You can start receiving Social Security benefits between ages 62 and 70. If you claim your benefits before your full retirement age (FRA), you will reduce your monthly benefit, though. Depending on your birth year and how early you claim, you could receive as little as 70% of your standard benefit for filing ahead of your FRA.
You may be tempted to simply accept this benefit cut if you want to get ahold of your retirement checks right away. But before you make an early Social Security claim, you should think carefully about the impact this choice could have on your spouse. Here's why.
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An early claim could doom your surviving spouse to financial disaster
If you're married, there's one situation in which filing for benefits early could be a huge problem: You were the higher earner in your relationship and died before your lower-earning spouse.
See, your Social Security check stops coming entirely when you die. So, your spouse is left with only one retirement payment coming in from the Social Security Administration when, previously, there were probably two (yours and theirs).
If you were the higher earner, your spouse could start receiving survivor benefits instead of getting only their own retirement benefits or spousal benefits. Those survivor benefits could be worth much more than the benefits they were personally receiving before your death -- but if you file for benefits early, you could shrink them.
Here's how an early claim could harm your spouse
Survivor benefits are available to widows or widowers. When you pass away, your spouse gets to keep the higher of the two benefits that were coming into the house. So, if you were receiving $2,000 a month but your spouse has a benefit of only $1,000, they would get to continue receiving the $2,000 check after your death (and their $1,000 payment would stop).
If you claimed your Social Security benefits early and shrunk them, your spouse would, unfortunately, be left with a smaller payment than they otherwise would have had if you'd delayed your benefits claim. Since many people rely on Social Security to cover the bills, the reduction in survivor benefits could create real financial hardship for the person left behind.
Rather than putting your spouse at risk of a financial crisis, it often makes more sense for the higher-earning spouse to put off their benefits claim as long as possible to maximize the survivor benefits paid after their death.
The spouse who earned less can claim their own benefits earlier to give the couple something to live on while the person who earned the most waits and maximizes their Social Security income so survivor benefits will be as large as possible.
Now, there may be circumstances where this doesn't matter much, such as if you have a huge nest egg and a large life insurance policy and your spouse will have plenty of funds after you die. But since that's not the reality for most people, it's crucial to consider what an early claim could do to your widow's finances if you pass first.
Don't make the choice to claim Social Security benefits early without considering this, or your spouse could regret the decision you made after you're gone.
