Claiming at 62 gets you a permanently reduced check; waiting until 70 gets you roughly 77% more per month than claiming at 62 (and about 24% more than waiting only to your full retirement age) — but you're betting on living long enough for the larger checks to catch up. There's no age that's right for everyone, which is exactly why "just wait until 70, it's always better" and "just take it early, take the guaranteed money" are both wrong as universal advice.
The common way people compare claiming ages is a break-even calculation: "if I wait, at what age have I collected the same total as if I'd claimed early?" That's a real number, but it silently assumes you know your exact lifespan in advance — it treats a coin flip as a certainty. A better question is: given the actual uncertainty in how long you'll live, which claiming age maximizes what you can expect to collect, averaged across every age you might die at?
That's a survival-weighted expected value calculation, not a break-even one. It uses actuarial survival curves (the same kind SSA and insurers use) to weight each future year's payment by the probability you're actually alive to receive it — so a claiming age that "wins" only in the unlikely event you live to 98 gets appropriately discounted, while one that performs well across the realistic range of outcomes rises to the top.
Spousal and survivor benefits change the math substantially. A lower-earning spouse can potentially claim a "spousal excess" — up to half the higher earner's benefit — once both have filed. And when one spouse passes away, the survivor keeps whichever benefit was larger, not both. That creates a real strategic consideration: it's often the higher earner's claiming age that matters most, since delaying it doesn't just increase their own check — it increases the survivor benefit the couple is protecting against the risk that one of them lives a long time alone.
Suppose your Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) — your benefit at full retirement age, 67 — is $2,400/month.
| Claim at 62 (earliest) | ≈ $1,680/mo (70% of PIA) |
| Claim at 67 (full retirement age) | $2,400/mo (100% of PIA) |
| Claim at 70 (latest, maximum credits) | ≈ $2,976/mo (124% of PIA) |
Which of these actually maximizes your expected lifetime income depends on your health, family longevity, marital status, and other income — which is what the calculator solves for using your real numbers, not this generic illustration.
See the full claiming-age comparison for ages 62–70, including spousal and survivor benefits if you're married — using survival-weighted expected value, not a simple break-even guess.
Open the claiming-age comparison →See the FAQ for a quick answer on claiming age, or How the Model Works for the full methodology behind the survival-weighted calculation. If you're also considering an early retirement, see the Retire at 55 guide — claiming Social Security and retiring are two separate decisions that don't have to happen in the same year. Roth conversion timing is covered separately in the Roth conversion calculator.