I plan to take my social security at my full retirement age of 66 and 2 months. In 3 years, when my spouse is 70 and files for his, I plan to file for spousal benefits which will be greater than my benefits. Is there any problem with this plan? Would my collecting benefits on my own impact the ability of my spouses's social security to grow at 8% until he collects at 70? I understand that my spousal benefit will be only 50% of his Primary Insurance Amount. Will the benefits we each receive when he is 70 be the same whether I ever collect on my own or not?

Hi,

There's nothing necessarily wrong with your plan, but I can't say whether or not it's your best possible plan given the limited information in your question. You definitely wouldn't want to wait past full retirement age (FRA) to start collecting your own Social Security retirement benefits, assuming that your own rate would be less than 50% of your husband's primary insurance amount (PIA) even if you waited until age 70 to start drawing your benefits.

If you start drawing your own benefits at FRA and you later become eligible for a higher spousal rate, you'll continue to be paid your own benefit plus an excess spousal rate equal to the difference in your PIA and 50% of your husband's PIA. A person's PIA is equal to their Social Security retirement benefit rate if they start drawing at FRA. The net result would be that you'd then get a combined benefit amount equal to a full 50% of your husband's PIA.

Thus, you wouldn't gain anything by not collecting your own benefits starting at FRA. And, your drawing your benefits would have no effect on your husband's ability to accrue DRCs that would increase his benefit rate by 8% per year between his FRA and age 70. In other words, drawing your benefits won't have any adverse effect on your husband's rate.

By the way, if your husband was born prior to January 2 1954 then he could file a restricted claim for spousal benefits when you file for your benefits. Doing so wouldn't keep him from accruing DRCs on his own record, so he could potentially collect spousal benefits while still allowing his own benefit rate to grow until age 70. Only people born prior to January 2 1954 are allowed to file for spousal benefits without being forced to file for their own benefits at the same time, though, so that wouldn't work if your husband was born after January 1 1954.

It sounds like you and your husband have a lot of potential options available to you, so you should strongly consider using our software (https://maximizemysocialsecurity.com/purchase) to fully explore your options so that you can determine the best strategy for maximizing your benefits.

Best, Jerry