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Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): A spousal benefit reduces at 25/36 of 1% per month for the first 36 months, not 5/9, and earns no delayed retirement credits at all. Delaying past full retirement age raises a worker’s own benefit and does nothing for the spousal one.
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A spousal benefit reduces on a different schedule
This is the detail that most couples get wrong. Under 20 CFR 404.410 a spouse's benefit is reduced by 25/36 of 1 percent for each of the first 36 months, not 5/9 of 1 percent. Beyond 36 months both use 5/12 of 1 percent. At age 62 against a full retirement age of 67, a worker's own benefit is cut 30 percent while a spousal benefit is cut 35 percent.
Delayed credits do not apply to spousal benefits at all
A worker who waits past full retirement age earns 2/3 of 1 percent per month on their own benefit. The spousal benefit derived from that record earns nothing for waiting. A spouse claiming a spousal benefit therefore has no reason to delay past their own full retirement age — the number stops growing.
Two clocks, and only one of them really matters
The higher earner's claiming age determines two things: their own benefit for life, and the survivor benefit the other spouse will step up to. The lower earner's claiming age determines only their own cheques while both are living. That asymmetry is why the usual advice is to delay the higher earner and take the lower earner's benefit earlier — it is not about which spouse is older.
Related: how the survivor benefit changes the higher earner's decision, and why delaying does not raise a spousal benefit.
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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