This Social Security break even calculator helps answer the question; over your lifetime, which filing age will net you the highest total payments from Social Security?
Just know…the results of this calculation alone cannot be the deciding factor when choosing the best filing age.
Deciding when to file for Social Security benefits requires the examination of multiple pieces of information. A Social Security break even calculator can help with the decision, but it can never be the sole factor used if you are serious about making a well-rounded decision.
Before using this calculator, I’d highly encourage you to read my article or watch my video on the right way to use a Social Security break even calculator.
Filing Ages
Early Filing Age should be before Later Filing Age
Your Break Even Age
{{monthlyBreakdown.breakEven.year}} years {{monthlyBreakdown.breakEven.month}} months
- Early
- Late
| {{monthlyBreakdown.early.payments[i-1].agey}}Y {{monthlyBreakdown.early.payments[i-1].ageM}}M | {{monthlyBreakdown.chartData.earlyCumulative[i-1].meta.early | currency}} | {{monthlyBreakdown.chartData.earlyCumulative[i-1].meta.late | currency}} |
| Full Retirement age | {{fullRetirementAge.years}}Y {{fullRetirementAge.months}}M |
| Early Retirement starting benefit | {{monthlyBreakdown.early.usbMonthly | currency}} |
| Late Retirement starting benefit | {{monthlyBreakdown.late.usbMonthly | currency}} |
| Early | Late | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | date | age | PMT | Cumulative | PMT | Cumulative |
| {{i}} | {{monthlyBreakdown.early.payments[i-1].date | formatDate}} | {{monthlyBreakdown.early.payments[i-1].agey}}y {{monthlyBreakdown.early.payments[i-1].ageM}}m | {{monthlyBreakdown.early.payments[i-1].thispayment | currency}} | {{monthlyBreakdown.early.payments[i-1].cumulative | currency}} | {{monthlyBreakdown.late.payments[i-1].thispayment | currency}} | {{monthlyBreakdown.late.payments[i-1].cumulative | currency}} |
Want to discuss your results? Leave your comments down below!
Thanks to Scott for posting about “time value of money”. Most folks won’t tell you about that. $1 today is worth more than $1 tomorrow and definitely in 5 or 10 years. Also be sure to account for all the money you leave on the table if you delay your social security for even one year after full retirement age. In my case, in order for me to receive $160 more a month for the rest of my life by waiting just one year after my full retirement age, I am leaving $28,440 on the table in that first year… Read more »
This is good for guidance but it doesn’t take into consideration delayed retirement credits. My birthday is in June and it upped my monthly calculation in June even though I am not 70. It should not go up until the following January.
Thanks for calculator. I started SS at 62 and stopped at 12 months after I went back to work. I have to figure in work income taxes fed and state, wep penalty and commute expense. Vs work income.
Also cost of hard labor on body, (PSE at small PO.) Also money I could have taken at 62 vs future ss draw date. I’ll have to determine at what time it isn’t worth it.
I will begin collecting my widower survivors benefit at 60. So I plan to delay collecting my higher benefits at 70.
Early survivor benefits will be about $1000. My personal later benefit will be almost $3000. Seems worth it to me. I also collect a teamster pension
So score. I’ll be making more than I did working.
The problem I see with all the SS breakeven calculators is that they do not take into account the time-value of money. $10,000 in my hands now is worth more than $10,000 five years from now. I am currently planning to take SS early so I can delay withdrawals from my 403b, leaving more time for my money to grow.
Can the table go past 80?
My breakeven point seems the same depite the numbers.. so if I retire at 62 vs FRA.. I am leaning toward early. I will have an annuity, I will still work a few more years so may delay until I leave work.. when I get Medicare 65, I guess I am thinking collect early, set it aside (I do not need it) put it is Roth or whatever.. something low risk,, I figured between 62-67 I can stash away about $70,000 vs zero if I don’t collect and maybe invest in another annuity that I could leave to my daughter… Read more »
Overall a good calculator. I think this is a great tool overall. If there was some way to automatically list the full retirement benefit with your birth date that would be helpful. In using this tool everyone is different. My wife and I will be taking SS early. I have a fully funded state pension with health care benefits. That pension for us at at 63 and 4 months is greater than both of our SS payments. My wife will draw the same amount plus COLAS when I pass. To me it makes more sense to take SS and leave… Read more »
Thank you, your calculator worked perfectly for me.
Ray
A nice feature would be to add spousal benefits to be started at same time as primary insured starts taking benefits. This really changes the breakeven point quite a bit.
I don’t fully understand the concept of social security and trying to better understand since I am getting close to the age of retirement. What is break even meaning and does social security benefits stop at some point during retirements?
Hi Warren…to be clear. This break even calculator is a really small component of the data needed to make this decision. If you have other assets/income, a spouse, a pension, etc. things change. You have to make the decision as part of an overall retirement income plan.
Which numbers?
Had another comment along that same line. I think this is work looking at for sure. Stay tuned!
Interesting. I’ve actually never thought about using the calculator in that way before. If I understand you, instead of using the calculator to find the break-even point, you’re using it to calculate the total cumulative benefits to a specific age?
Good idea! I’ll add that to the list of things to mull over.
Thanks Don! The issue of the ages should be fixed with the next update. In the future I plan to add components to this calculator and I’ll certainly let you know as it develops.
Max benefits are age 70
Hopefully this calculator (and those to follow) will offer a greater user experience with constructive feedback from my users.
Thanks for the feedback. The COLA should change your break even slightly. If you resuse it, and still have the same issue, please let me know.
Love the calculator. It helps in making the big decision of when to file. Just want to mention my break-even point does not change when I add in different COLA percentages. Thank you for all of your hard work.
It’s clunky. Clean it up before releasing. Not impressed
Provide the whole table of numbers not just the abbreviated one. The average cola last 47 years has been 3.68% from 1975-2022.
Devin so if I understand right, if I will live beyond the break even point I should adjust my break even as high as possible for the max Benifits? I feel confident I will live to a similiar age as my grand father and father , it’s all genetic and only 10% more if very healthy. Cheers Warren Also Devin , thank for this , I will trust your calculator , So question …..if you decide to take a later start point for SS what you do for income between now and then is huge. Do you keep working? Do… Read more »
Expanding the ending age beyond 84 year 7 months to 95 years would show the optimistic total dollar difference between filing early and later. Thanks.
Can you make it calculate to 100 yrs old. I will live past 83 yrs old and want to know the difference when I’m 90 yrs old.
Lots of bugs. First is I can’t set the “Later” age older than 70. The chart from SS said max benefits are at 72. Also, how can you ever break even when SS is half to a third of what you earn on while working?
It would be nice to see income at full retirement age with monthly income between early and late lines and see how the incomes at early, full and late change at different COLA rates. That gives me an idea if it worth it delaying it by 1 year or 2 years. Just a thought
Couple comments on my trial run.
1. I wasn’t able to enter Early and Late ages without editing what was there. In other words I couldn’t just overwrite (say replace 70 with 69).
2. Will there be a way to factor in spousal benefits based on the spouses age? My wife is 2 years younger than me and won’t have her own benefit.
So far so good! Can’t wait to follow along as it evolves. Will you send an email blast as changes are rolled out?
If you are on SSDI, the filing decision has effectively already been made. You should be receiving an amount equivalent to your full retirement age benefit. Things could change if you are married depending on which spouse is receiving SSDI.
Thanks Ken…going to adopt these changes and get this sent over to my developer.
Great suggestion. Going to send this to my developer now.
You’ll have to find out your full retirement age benefit. The easiest way is to simply subtract .6667% per month that you’ve delayed beyond your full retirement age. If you are unsure about your numbers, just call the SSA and ask them what your current PIA is today.
If you are single, the break-even analysis certain becomes more important. The one problem, as noted in my article, this does ask you to answer the impossible question of “how long will I live?” I’d recommend using it as one of your consideration points.
With my health declining at this early age and unexpectedly at 62, I decided to look into early retirement. I didn’t plan like I should have all of these years but I want to enjoy some time before I can’t. I had recently found out about these issues and it threw me and I couldn’t concentrate on my sales job. The company has dismissed me because my numbers fell, knowing that I had these problems and understood that my mind wasn’t there , but they had to let me go anyway. Not sure I want to start again somewhere else.… Read more »
Does this calculator work for those of us who are past full retirement age, but haven’t filed yet? The SSA site doesn’t show me what my benefit would have been at full retirement age, just what it is now.
How does ssdi change things
Devin – one simple suggestion. Add the word “Average” before “cola”. People are adjusting it to the projected 8.x% for 2023, which the calculator applies to ALL years & skews the result. High COLA’s won’t last long term, so setting it to 8.x will produce a totally unrealistic break even. Over the last 20 yrs, including the Jan 22 5.9%, the average COLA is 2.2% so that is the most correct figure to use, or maybe 2.5%. Correct? The new calculator is awesome, but like any good tool one must use it properly & making it clear that it’s an… Read more »
A couple of technical notes: please adjust the form window for birthdate as it’s too small to hold the full date. Also, allowing direct entry of birthdate rather than going through many, many clicks to jump through the months would be a nice improvement. I sent you a private email of my own similar analysis using a spreadsheet. Thanks for posting the tool—certainly one of a number of important considerations when choosing to apply.
Breakeven for me was at about 80.5 years. I chose to take SS earlier this year at 67 as my wife hit FRA and was able to pick up the full Spousal Benefit, Her benefit jumped by over 300/month. I had to assume that this extra income would put the breakeven at some point well into my 80’s.
Hi John…sounds like you have a well-thought-out plan.
Nice analysis. It’s in line with my own excel computation schedules. My wife is 9 years younger than me, and in good health, so I’m delaying my benefits to ensure maximum benefits for her in later years after my death.
Scott…thanks so much for the feedback. I view this calculator as a good first step in creating Social Security tools that are valuable for consumers. With input like yours, I hope to continue to improve and make these tools much more comprehensive in the future.
Thanks for the feedback!
I have been made aware of the issue where only mobile devices are showing the table. Hopefully, that will be updated shortly. 🤞
On the COLA, it doesn’t calculate above 10%. I did notice that you can currently manually set it to be higher than that. Something else for the developer to work on.
No matter what I enter into the COLA I get the same results. I have set it at 20%, 0%, 5% and tried with early age as 62 and later age as 70.
On my Android phone cannot set DOB to the exact year (like on laptop) and results appear in graphical format as well as a table which is great, where as on windows laptop using Chrome browser, it shows only in graphical format.
Great calculator. Always appreciate your knowledge and input. It is always a never ending balance between any calculator’s simplicity and it’s complexity/capability. That said, I believe a critical input is the rate of return of the beneficiary’s other assets. The idea being that if you delay SS to a later age, you must draw down other assets which takes them out of the market (whether checking account, stocks/bonds, etc.) and eliminating that return. This will move the breakeven age. Currently, it looks like the calculator assumes a 0% return on these assets. I don’t think that is realistic for most… Read more »
Thanks so much for sharing my content! The WEP and GPO can be awful surprises so I’m glad you’ve taken the time to research and learn.
Hi Rick…this calculator is meant to be an easy-to-use resource. In the future, I look forward to developing add-on components that are more comprehensive. For now, I don’t want to “muddy the waters” with too many inputs or outputs. Thanks for stopping by and checking it out!
Hi Rick…this calculator is meant to be an easy-to-use resource. In the future, I look forward to developing add-on components that are more comprehensive. For now, I don’t want to “muddy the waters” with too many inputs or outputs. Thanks for checking it out!
The calculator is located at https://www.socialsecurityintelligence.com/calculators/social-security-break-even-calculator/