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Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): Standard breakeven math assumes early cheques earn nothing. Charge a 5% opportunity cost on a 62-versus-70 comparison and the breakeven moves from about 80.3 to about 89.8 – past most people’s planning horizon, and a genuinely different decision.
The right discount rate is a portfolio question.
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The assumption inside every published breakeven age
Breakeven figures of 78 to 82 are arrived at by adding up cheques and comparing totals. That arithmetic silently assumes the money you collect at 62 earns nothing for the eight years before the delayed claimant starts. Nobody's money behaves that way.
What happens when you charge it a return
On a $2,000 full-retirement-age benefit, comparing 62 against 70 with no return assumed, breakeven is about 80.3. Charge a 5 percent opportunity cost and it moves to about 89.8.
That is not a rounding difference. It moves the crossover from inside most people's planning horizon to outside it. On a strict present-value basis at 5 percent, the delayed claim wins only for someone confident of living into their nineties.
Choosing the rate honestly
The right rate is not a savings-account rate, and it is not an equity return either. It is what the money would actually have done in your hands — which for most retirees means a balanced portfolio return, or, if delaying means drawing down investments to bridge the gap, the return on what you would have had to sell.
The argument this does not settle
Present value is one lens and longevity insurance is another. A delayed benefit is inflation-linked and lasts as long as you do, which is worth something a portfolio cannot easily replicate — precisely in the scenario where you outlive your money. The discounted arithmetic is the honest version of the financial comparison; it is not the whole decision.
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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