I filed for and received survivor benefits at age 60, I'm currently 61. I Went back to work and suspended the payments due to earnings. Do these benefits continue to accrue? How do they accrue? I'm planning to retire at 70 to maximize my own benefits but would like to know my best strategy (maximum $) for claiming both my survivor benefits and personal benefits. Thanks for your help.

Hi. I'm not sure what you mean by 'accrue', but benefits lost to the Social Security earnings test are not accumulated and returned to the person later. What happens instead is that the reduction for age applied to your benefit amount is later adjusted to account for any months that benefits weren't payable due to the earnings test.

For example, say that Bob applied for widower benefits at age 60. Bob's full retirement age (FRA) survivor rate would have been $1000, but his age 60 rate is reduced for age to by 28.5% to $715. Bob continues working and due to his earnings his benefits, he ends up only being paid benefits for half of the months between his first month of entitlement and his FRA. In that case, Bob's widower rate would be adjusted effective with FRA to remove half of the original 28.5% reduction for age, raising his monthly benefit rate to $857.50.

By the way, you can't voluntarily suspend your survivor benefits. If your earnings are above the Social Security earnings test limits then your benefits can be involuntarily suspended, but you can't refuse to accept any benefits that are still payable after accounting for the earnings test withholding.

You're probably on solid ground with your original strategy to apply for survivor benefits at age 60 and then switch to your own benefits at age 70, assuming that your own age 70 benefit rate will be higher than your unreduced survivor benefit rate. However, you may want to strongly consider using our software (https://maximizemysocialsecurity.com/purchase) to fully compare and analyze all of your various options so that you can determine your best strategy for maximizing your benefits.

Best, Jerry