Social Security Calculator: Your Benefit at 62, 67 and 70, and the Break-Even Age

01Your Benefit at Every Claiming Age

The number that matters is your benefit at full retirement age, which Social Security calls your primary insurance amount. It is printed on your Social Security statement (sign in at ssa.gov/myaccount). If you don't have it, switch to the estimate and enter your typical yearly earnings instead.

In today's dollars: every amount rises with the cost-of-living increase each year, whichever age you start at. Totals are simple sums of monthly payments from the starting age to the age you plan for, with no investment return and no taxes.

When Waiting Pays Off

Total benefits collected by each age, in today's dollars. Where a later line crosses an earlier one is the break-even age: live past it and the later start pays more in total.

02What Your Spouse Can Collect

A husband or wife can be paid up to half of your full retirement age benefit, less their own full retirement age benefit, once you have filed for your own benefit. The spousal part is cut if they start before their own full retirement age and, unlike your own benefit, it does not grow if they wait past it. This uses the benefit you entered above.

Assumes you have already filed when your spouse starts. A spouse must be at least 62, or caring for a child under 16 or disabled, to collect. A divorced spouse can collect on an ex-spouse's record if the marriage lasted at least 10 years and they are unmarried, and if they have been divorced for at least two years they do not have to wait for the ex to file. When one spouse dies, the survivor generally keeps the larger of the two benefits (in full from the survivor's own full retirement age), which is one reason the higher earner in a couple often waits.

03Working While You Collect

If you start benefits before full retirement age and keep working, Social Security holds back $1 for every $2 you earn above $25,560 in 2027. In the calendar year you reach full retirement age it holds back $1 for every $3 above $67,920, counting only earnings before the month you reach it. From that month on there is no limit. The money is not lost: your benefit is raised at full retirement age to make up for the months that were held back. In the year you retire there is also a monthly test: you get a full check for any month you earn $2,130 or less ($5,660 in the year you reach full retirement age) and do no substantial self-employment work, whatever you earned earlier in the year.

For the year you reach full retirement age, enter only what you expect to earn before that month. Social Security withholds whole monthly payments at the start of the year until the amount is covered, so you may get nothing for a few months and full checks after. In the year you reach full retirement age, only payments for months before you reach it can be held back.

04How Claiming Age Changes Your Check

For anyone whose full retirement age is 67. Your own benefit is cut by 5/9 of 1% for each of the first 36 months you start early and 5/12 of 1% for each month after that, and grows by 2/3 of 1% for each month you wait past full retirement age, up to 70. A spousal benefit is cut by 25/36 of 1% for each of the first 36 months early and 5/12 of 1% after that.

Own benefit as a share of the full retirement age benefit; spousal benefit as a share of the worker's full retirement age benefit. Ages are exact ages in years; the first month you can be paid at 62 is usually the month after your 62nd birthday.

05Full Retirement Age by Year of Birth

Set by the 1983 Social Security Amendments, which raised the full retirement age from 65 in steps. If you were born on January 1, use the year before; Social Security treats you as reaching each age the day before your birthday. Benefit at 62 and at 70 as a share of the full retirement age benefit.

06Social Security in 2027: The Numbers

From the Social Security Administration's announcement of October 14, 2026. The cost-of-living increase shown for each year is the one paid in that year's January checks. The largest benefits are for someone who earned the taxable maximum every year from age 22 and starts in January of the year shown (at 62 and 1 month for the age 62 figure). Bend points apply to people who turn 62 in that year.

07Every Cost-of-Living Increase Since 1975

By the year the increase first showed up in checks. From 1975 to 1982 increases started with June benefits; the 1983 increase was delayed to January 1984, and every increase since has started in January. Since 1984 each has been set from the rise in the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W) from the third quarter of one year to the third quarter of the next; earlier increases were measured from the first quarter.

08What the Numbers Show

Waiting raises the check a lot. For anyone born in 1960 or later, starting at 62 pays 70% of the full benefit and starting at 70 pays 124%, so the age 70 check is 77% bigger for life, and every cost-of-living increase is applied to the bigger number.

The break-even age is around 80. Comparing total benefits collected, starting at 70 instead of 62 comes out ahead once you live past about 80 and 4 months. Waiting from 62 to 67 breaks even at about 78 and 8 months, and from 67 to 70 at about 82 and 6 months. These ages are the same whatever your benefit is. They ignore what you could earn by investing the earlier checks, which pushes the break-even later.

When starting early makes sense. Starting early can make sense for people in poor health, those who need the income or a lower-earning spouse whose partner is waiting, but for a married higher earner the larger benefit also becomes the survivor's benefit, which can last decades.

The trust fund question. The 2026 Trustees Report projects that the retirement and survivors trust fund will run out in 2032, when incoming taxes would cover about 78% of scheduled retirement and survivor benefits, and the combined retirement and disability funds in 2034, when they would cover about 83%. Benefits would not stop, but without a change in the law they would be cut across the board. This calculator shows benefits as currently scheduled.

Cost-of-living increases vary widely. Since 1975 they have ranged from nothing (2010, 2011, 2016) to 14.3% in 1980; the increase paid in 2027 is 3.6%.

09How the Calculator Works

Your full retirement age comes from your year of birth. Each claiming age is converted to months before or after it, and the Social Security Administration's reduction and delayed retirement credit rules are applied to your full retirement age benefit, rounding down to the dollar as Social Security does. The spousal table applies the spousal reduction to half your full retirement age benefit, less your spouse's own full benefit.

The estimate from earnings is a rough guide. It assumes your earnings have kept pace with average wages through your career, takes your best 35 years (years you did not work count as zero), caps earnings at the 2027 taxable maximum and runs the result through the 2027 benefit formula: 90% of the first $1,340 of average monthly earnings, 32% up to $8,077 and 15% above that, capped at the largest full retirement age benefit. Your actual earnings record is what counts, so use the figure on your Social Security statement when you can. Public-sector pensions from jobs that did not pay Social Security tax no longer reduce benefits: the Social Security Fairness Act, signed in January 2025, repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset for benefits payable from January 2024.

All amounts are in today's dollars and nothing you enter leaves your browser.

10Questions People Ask

11Sources

• Social Security Administration: 2027 Cost-of-Living Adjustment Fact Sheet
• SSA Office of the Chief Actuary: Benefit formula bend points
• SSA Office of the Chief Actuary: Workers with maximum-taxable earnings
• SSA Office of the Chief Actuary: Cost-of-living adjustments since 1975
• SSA: Benefit reduction for early retirement and delayed retirement credits
• SSA: Benefits for your spouse and getting benefits while working
• IRS Publication 915: Social Security and Equivalent Railroad Retirement Benefits
• The 2026 Annual Report of the Social Security Board of Trustees

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