It's natural to want the most Social Security checks possible, especially after you've spent decades paying into the program. But rushing to sign up for Social Security as soon as you can could turn out to be a costly mistake.
The government uses your claiming age when deciding what your monthly benefit should be, and 62-year-olds pay a steep price for signing up early. If you're looking to maximize your lifetime benefit, you need to understand how this works before you fill out your application.
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Here's the average benefit for 62-year-old beneficiaries
When calculating your Social Security benefit, the government first determines your primary insurance amount (PIA), the benefit you'd get if you waited until your full retirement age (FRA). That varies by your birth year, but for most workers today, FRA is 67.
You're allowed to claim Social Security as early as 62, but doing it so early reduces your checks by 5/9 of 1% per month for up to 36 months and then 5/12 of 1% per month thereafter. If your FRA is 67, you shrink your benefit by 30% when you claim right away at 62.
We can see how this plays out when we look at average benefits. The typical 67-year-old received about $1,930 per month as of December 2024, the most recent data available. The average 62-year-old got only about $1,342 per month -- a difference of $588.
That gap only widens once you add the 2.5% Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for 2025 and the 2.8% COLA for 2026. That would bring the 67-year-old claimant's $1,930 monthly benefit to about $2,034 per month and the 62-year-old's benefit to $1,414 -- a $620 difference.
Does claiming Social Security at 62 ever make sense?
The numbers above appear to make a strong case for delaying Social Security, but it's not quite that simple. You have to think about your financial situation and your life expectancy when deciding which claiming age is best for you.
Some people cannot afford to delay their benefits until their FRA. They may be unable to work due to poor health or family caretaking duties, and they might not have a lot of personal savings to fall back on. In that case, claiming early can absolutely make sense, even if it means settling for a smaller lifetime benefit.
Those with short life expectancies also do better by claiming early. If you only expect to live until 70, you will get a larger lifetime benefit by claiming at 62 than you would by waiting until 67 to apply, even though you get larger monthly checks by starting at 67.
If you can afford to delay and you have an average to above-average life expectancy, waiting to sign up for Social Security could be your best move. You don't have to stop at your FRA, either.
You can continue to delay Social Security until you qualify for your maximum benefit at 70. This is 124% of your PIA if your FRA is 67. However, you don't want to wait longer than this because there are no further increases after 70.
If you're still not sure when to sign up, you can compare your estimated monthly benefit at every claiming age in your my Social Security account. Choose a few ages you're considering and multiply those monthly benefits by 12 to get your estimated annual benefit. Then, multiply that by the number of years you expect to claim. For example, $2,000 monthly checks for 20 years give you a lifetime benefit of $480,000.
Whenever possible, choose the claiming age you believe will give you the most money overall. Remember, you can always adjust the date you plan to file for benefits if your health or finances change down the road.
