There are certain benefits to being married when you're older. For one thing, you have someone to spend your days with in the absence of being busy with a job. And also, it's nice to have someone to commiserate with on the trials of aging.
Being married can also be advantageous from a Social Security standpoint. Even if you didn't earn enough work credits to qualify for Social Security on your own, if your spouse is eligible for monthly benefits based on their income record, you may be eligible for spousal benefits.
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But it's important to understand how Social Security spousal benefits work. It's also crucial to understand how much they'll pay you.
Know how much total Social Security income to expect
If you and your spouse are expecting Social Security to be a primary source of retirement income, then it's important to have a good sense of what you'll get from the program. This means that if one of you is entitled to benefits based on an income record and the other is eligible for spousal benefits only, it's crucial that you know what those two benefits combined might amount to.
In a nutshell, Social Security spousal benefits max out at 50% of what the benefit-earning spouse collects at their full retirement age. So, let's say you're the one signing up for spousal benefits and your spouse is the earner in your household. If their monthly benefit at full retirement age is $2,000, your maximum spousal benefit is $1,000 a month at your full retirement age.
Don't bother trying to grow a spousal benefit
One area where couples claiming spousal benefits may get tripped up is thinking they'll delay their spousal benefit claim for boosted monthly checks. But that strategy works only when you're claiming Social Security based on your own income records.
In that case, for each year you delay your claim past full retirement age, your monthly benefits get an 8% boost. But that boost does not apply to spousal benefits, so it's important to plan accordingly. You don't want to overbank on Social Security income for your retirement that may not come through.
In this example, the spouse claiming Social Security on their own earnings record could grow their monthly benefit beyond $2,000 by delaying past full retirement age. But the maximum value of the spousal benefit in this example is still $1,000.
Of course, if your spousal benefit eventually becomes a survivor benefit, at that point, you'd be eligible for whatever your spouse's monthly checks were. Make sure you know the ins and outs of spousal benefits, though, because hopefully you won't have to think about survivor benefits for a very long time.
