When to claim Social Security

Social Security hands you one big decision. When does your monthly check start?

You can start as early as 62. You can wait as late as 70. Any month in between works too.

The gap between those two choices is bigger than most people think. Say your full benefit would be $1,000 a month. Start at 62 and you get $700. Wait until 70 and you get $1,240. Same job history. Same taxes paid in. The bigger check is 77 percent larger, every month, for the rest of your life.

Every rule in this decision hangs on one number. That number is your full retirement age, the age when you qualify for your unreduced check. For almost everyone deciding today, it is 67.

This guide covers five things. What full retirement age really means. What claiming at 62 costs. What waiting until 70 pays. How the rules change for married couples and widows. And a checklist you can finish in one afternoon.

One promise before we start. This is education, not advice. No one can name your right age without knowing your health, your savings, and your family. What this guide can do is show you the actual rules, with the actual math, so the decision is yours.

Your full retirement age is the age when you qualify for your full monthly benefit. No reduction for starting early. No bonus for waiting. Social Security calls that full monthly amount your primary insurance amount. This guide just calls it your full benefit.

Your full retirement age depends only on the year you were born.

Born in 1960 or any year after? Your full retirement age is 67. That covers everyone turning 62 from now on. Under current law, this table is complete. Congress set these ages in 1983 and the phase-in has finished. Only a new act of Congress could move it again.

Two common mix-ups are worth clearing up right now.

Full retirement age is not 65. It was 65 for people born before 1938. Medicare still starts at 65, which keeps the confusion alive. The rule today is simple. Medicare at 65. Full Social Security at 66 or 67, depending on your birth year.

Full retirement age is not a deadline. You do not have to claim at 67. It is a reference point. Every rule about claiming early or late is measured from it, month by month.

And that measuring is exact. Claim one month before your full retirement age and your check shrinks a little. Claim sixty months before, at 62, and it shrinks a lot. How much is a lot? The answer is 30 percent. And it never comes back. That is the next lesson.