- The benefit at full retirement age is yours to supply — take it off your Social Security statement rather than trusting any tool that claims to derive it from your salary.
- Starting at 62 is a permanent 30% cut, not a temporary one; the reduced amount is what you are paid for the rest of your life.
- Each month you delay past full retirement age adds 2/3 of 1%, and the credits stop at 70 — waiting beyond that earns nothing.
- Break-even ages land in the late 70s and early 80s, so the choice is mostly a judgment about longevity and partly about whether you need the money sooner.
How the Social Security calculator works
Social Security pays a fixed monthly amount for the rest of your life, and the largest decision you make about it is when to start. Claim before your full retirement age and every payment is permanently smaller. Wait past it and every payment is permanently larger. This calculator takes your benefit at full retirement age and shows what each starting age from 62 to 70 turns it into — per month, per year, and over the whole retirement you expect to have.
That benefit at full retirement age is an input here, not something the calculator derives. Turning a work history into a primary insurance amount requires the SSA bend points and a 35-year average of indexed earnings, and this site holds neither. Rather than approximate it badly, we ask for the figure printed on your Social Security statement, which is the one place it is authoritative. Everything downstream of it is arithmetic on published rules, so the answer is exactly as good as the number you start with — and you already have that number.
Full retirement age is 67 for anyone reaching it today, and that single cohort is the only one modelled. There is no birth-year lookup table behind this page. If your own full retirement age is 66 and some number of months under an older schedule, the adjustments below still describe the shape of the trade-off, but the reference age they are measured from is not yours, and the percentages will be slightly off in your favour.
The math
Claiming early reduces the benefit by 5/9 of 1% for each of the first 36 months before full retirement age, then by 5/12 of 1% for every month earlier than that. Starting at 62 is 60 months early: 36 months at the steeper rate and 24 at the shallower one, which works out to a 30% permanent reduction rather than the 33% a single flat rate would produce. Claiming late adds 2/3 of 1% per month, or 8% a year, and those delayed credits stop accruing the month you turn 70 — which is why the table ends there and not later.
The break-even age answers a narrower question than people assume. The early claimer banks payments through the whole head start; the later claimer then collects more every month afterwards. Break-even is that banked total divided by the later claimer’s monthly advantage, expressed as the age at which the two cumulative totals are equal. It is always computed against starting at 62, not against whichever age you last selected, so the comparison stays anchored to the earliest option available.
Lifetime totals are the annual benefit multiplied by the years between your starting age and the life expectancy you set. Nothing is discounted, indexed, or taxed. Cost-of-living adjustments raise every starting age’s payment proportionally, so they largely cancel out of a comparison between ages; income tax on benefits depends on your other retirement income, which this page does not ask for. Both are real, and both would move the totals without changing which column wins.
Worked example
On a $2,400 monthly benefit at full retirement age, starting at 62 pays $1,680 a month, or $20,160 a year. Waiting to 67 pays the full $2,400. Waiting to 70 pays $2,976 a month, or $35,712 a year — about 77% more than the earliest option, for the same work history. Those three numbers are the entire decision.
Set life expectancy to 87 and the lifetime totals reorder. Starting at 62 collects $504,000 over 25 years, starting at 67 collects $576,000 over 20, and starting at 70 collects $607,104 over 17. The break-even against starting at 62 lands at roughly age 78.7 for a 67 claim and roughly 80.4 for a 70 claim. Drag life expectancy down to 78 and every one of those orderings flips. That is precisely why life expectancy is a slider here rather than a buried assumption.
Key terms
- Full retirement age
- The age at which you receive your calculated benefit in full, with no early reduction and no delayed credit. This calculator models it as 67.
- Primary insurance amount
- The monthly benefit payable at full retirement age, worked out by the SSA from your 35 highest years of indexed earnings. It is the figure this page asks you to enter.
- Delayed retirement credit
- The 2/3 of 1% added to your monthly benefit for each month you postpone claiming past full retirement age, ending the month you reach 70.
- Break-even age
- The age at which the cumulative payments from a later start overtake the cumulative payments from starting at 62.