The Unexpected Reason a Delayed Social Security Claim May Pay Off

Key Points

• If you delay Social Security, you can increase your monthly benefit.

• Many people choose to delay because doing so gives them more income each month.

• There's another equally important reason to delay benefits in some circumstances.

• The $23,760 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook ›

Many experts recommend waiting to claim Social Security for as long as possible. This can help you increase your monthly benefits.

However, there may also be another unexpected reason why putting off a benefits claim could be a very smart choice. Here's what it is.

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Delaying Social Security benefits could have a surprising -- and important -- benefit

Social Security can be claimed starting at 62, but if you delay your retirement benefits until the age of 70, your Social Security checks will get substantially bigger.

In fact, your standard benefit only becomes available at a designated Full Retirement Age, which is 67 for anyone who was born in or after 1960.

An early claim shrinks benefits for each month you are ahead of FRA, with annual reductions adding up to between 5% and 6.7%. Those who claim at 62 end up losing a full 30% of their standard benefit. A delayed claim, on the other hand, results in a monthly increase in benefits that adds up to 8% per year to your standard benefit check for each year you wait up to age 70.

Delaying to get that benefit boost has an obvious advantage, as it gives you a larger lifetime benefit that comes with inflation protections built in.

It also has a not-so-obvious, yet perhaps equally important advantage, though, in that you increase the survivor benefits you leave behind if you were the higher-earning spouse.

Boosting survivor benefits is very important

Survivor benefits are benefits that your spouse can receive from Social Security if you pass away. As of February 2025, around 3.7 million widows and widowers were collecting these benefits.

If you die before claiming your benefits, then your widowed spouse could collect the amount that you would have received based on your earning history. However, if you claim your own benefits before you die, then your spouse's survivor benefits can equal up to 100% of the benefit amount you were receiving during your lifetime.

Unfortunately, that means if you claim your benefits before 70 and you thus collect less than the maximum amount you could have received, you will not just shrink your own Social Security retirement check but also the survivor benefits check that your widowed spouse gets to collect when you are gone.

Since many people don't have enough money in their retirement plans to live comfortably after their spouse dies, reducing the survivor benefits that you leave behind for your partner could put them in a tough spot.

That's especially true because, when both spouses are alive, there are typically two Social Security checks coming into the household. When you die, the number of checks coming in goes down to just one. You obviously want that one to be as high as it can be, so your spouse doesn't find themselves relying so much on their 401 (k) or IRA distributions that their account runs dry.

Ultimately, as you and your spouse go through the retirement planning process, you need to consider what will happen if you die first when you were the higher earner. You want to ensure that your spouse is left as financially secure as possible when you are gone, and doing so may mean that you need to take full advantage of the opportunity to increase your Social Security check as much as you can.

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