Should You Wait to Claim Social Security Benefits Until Age 70?

Finally reaching the magical age to claim your Social Security benefits can be exciting, particularly if your retirement plans have not reached the financial level of comfort you’d like to see in your later years. But there can be some benefits to waiting until later on to take your social security benefits, particularly if you can make it to age 70. However, this isn’t the right choice for everyone.

Read on to learn more about some of the advantages and disadvantages of taking this approach. Claiming Social Security before you’ve hit full retirement age could lead to reduction in benefits as much as 30% if you had waited. If you wait until beyond your full retirement age, a delayed retirement credit of 8% will be added to your eventual monthly payout for every year that you hold off. This is more than the cost-of-living adjustments that social security beneficiaries have received for the last decade.

You may be getting Social Security checks for a long time especially considering recent CDC research shows that the average American who makes it to age 65 will live another 19 years.

If your Social Security benefits are 75% higher than the benefit you’d get at the age 62, you’ll have a lot more money to take care of your needs as you get older. You could also help keep your tax bill lower but make sure to discuss with any retirement professionals and financial planners the pros and cons of taking this route because there are so many possible implications of taking Social Security benefits. Talk to a Virginia Beach, VA estate planning lawyer to learn more.