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? thanks, James

Dear James,

This strategy may, indeed, be optimal. For example, if you are 62 and your wife is 66 and you are the higher earner and have a relatively short maximum age of life, you could file for your reduced retirement benefit now and have your wife file just for her spousal benefit. (She was, in this case, age 62 before January 2, 2016 and is grandfathered to file just for her spousal benefit starting at her full retirement age.) Then at 70 she'd take her own, hopefully higher retirement benefit. At 66, upon reaching full retirement age, you'd suspend your retirement benefit and restart it at 70.

Whether this or something close is your situation, I don't know. You really should run our $40 program. It will indicate exactly what to do and when to collect the highest lifetime benefits.

All best, Larry