5 SMART Reasons to File for Social Security at 62

Is this statement True or False?

Filing for Social Security at 62 is always a bad idea.

Most of the information and “advice” you find online makes the case that delaying your filing is always the right thing to do. And there’s good reason for that, because filing for Social Security at 62 means taking reduced benefits.

That means filing early means receiving a smaller benefits check. On the surface, that certainly sounds less appealing than waiting and getting a bigger check for doing so.

But it’s not true that filing at 62 is always a bad idea.

You may hear people say things like, “you should always wait until you’re full retirement age for file for maximum amount of benefits.” Again, filing later for Social Security benefits does mean maximizing income… in most cases.

This doesn’t apply to every situation. The decision to file early, at full retirement age, or to delay benefits is highly dependent on your own personal set of factors.

In fact, there are five specific circumstances when I think filing early actually makes the most sense. Here they are:

1. You Need the Income

There’s not a lot to think about here: If you’ve left your job, plan to retire, and need this income, you just need to go file.

A lot of people leave work long before they actually want to leave, or planned to do so. In fact, the Employee Benefit Research Institute did a study in 2016 and found that among those retiring, 46% were retiring before they wanted to:

• 55% of those individuals surveyed retired because of a health concern or disability
• 24% of workers left because their company was either downsizing or going away completely
• 17% of respondents were leaving work to care for a spouse or some other family member

Let’s take a moment to talk about the 55% of individuals who left work because of a health issue or disability. If this describes your situation, you probably need the income benefits could provide to you… but you also need to make sure you file for the right benefits.

What does this mean? Before you go and file for Social Security retirement benefits, you need to thoroughly investigate whether or not you qualify for Social Security disability. 

Assuming your full retirement age is 67, if you file for those retirement benefits at 62, you’ll receive around 70% of your full retirement age benefit amount. If you file for disability and are awarded those benefits, the amount that you would receive would be 100% of your full retirement age benefit, even at 62.

Where and how you file can make a big difference for you and the income you receive. If you’re leaving work because of a disability or because of a health issue, take the time to compare both sets of benefits.

If you qualify for disability, your benefit may be higher than if you file for regular Social Security.  Knowing what you qualify for could mean the difference between maximizing your retirement income, or falling short of what you need to cover your expenses.

If you’d like to read more about this, see my article that takes a closer look at the question, Should You File for Social Security Disability or Retirement? 3 Things to Consider.

2. You’re Single and Have Health Issues

If you’re single and have health issues, you may just want to use a simple break-even analysis. This calculation compares what you’ll receive in cumulative lifetime benefits for filing at various ages.  

For example, if you’re trying to compare filing at 62 versus what you’d receive if you filed at 67, a break-even analysis would tell you that you need to live longer than age 78 for filing at 67 to make more sense over filing at age 62.

You can run all sorts of age combinations in these calculations, but if you’re single and have health issues, this is probably where filing early makes the most sense because you’re not worried about increasing survivor benefits or the host of other factors that married individuals have to worry about.

3. There Is Some Kind of Spousal Issue to Consider

There are a few factors that your spouse’s earnings and health contributes to making this decision. Here are the two that I see most often:

Your spouse is the higher earner and has health issues

The first is if your spouse is the higher earner and has health concerns. If your spouse had higher earnings than you, that means their Social Security benefit is going to be higher than yours.

If they’re also in poor health and have a shortened life expectancy, that means the higher benefit they receive will most likely become your benefit when they pass away. That happens though the survivor’s benefit.

If that’s the case, there’s not much reason to delay your benefit for years down the road just so you can get a higher benefit for the rest of your life, because you’ll most likely start getting that survivor’s benefit at some point in the future.

Your spouse is the lower earner and older than you.

This is the other common case where spousal issues can make it more advantageous for you to file earlier.

If your spouse is older than you and their own benefit is not as high as the amount they can receive as a spousal benefit, it could make sense to file and open up your work record to pay a spousal benefit to them.

When you compare the total amount of cumulative benefits that you could both receive, it may make more sense to do it this way.

For example, assume your spouse has already attained full retirement age and her benefit from her work is $400 per month. You are only 62, but your full retirement age benefit is $2000.

By filing now you’d allow your wife to begin collecting the full spousal benefit of $1,000. Yes, you’d get a reduced benefit of around $1,500 for the rest of your life — but the cumulative amount of benefit received over your lifetime could be greater for filing early.

4. You Are Eligible for a Survivor’s Benefit

This strategy is highly dependent on the math. It could make sense to file for your survivor’s benefit as early as age 60, and then switch to your own benefit down the road up until age 70.

Let’s walk through an example and see how this would work.

Say your own Social Security benefit at full retirement age is $1,500, and the survivor’s benefit that you’re eligible for is $1,750. If you file early, you know there will be some reductions that come into play; your own benefit would be $1,050 and the survivor’s benefit would be $1,394.

Here’s the way this switching strategy would play out:

You would file for survivor’s benefit at age 62 (and remember, you can file for that benefit as early as age 60 or even 50 if you’re disabled, but to keep everything the same, I want to use age 62 here).

You’d then start receiving $1,394 in benefits per month, and then at age 70, you’d switch back to your own benefit.

Because your benefits increase every year between age 62 and 70, your benefit would be $1,860 — and that’s not including any cost of living adjustments, which would be added to this amount over time.

5. You Have Minor or Disabled Children at Home

If you have children, eligible grandchildren, or even a spouse providing care for these children at home, these family members may be eligible for a benefit. Just know you will have to file first before they can receive it!

There’s a rule that states that before benefits can be paid to anyone off of your work record, you have to be receiving benefits. That means filing early could make more sense than waiting.

When combined with your benefits, the benefits to children and your eligible spouse can be up to 180% of your full retirement age benefit. If you have children at home that meet the criteria for eligibility, that’s an obvious reason to consider filing early.

Let’s look at an example to illustrate this.

Say you’re 62 and your wife is 50. You have two children, ages 13 and 11. Thanks to good savings habits throughout your working career, you don’t need Social Security income and can be flexible when you file.

It might seem like it makes sense to wait to file until full retirement age, then, when you’d receive $2,000 (versus filing now, when you’d only get $1,500 per month).   

If you lived until 90, you’d receive an additional $70,000 in benefits for delaying filing until 66 instead of filing at 62. But this doesn’t take into account the benefits paid to your children.

While your children would be eligible for benefits based upon your retirement, the kids cannot get benefits until you file. That means your family would able to collect thousands of dollars more in lifetime benefits if you file early and turn on the benefits for your kids.

That’s the quick rundown of the  five scenarios in which I think it makes sense to file for Social Security as early as possible.

Now, I have to make the side note here before we leave. There’s a video that I did recently called “Three Stupid Reasons to File For Social Security at Age 62.”

It has some amusing comments if you want to go out and read those, and maybe even add your own to that — but the bottom line is that I don’t think that filing at 62 is always right.

Filing at later ages such as full retirement age or even 70 isn’t always right, either! It‘s highly dependent on your individual circumstances.

So what does that mean for you as far as next steps?

Do yourself the favor of getting informed about Social Security. Don’t just take someone’s word for it. And whatever you do, don’t just take the Social Security Administration’s word for it.

If you need help getting started, there are two ways to get help.

First, you should order my bestselling Social Security book on Amazon:

If you still have questions, you could leave a comment below, but what may be an even greater help is to join my FREE Facebook members group. It’s very active and has some really smart people who love to answer any questions you may have about Social Security. From time to time I’ll even drop in to add my thoughts, too. 

You should also consider joining the 330,000+ subscribers on my YouTube channel! For visual learners (as most of us are), this is where I break down the complex rules and help you figure out how to use them to your advantage. 

One last thing that you don’t want to miss: Be sure to get your FREE copy of my Social Security Cheat Sheet. This handy guide takes all of the most important rules from the massive Social Security website and condenses it all down to just one page.