced by about 30%, your monthly amount would be around $2,100, or $25,200 per year. If you instead delayed until 70 for the maximum 124% benefit, you'd be receiving around $3,720 per month, or $44,640.

The break-even point, and why it is hard to use

Now the math looks pretty simple. Delay, and you receive more per month. But most people base their decision at least partly on the age where they'll receive not the most per month, but the most over the course of their entire life. And when you do that math, you'll find that between any two ages you compare, there's a break-even point, which is the age where the cumulative amount you've received from delaying finally catches up to and passes what you would have collected by claiming earlier. Before that age, the early claimer is ahead on total dollars. After it, the person who waited has received more, and will continue to for the remainder of their life.

Running those numbers on our $3,000 example, claiming at 62 versus waiting for your FRA breaks even around age 79. Claiming at 62 versus waiting until 70 lands around 80. And claiming at your FRA versus waiting until 70 is closer to 82.

The further you live past those ages, the more the math favors having waited. Which is the whole problem with the math: it asks you to know how long you're going to live. Maybe you need the money right at 62; then there's not a whole lot of math that would sway your decision. Maybe you figured you won't even need it at 75 and it never really mattered either way.

What people actually do

Here's a breakdown of what the data shows people actually choosing. About 22% of retirees claim at 62, the earliest they can. Roughly a third claim at 66, which is a year before full retirement age for anyone born in 1960 or later. Only about 8.5% wait all the way to 70, and the median claiming age sits between 64 and 65.

Claiming early while you are still working

As if there weren't enough factors pulling you in every direction for this decision, there's also a caveat if you plan to claim early while you're still working. For 2026, if you earn more than $24,480 and you've already claimed before your FRA, your benefits are reduced by $1 for every $2 you earn above that threshold. The withheld amount does come back to you once you reach FRA, so it isn't lost. But it's worth knowing what you might be deferring if you claim early and keep working.

If you are married, it is two decisions

One more piece if you're married, because then it's two decisions instead of one. A common approach is to have the spouse with the smaller benefit claim earlier to bring some income in the door, while the spouse with the larger benefit delays to FRA or all the way to 70. That locks in the highest possible monthly amount on the bigger of the two benefits, and it matters for more than just the benefits themselves. When one spouse dies, the survivor keeps the larger of the two benefits for the rest of their life.

The part the math cannot answer

Honestly, that's about as deep into the math as I want to get here. Let's move on to a more interesting aspect of Social Security: the behavioral one. You can run numbers all day long, and you can find the exact year and month to claim based on the maximum benefits received, but you'd need to know exactly when you're going to die. Unfortunately, I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't really help anyone there.

But what you can think about is your lifestyle, and your goals. Do you have less saved than you'd hoped, and need the earlier guaranteed income from Social Security? Well, that might push you to claim earlier. Were you a diligent saver, or don't have a lot of expenses in retirement? That could push you in the opposite direction to delay, and allow the monthly benefits to grow.

How healthy are you? Do you have a medical history that makes delaying until 70 sound a bit more uncertain, or are you the pinnacle of health and know you'll want to wait until 70 no matter what? Maybe it's important to you to have a defined, guaranteed income stream every month as soon as you quit working. I could go on and on with questions like these that go so much deeper than the math, and that I think matter a lot more.

I'm not here to give a recommendation. I wrote this because deciding when to claim Social Security is a nuanced decision, and personal finance is personal to you, your family, and your goals. I wanted to simply lay out the facts to help you develop a rationale behind your decision.

This post is general information, not personalized advice. Talk to a fee-only fiduciary about your specific situation.