When you start collecting Social Security payments, the amount you receive each month is not guaranteed. Several factors can influence the size of your check over time, and recognizing them will allow you to optimize your benefits. Choosing the age at which to begin collecting Social Security retirement benefits is one of the most important decisions you will make. This decision has a huge impact on your financial well-being in retirement.
Claiming Social Security benefits before reaching the full retirement age typically results in a smaller monthly payment. In contrast, postponing benefits until you reach full retirement age can dramatically boost the amount you receive. Specifically, the difference between claiming benefits at age 62 and waiting until age 70 might result in a significant 77% increase in monthly benefits.
However, if you’ve already started collecting Social Security, you should know that there is still a way to potentially boost the size of your monthly check. By following a certain technique, you might increase your Social Security benefits by up to 26.7%.
Key Factors Impacting Social Security Benefits
Before pursuing a strategy to raise your benefits, it is critical to understand the underlying factors that influence how much you receive from Social Security each month. The Social Security Administration (SSA) determines your compensation using three major components:
- Lifetime Earnings: The amount you earned over your working years has a significant impact on your Social Security benefits. The SSA examines your earnings history, accounting for pay inflation over time. It detects your 35 highest-earning years, averages their wages, and divides the total by 12 to determine your average indexed monthly earnings (AIME).
- Year of birth: The year you were born affects your full retirement age (FRA), which is the age at which you can receive full Social Security payments. For those born in 1954 or earlier, the FRA is 66. For individuals born after 1954, the FRA steadily rises by two months every year until reaching 67 for those born in 1960 or after.
- Age of Claiming: The age at which you decide to collect Social Security benefits determines the size of your monthly check. If you claim benefits before reaching your FRA, you will receive a lower amount. Delaying benefits beyond your FRA awards you delayed retirement credits, which raise your monthly payment by two-thirds of a percent for each month you postpone, up to age 70.
To demonstrate, deferring Social Security payments until age 70 can increase your monthly payment by 24% to 32%, depending on your birth year. Fortunately, even if you have already collected your benefits early, there is still time to earn these essential delayed retirement credits.
The Strategy to Increase Your Social Security Benefits
Requesting the SSA to suspend your benefits is an effective approach to potentially increase your Social Security benefit. This lesser-known option allows you to temporarily suspend your monthly payments while still accumulating delayed retirement credits for each month you defer. These credits are then applied when your benefits resume, resulting in a larger monthly paycheck.
You can suspend your benefits at any time after achieving your FRA. Once the SSA confirms your request, the suspension begins the next month. If you do not resume your benefits before the age of 70, they will be automatically restarted.
Important Considerations:
Before you decide to stop your benefits, consider a few important points. First, if anyone else receives benefits based on your earnings record, such as a spouse, their benefits will be impacted. Specifically, they will no longer be eligible for benefits during the suspension period, unless they are a divorced spouse.
Furthermore, if you are registered in Medicare, you must expect to pay your Part B premiums out of pocket during the suspension, as they are generally deducted from your Social Security checks. If you decide to temporarily discontinue your benefits, you should budget for these expenses.
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