Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): Enter your own full-retirement-age benefit, the two ages you are choosing between, and your own COLA and opportunity-cost assumptions. The tool returns the monthly difference, lifetime totals, and the breakeven age for your numbers.
Claiming age calculator
Take the benefit figure from your own SSA statement. This tool does not estimate your benefit from your earnings record — it compares what happens to the figure you already have.
Why your benefit is a field and not a lookup. The formula that turns an earnings record into a full-retirement-age benefit runs through bend points that are re-indexed every year. Any tool that hardcodes them is wrong within twelve months. The claim-age adjustments this page applies are fixed in regulation and have not changed in decades, so those are built in and cited. Take the benefit figure from your SSA statement.
You have the two numbers. The decision is what happens around them.
Claiming age interacts with withdrawals, Roth conversions and tax brackets in the same years. The matching service below introduces you to advisers who pay to meet you.
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The three adjustments, exactly as written in regulation
Only three pieces of arithmetic decide what your cheque becomes, and all three are fixed in regulation rather than re-set annually:
- Claiming early, first 36 months: 20 CFR 404.410 — “The reduction is 5/9 of 1 percent for each of the first 36 months”.
- Claiming early, beyond 36 months: “5/12 of 1 percent for each month in excess of 36”.
- Claiming late: 20 CFR 404.313 — delayed retirement credits of “2/3 of 1%” per month for anyone born after 1 January 1943, ending at age 70.
With a full retirement age of 67, that makes claiming at 62 a 30% cut (36 × 5/9% = 20%, plus 24 × 5/12% = 10%) and claiming at 70 a 24% raise (36 × 2/3%). For the older cohort with a full retirement age of 66 the same arithmetic gives 25% and 32%.
Delayed credits stop at 70, with no exceptions
Nothing accrues after age 70. Claiming at 71 or 72 produces exactly the same benefit as claiming at 70, minus the months of cheques you did not take. This calculator caps the credit at 70 for that reason, and it is the single most expensive misunderstanding available in this decision.
The assumption most breakeven tools hide
Published breakeven ages cluster at 78 to 82, and they get there by assuming the cheques you take at 62 sit in a drawer earning nothing. Charge them a return and the answer moves a lot. At a 5% opportunity cost the 62-versus-70 breakeven moves from about 80.3 to about 89.8. That is why this tool has an opportunity-cost field, and why it says so in the output when you use it.
What this deliberately does not model
Taxation of benefits, the earnings test if you are working before full retirement age, spousal and survivor interactions, and Medicare premium effects. Each is real and each is a separate decision; folding them into one number would produce false precision rather than a better answer.
Related
- Claiming social security 62 vs 70
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- Social security claiming married couple calculator
- Social security cola effect on claiming age
Methodology
- Claim-age adjustments are taken from the text of 20 CFR 404.410 (worker 5/9 of 1% for the first 36 months, 5/12 of 1% beyond; spouse 25/36 of 1% for the first 36 months) and 20 CFR 404.313 (delayed retirement credits of 2/3 of 1% per month, born after 1 January 1943, ending at age 70). Both were read on 2026-07-30.
- Your full-retirement-age benefit is an INPUT taken from your SSA statement. This site does not compute a benefit from an earnings record, because the bend points that formula uses are re-indexed annually and would rot within a year.
- COLA and opportunity cost are your own assumptions, never forecasts baked into the page. Where a discount rate is applied, both streams are discounted from a common date — discounting each stream from its own claiming age flatters delaying and is a common error.
- Figures were computed by two independently written engines that agree to the cent, and the calculator reproduces both exactly.
- Excludes taxation of benefits, the earnings test, and Medicare premium effects.
Educational estimate, not advice. Confirm anything that changes a claiming decision against your own SSA statement and with a qualified adviser.
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One more case: if health or family history argues for a shorter horizon, the breakeven math inverts — claiming with a shorter life expectancy works through it.