Wife claim my Social Security?

Q

qwerty3656

Full time employment: Posting here.
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Nov 17, 2020
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My wife was a stay at home mom and here SS is less than half of mine. Someone was saying there may be an advantage for her to claim my SS while I keep deferring? Is that a thing?
 
As in all things SS that depends on your ages. You both would need to be 62 by 1/1/2016 for this to apply to you and your spouse.
 
ivinsfan said:
As in all things SS that depends on your ages. You both would need to be 62 by 1/1/2016 for this to apply to you and your spouse.
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Well we are only 58 now - I'm just starting to think about such things
 
She cannot claim spousal SS until you begin drawing.
 
Agree with MissMolly. Your wife can claim her own SS at 62, but she has to wait for you to start drawing your SS to claim spousal.
 
travelover said:
....from a random somebody......
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We're not random somebodies, :angel: I was talking about someone you know throwing out an unsolicited tip about SS claiming.
 
SecondCor521 said:
I can't tell if I should follow this advice or not! :facepalm:
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:cool::cool: The good thing is the comment led the OP here to ask his question. At late 60s/early70s I can't tell you the amount of time fellow oldsters have proclaimed things about SS that are 100% wrong. This board was my number one resource to separate the truth from the B$...
 
The trouble with this is that it only changed in 2014/15 and everyone will swear that they are right because they or their brother did it back in the day. Always go to the source if you want current rules.'
There are people still trying to use the old primary residence rules of reinvesting in new property that changed 25 years ago.
 
qwerty3656 said:
My wife was a stay at home mom and here SS is less than half of mine. Someone was saying there may be an advantage for her to claim my SS while I keep deferring? Is that a thing?
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As others have posted, it doesn't work that way for people your age. She will get SS based on her own work record. Once you file, her SS will increase for the difference between 50% of your PIA and her PIA. PIA is primary insurance amount, the retirement benefits that you are due at your full retiremnt age (FRA).

So for example, let's say her PIA is $500/month and yours is $2,500/month. She claims before her FRA and is receiving $400/month. Then you claim at your FRA.

After you claim, her benefit will increase by $750 from $400/month to $1,150/month. The $100/month discount because she claimed earlier than her FRA permanently affects her benefit.

Something like that anyway. I second the recommendation to visit opensocialsecurlty.com to optimize your benefit... be sure to checked the advanced options box at the top of the page and select the factors that might impact your situation.

And consistent with post#5, this advice is worth everything that you paid for it and YMMV.
 
My wife gets 50% of my FRA benefit. In order to do this she had to wait until her FRA and I had to start my benefit also.
 
And it's even more complicated under the covers. My understanding is what they do is that they project the cash flows for each possible claiming strategy... So claiming each month between 62 if you're currently under 62 and age 70. Of course if you have a married couple and two people, there many more possible claiming strategies. Then they multiply those cash outflows by the probability of one or the other of you being alive to receive them. And then they discount the adjusted cash outflows for the time value of money. And they do that for many many possible sequences and see which one comes out the winner.
 
pb4uski said:
And it's even more complicated under the covers. My understanding is what they do is that they project the cash flows for each possible claiming strategy... So claiming each month between 62 if you're currently under 62 and age 70. Of course if you have a married couple and two people, there many more possible claiming strategies. Then they multiply those cash outflows by the probability of one or the other of you being alive to receive them. And then they discount the adjusted cash outflows for the time value of money. And they do that for many many possible sequences and see which one comes out the winner.
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That is my understanding, too.

If anyone hasn't looked at it in the last year or so (I think?), Obvlibious Investor (AKA, Mike Piper, who runs the site) added a wonderful feature for married couples. In addition to showing what he calculates to be the optimal ages for the couple to claim, he shows you a matrix of all the possible claiming ages. You can then easily see how sensitive the expected-value outcome is to claiming strategies.

For example, for us, the optimal was me to claim at 70, and DW to claim at 62. But as long as I claim at 70, the age she chooses does not reduce the optimum very much, like <5% or so.
 
Out of Steam said:
One thing I've learned since I started looking at Social Security (including running strategies on Open Social Security), is that it is not a simple program. Especially once you start considering spousal benefits.
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Then if you have to throw WEP/GPO into the mix.......
 
LRDave said:
Then if you have to throw WEP/GPO into the mix.......
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I do have to throw WEP in, but since I had a long non-Federal stint in the middle of my career, I'm not affected by GPO. Calculations so far are that I should be second to file for Social Security.
 
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