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CLAIM LATE: YOU HAVE OTHER INCOME That could be a healthy nest egg from which you can prudently make withdrawals. It could be a pension, an annuity, a rental property, or earnings from a
side hustle or part-time job. If these sources provide a money stream you can live on in your first years of retirement, planners advise holding off on Social Security to maximize your
guaranteed income in the later years. Ditto if you hit your 60s with a job you like and can keep doing. In this situation, you have twin incentives to defer Social Security. First, it’s
income to support you while your prospective benefit grows. Second, you avoid Social Security’s earnings test. This rule reduces Social Security payments for beneficiaries who claim early
but continue to work and earn over a certain threshold. Once you reach full retirement age, though, there’s no such withholding no matter how much you earn from work, and you can claim 100
percent (or more) of your calculated benefit amount. CLAIM EARLY: MAXIMIZE FAMILY BENEFITS For a married person, choosing when to claim retirement benefits isn’t an entirely personal
decision. Your spouse’s work history, or lack thereof, may present strategic options to increase household benefits, some of which lend themselves to early claiming. Say your mate is in line
to get a far lesser retirement benefit than you, due to lower wages or long stretches off work for childcare, caregiving or health issues. In this situation, they may be eligible to receive
a spousal benefit on your earnings record. Social Security would pay them between a third and a half of your benefit amount, but only once you’ve claimed it. “By a strategic decision to
have the higher wage earner in the married couple file as late as age 70, the lower wage earner might consider filing early to at least get some Social Security dollars flowing,” Schreiber
says. Then, when the higher earner files, the lower earner could switch from their retirement benefit to a higher spousal benefit and collect it for the rest of their life. Or, suppose you
can no longer work, and your partner worked so little that they don’t qualify for a retirement benefit of their own. Claiming early would mean accepting a lower payment for yourself, but it
could trigger spousal benefits for your partner, providing two incomes at a time when you need it. CLAIM LATE: MAXIMIZE SURVIVOR BENEFITS When one spouse dies, the other may become eligible
to receive the deceased’s entire Social Security payment if it exceeds their own. And unlike benefits for a living spouse, which are fixed as a percentage of the higher earner’s
full-retirement-age benefit amount, payments to a surviving spouse will be lower or higher if the late partner started Social Security early or late. “If there is a wide disparity in income,
waiting as long as possible will preserve the highest survivor benefit to the survivor,” Schreiber says. “Waiting to [claim] as late as age 70 maximizes the survivor benefit to the
widow/widower.” So, claiming later doesn’t just increase your benefit in life — it could provide your spouse with a bigger payment, and greater financial security, after you’re gone.