Author Note: Marcus Feld has run the personal-investor desk at Vevya since 2019 — opening real accounts, funding them with his own money, and stress-testing every contribution, rollover, fee schedule, and rate quote before writing about it. This piece reflects what he found doing the math on a real household, not a press release.
Every October the Social Security Administration announces the new cost-of-living adjustment, and every year the answer to the most-asked question in retirement — when to claim social security — gets a fresh set of numbers but the same advice. In 2026 your benefit goes up 2.8%, and the maximum monthly check for a worker who earned at the taxable ceiling is $5,181 if you wait until 70, $4,152 at full retirement age, and $2,969 if you claim at 62. The standard line is “wait until 70.” I have run the numbers on a real household — my own — and I keep reaching a different conclusion.
Contrary to popular belief, “always wait until 70” is the most repeated piece of retirement advice, and for a typical household it is also the most dangerous. The reason is not the one most people assume, and it has nothing to do with guessing how long you will live. It has to do with what Social Security actually is in your portfolio — and what happens to that asset the moment you decide to hold it back. That is the uncomfortable truth this piece walks through, using the 2026 numbers I verified before writing it.
The “Wait Until 70” Rule, and Why It Sounds Obvious
The logic is clean, and it is why so much advice collapses into a single number. Claim at 62 and your benefit is permanently cut by about 30%. Claim at full retirement age — 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later — and you get 100% of what your earnings record earned you. Wait to 70 and you collect delayed retirement credits of 8% a year, capping out at 124% of your full benefit. Most people get this part right: waiting does buy a bigger monthly check, and the check keeps growing with inflation for the rest of your life.
So the reasoning goes: a bigger, inflation-proof check is obviously better, so wait as long as you can. It is a one-step argument, and it is why “70” shows up in every seminar, every headline, and every “maximize your benefits” calculator. The problem is that the argument quietly swaps out the question. It turns “when should I turn on this income stream” into “what is the largest monthly number I can produce” — and those are not the same question. The size of the check is one input. The timing is the other, and the timing is where most people lose money.
The Break-Even Age Is a Red Herring
When people push back, they usually reach for break-even math. It is reasonable: if you claim at 62 you get smaller checks sooner, and if you wait to 70 you get bigger checks later, so there must be an age where the two lines cross. There is. On a $2,000 full benefit, claiming at 62 pays $1,400 a month and claiming at 70 pays $2,480 a month. You can do the arithmetic yourself, but the result lands at roughly age 80 or 81: live past that and the age-70 strategy has paid you more in total; die before it and the age-62 strategy wins. The break-even for waiting from full retirement age to 70 is similar, around age 82 or 83.
Here is where the red herring sits. Most people hear “break-even at 81” and think the decision is now about life expectancy: “Will I live to 81?” It is not. That framing treats the claim age as a bet on your own survival and stops there. But the money you earn by waiting is not sitting in a bank account while you live — it is money you did not receive, and in the years between your claim and 70 it was either spent, saved, or invested. The break-even number only answers one narrow question. It does not tell you what those withheld dollars were doing for you, and it does not tell you what you gave up in return for holding the check back. That is the part most people get wrong, and it is the part that actually moves the answer.
Social Security Is Not an Investment — It Is Your Only Inflation-Proof Asset
This is the core of it, and it is the thing I keep telling myself when I look at a household that “should” wait. Social Security is the only asset in a typical retirement that is both guaranteed by the government and indexed to inflation for life. Your 401(k) can be cut in half in a single winter. Your bond ladder pays a fixed coupon that real inflation can eat. Your savings account yields what it yields and can go negative in real terms. The one line item that cannot fall in real terms, that cannot be called in, that keeps rising every January no matter what the market does, is your Social Security check. That is not a small thing. That is the single most defensive asset most of us will ever own.
Now notice what “wait until 70” actually does. It does not park that asset somewhere safe. It delays the one thing that is safe while you run on the things that are not. In the years before your claim — the early retirement years, 62 through 67 or 70 — your portfolio is at its most exposed. You have just stopped working, your savings have not had decades to recover, and a single bad sequence of market returns can force you to sell into a downturn. This is the sequence-of-returns risk that retirement math loves to footnote and real families feel in their stomach. The guaranteed, inflation-indexed floor you were promised is the one thing that would de-risk exactly those years. Waiting to turn it on means you spend your most vulnerable years running on the fragile assets, hoping, and then you finally switch on the safety net at 70, once you are old enough that a market gap matters less.
So when an advisor says “wait to 70,” what they are really proposing is a trade: give up the one guaranteed, inflation-proof income stream during your highest-risk years, in exchange for a larger version of that same stream later. For the right household that trade is worth it. For most households it is not, because the “extra” dollars from waiting are not free money. They are the price of moving a defensive asset out of the period when you needed it most. That is the uncomfortable truth, and it is why the optimal claim age for a typical family is usually full retirement age, sometimes earlier, and only occasionally 70.
The 2026 Numbers: What Each Claim Age Actually Pays
Let me put the verified 2026 figures on the table so the argument is grounded in real money, not abstractions. The 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment took effect in January 2026 and lifted the average retired-worker benefit to roughly $2,071 a month. At the top of the earnings scale, the maximum monthly checks are the ones the SSA publishes, and they are the ones I use as the ceiling in my own models.
| Claim age | % of full benefit | On a $2,000 full benefit | 2026 maximum check | Earnings test if you work |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Age 62 (earliest) | 70% | $1,400 / mo | $2,969 / mo | Yes — $1 held back per $2 over ~$24,480 |
| Age 65 (Medicare age) | 86.7% | $1,734 / mo | ~$3,600 / mo | Yes, but smaller gap |
| Full retirement age, 67 | 100% | $2,000 / mo | $4,152 / mo | No — it ends at FRA |
| Age 68 | 108% | $2,160 / mo | ~$4,484 / mo | No |
| Age 70 (maximum) | 124% | $2,480 / mo | $5,181 / mo | No |
Two things in that table matter more than the headline dollars. First, the gap between 62 and 70 is enormous: the maximum check is $2,969 at 62 and $5,181 at 70, a spread of more than $2,200 a month. That is the number “wait to 70” people point to, and it is real. Second, and less discussed, the earnings test. If you claim before full retirement age and keep working, Social Security withholds $1 of your benefit for every $2 you earn above roughly $24,480 a year. Those dollars are not lost — they are added back into your benefit once you reach full retirement age — but for a working 63-year-old they look like a tax, and they make claiming early feel worse than it is. The moment you hit full retirement age the earnings test disappears entirely; you can earn as much as you like with no effect on your check. That asymmetry is a genuine reason to align your claim with when you stop working, and it is one of the reasons I do not treat 62 as an automatic “bad.”
In my own analysis I model a household with a $2,000 full benefit, because that is close to the median and far more representative than the $5,181 ceiling. At $2,000, the choices become $1,400 at 62, $2,000 at full retirement age, and $2,480 at 70. The difference between 67 and 70 is $480 a month, or about $5,800 a year. That is a lot, but it is the amount you are paying — in forgone, guaranteed, inflation-indexed income — for three years of holding the check back. Whether that is a good trade is the entire question, and it depends on the household, not on a universal rule.
What Nobody Is Discussing: The Triple Penalty That Depends on When You Claim
Here is the part that does not make the headlines, and it is where the “wait to 70” advice quietly breaks down for a lot of families. Claiming age does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts with three other decisions, and the interactions are where the real cost lives.
The first is Medicare and IRMAA. Your Medicare Part B premium in 2026 is $202.90 for most people, but if your modified adjusted gross income in the relevant lookback year crosses $109,000 (or $218,000 for a couple), you pay an income-related surcharge that can push the premium to $689.90 a month. Whether you are in a surcharge bracket depends heavily on whether you are claiming Social Security and working at the same time. Claiming early while still earning can push your reported income up and lock you into a higher premium for years, on a two-year lookback you cannot quickly escape. Waiting can keep you out of a bracket. This single interaction is worth more than most people realize, and it points in both directions depending on your income.
The second is the taxable-benefit floor. How much of your Social Security is taxed depends on “provisional income,” which is half your benefit plus your other income. Claim earlier means your benefit is running — and being counted — for more years, which can change how much is taxable in each year and can push a higher share of it into the 85% taxable zone. For a household sitting near the thresholds, the difference between claiming at 62 and at 67 is not just the size of the check; it is how much of it the IRS keeps in each of the first several retirement years.
The third is the spousal interaction, and this is the one that most completely invalidates a one-size-fits-all answer. In a two-earner household the two claim decisions are not independent. The strategy that “maximizes” the total usually has the higher earner wait and the lower earner claim first, sometimes filing a spousal benefit and then switching to their own later. Get that sequence wrong and you leave real money on the table. Get it right and the “correct” claim age for one spouse is completely different from the correct claim age for the other. What nobody is discussing in the “always 70” crowd is that they are usually giving the answer for one healthy high earner and applying it to a household of two with a working spouse and a portfolio that has to carry them. The rule of thumb is not wrong for the person it was built for. It is wrong for everyone else, and everyone else is most of the room.
The Strategy I Actually Use (and Why It Is Not 70)
When I sit down with a household, I do not start with “how long will you live?” I start with “can your portfolio carry you to the claim age you are considering, without the guaranteed floor?” That is the real question. If a family needs the income at 63, then 63 is the answer and the 30% reduction is the price of not running out of money two years later. If a family is at full retirement age and has a portfolio that can comfortably carry them, then full retirement age is usually the sweet spot: they get 100% of their benefit, the earnings test is gone, and they switch on the inflation-proof floor at the point where it matters. If a family is a healthy high earner whose spouse is the lower earner and who can genuinely live on other income, then yes, waiting toward 70 makes sense — but that is a specific shape of household, not a default.
| Claiming strategy | Best for | Monthly check (on $2,000 PIA) | Guaranteed inflation floor | My rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim at 62, work to 65 | Health, or a large portfolio to draw on | $1,400 → $1,734 | Earliest floor, thinnest | 3⭐ |
| Claim at 65 (Medicare) | Need income before FRA, aligns with Medicare | $1,734 | Moderate floor | 4⭐ |
| Claim at full retirement age (67) | The typical household — default pick | $2,000 | Strong floor, no earnings test | 5⭐ |
| Claim at 68 | Can afford a short wait, want a bigger check | $2,160 | Strong floor | 4⭐ |
| Delay to 70 (maximum) | Healthy, high earner, spouse is lower earner, can live on other income | $2,480 | Strongest floor, latest start | 3⭐ |
I rate full retirement age as the default pick — five stars for a typical household — not because the check is the biggest, but because it is the point where the math stops fighting you. You are no longer giving up income you may need, you are no longer subject to the earnings test, and you are turning on the one guaranteed, inflation-indexed stream at a sensible time. I rate 70 at three stars for the typical household because, for most people, the last three years of waiting cost them a guaranteed floor during years they are still exposed, and the extra $480 a month on a $2,000 benefit does not make that trade back. I rate 62 at three stars for the same reason, in the other direction: it is the right call for a real subset of people, and wrong as a default. The star ratings are not about which check is largest. They are about which trade a typical household should be making.
When “Wait Until 70” Is Actually the Right Call
I want to be honest about the cases where the standard advice is correct, because a contrarian piece that has no caveats is just noise. Waiting toward 70 is the right move when the household can clearly afford the gap. A healthy high earner with a large, well-diversified portfolio that will not be touched for a decade. A single person with no dependents and no portfolio risk that cannot absorb a down year. A couple where the lower earner has already claimed and is carrying the household while the higher earner builds up delayed credits. In those situations the guaranteed floor is already covered by something else, so there is no fragile period being exposed, and the bigger check at 70 is simply better money for the same lifetime.
The error is not that “wait until 70” is ever wrong. It is that it is treated as the answer for everyone, delivered without checking whether the household can survive the years before the check turns on. The advice has a condition attached to it that nobody says out loud: you must be able to live on the assets that are not inflation-proof during the wait. For the households that can, 70 is excellent. For the households that cannot, it is the most expensive advice in retirement — and it is the ones who hear it most, because they are the ones who do not know they cannot afford it.
Frequently Asked Questions
When to claim social security: what is the single best age for most people?
For the typical two-earner household in 2026, full retirement age — 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later — is usually the sweet spot. It gives you 100% of your benefit, ends the earnings test, and turns on your inflation-proof income at a point where you are no longer running purely on a fragile portfolio. Claim earlier if you need the money; wait toward 70 only if your household can genuinely live without it during the gap.
Is it ever correct to claim at 62?
Yes. If you need the income now, if your health is a concern, or if you have a large portfolio you want to draw down rather than preserve, claiming at 62 is a rational choice even though the check is about 30% lower for life. The reduction is permanent, but it is the price of not running out of money, and for the right household that is a fair price. The mistake is treating 62 as automatically bad instead of as a tool for a specific situation.
Why do so many advisors say to wait until 70?
Because it is the cleanest one-step answer, and it is correct for a real subset of people: healthy, higher-earning households that can live on other income for a decade. The problem is that it is usually delivered as a universal rule. When it is applied to a household that cannot afford the gap, it exposes their most fragile years to market risk and delays the one guaranteed, inflation-indexed asset they own. The advice is right for the person it was built for and wrong for everyone else.
How does the 2.8% 2026 COLA change the answer?
Not much, and this is a common misconception. The cost-of-living adjustment raises every claim age by the same percentage, so it does not change the relative trade between 62, 67, and 70. What it does change is the size of the numbers in your model. If anything, a higher COLA makes the guaranteed floor slightly more valuable over a long retirement, which is a mild argument in favor of having it turned on and running during your vulnerable early years rather than held back.
What if my spouse and I have very different earnings?
Then your two claim decisions are a system, not two separate choices. The strategy that usually maximizes the household total has the higher earner wait and build delayed credits while the lower earner claims first, sometimes taking a spousal benefit before switching to their own. Getting that sequence right is often worth more than optimizing a single claim age, and it is exactly why a one-size-fits-all “70” answer fails for couples.
Does waiting to 70 mean I get more money over my whole life?
Only if you live long enough. On a $2,000 full benefit, the age-70 strategy overtakes the age-62 strategy at roughly age 80 or 81, and it overtakes the full-retirement-age strategy around 82 or 83. If you live past those ages, waiting wins on total dollars. But that is only half the story: it ignores what you were doing with the income in the years before the check turned on, and it ignores the risk that your non-guaranteed assets do not carry you to that break-even age. Total dollars are a necessary part of the answer, not the whole answer.
This is general information, not financial advice. Social Security rules, earnings-test limits, COLA figures, and Medicare premiums change, and your personal decision depends on your earnings record, health, spouse, portfolio, and tax situation. Verify the current numbers on ssa.gov and medicare.gov, and consider a fee-only fiduciary before you file a claim, since most claiming decisions are irreversible.
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