I am 66 and my wife will be 72 in a month. I earned well more than she did in part because she stopped working for many years to raise our kids. We were both born before January 2, 1954. In 2012 when she turn 66 she applied for and is receiving (not suspending) monthly retirement benefits. I have not applied for any benefits but ran a report that suggests that I should apply for spousal benefits now and then apply for retirement benefits when I reach age 70. The report has a section about when to collect particular benefits for married couples, but it's very confusing. Can you help?

Hi,

If the report that you refer to is from our software, then yes your best strategy would likely be to file for just spousal benefits only now and then switch to your own record at age 70. If the report is from somewhere else, though, I would need more information to know if it's accurate. If you aren't yet a subscriber to our software, you should strongly consider subscribing in order to determine your exact optimal strategy.

In any case, if you're planning to wait until age 70 to take your own benefits then it sounds like you should almost certainly file for spousal benefits as soon as possible. Drawing spousal benefits only from age 66 to age 70 would have no adverse effect on your future retirement benefit rate from your own record. You would want to claim the spousal benefits effective with the month that you reached age 66, but you but if you turned age 66 more than 6 months ago you could only claim retroactive benefits for a maximum of 6 months.

Best, Jerry