Claim at 62, 67 or wait until 70?
Claiming early gets you smaller payments sooner. Waiting gets you bigger ones later. Which wins depends entirely on how long you live, and every calculator picks one life expectancy for you and hides the rest. This one sweeps the whole range and shows all three claim ages together, so you can see where the answer flips.
Personal Finance Starter Data Table free
After you install, this is the model to open.
When Should You Take Social Security?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
Nine rows of three numbers, with the crossovers visible straight down the columns:
- Live to 78
- Claim at 62 ahead by about $20,000
- Live to 82
- Claim at 67 ahead by about $6,000
- Live to 90
- Claim at 70 ahead by about $75,000
- Break-even ages
- 81 and 85 67 passes 62, then 70 passes 67
Waiting does not start paying off in the low eighties, which is the usual shorthand. On these numbers claiming at 67 overtakes claiming at 62 at about age 81, and claiming at 70 does not overtake 67 until about age 85. Live to 78 and claiming early wins by roughly $20,000; live to 90 and waiting until 70 wins by roughly $75,000 over claiming at 62. This is the US program, it assumes a full retirement age of 67, and it deliberately leaves out taxes, spousal and survivor benefits, and the earnings limit if you keep working. Put the figure from your own benefit statement in the first cell, because that one number scales all three columns.
The model
One assumption stack and a one-variable data table. Each claim age is valued as an ordinary annuity of real payments and discounted back to age 62, so all three are measured at the same point rather than at three different starting lines.
| Benefit at full retirement age | $31,200 a year, or $2,600 a month |
| Claim at 62 | 70% of it |
| Claim at 67 | 100% of it |
| Claim at 70 | 124% of it |
| Real discount rate | 2%, with everything in today's dollars |
| Full retirement age assumed | 67, the US rule for anyone born in 1960 or later |
| Age you live to | swept from 75 to 100 by the data table |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
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Every model like this one, and the method behind them: What-if analysis in Google Sheets.