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Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): Waiting from 67 to 70 adds 2/3 of 1% per month, 24% in total: $2,000 becomes $2,480. This pairing has the latest breakeven of the three – about 82.4 undiscounted – because you give up three full years of cheques to get it.
Bridging three years is a portfolio question, not just a claiming one.
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Twenty-four percent, and the three years it costs
From full retirement age to 70, delayed retirement credits accrue at 2/3 of 1 percent per month under 20 CFR 404.313 — 8 percent a year, 24 percent over three years. A $2,000 benefit becomes $2,480.
This is the pairing with the latest breakeven
Undiscounted breakeven here is about 82.4, later than either comparison involving age 62. The reason is structural: you are giving up 36 months of full-sized cheques to buy a 24 percent increase, whereas the 62-year-old is giving up cheques that were already reduced. The gap you have to close is proportionally larger.
Which makes it the most sensitive to your return assumption
Because the payback period is long and starts late, this is the comparison a realistic opportunity cost changes most. If you would otherwise be drawing from a portfolio to bridge those three years, the relevant rate is not a savings rate — it is what that portfolio would have earned.
The credits stop dead at 70
There is no benefit whatsoever to waiting past 70. The credit ends, and every further month is a month of cheques forfeited for nothing. If the plan is to delay, 70 is the date, not “as long as possible”.
Related
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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