I've always assumed that my wife and I should wait until we're both 70 to take our social security maximums. Recently, however, I read that for married couples, a good strategy for balancing the benefit of earlier payouts with the benefit of later but higher payouts is for one spouse to collect earlier and the other to collect at the maximum. Any thoughts on this strategy?

Hi,

The answer to your question depends on many factors, such as your birth dates, past earnings, current earnings, and life expectancies. There are numerous possible strategies to consider, particularly if one or both of you were born prior to 1954.

If you haven't already done so, you may wish to consider running the maximization software available on this website. It will factor in all of the above variables in order to give you a better idea of your best option.

Best, Jerry