Dear Liz: My husband and I plan to delay taking Social Security retirement benefits until the higher-earning spouse is 70. <\/p>\n
This is to ensure the highest possible survivor benefit. However, the lower-earning spouse will be turning 62 at the same time that the higher earning spouse turns 70. We are concerned that the lower-earning spouse\u2019s future survivor benefit will be reduced if the lower earner starts benefits early. <\/p>\n
When would be the best time for the lower-earning spouse to take retirement benefits and ensure that the survivor\u2019s benefit remains the same?<\/p>\n
Answer: The lower earner won\u2019t reduce the survivor benefit by starting early, but they will permanently reduce their own benefit or any spousal benefit they\u2019re owed. Most people are better off waiting at least until their full retirement age to start Social Security benefits so they can avoid this reduction.<\/p>\n
Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist for NerdWallet.<\/a> <\/a>Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or by using the \u201cContact\u201d form at asklizweston.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Liz: My husband and I plan to delay taking Social Security retirement benefits until the higher-earning spouse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[114,268,85,46,266,267],"class_list":["post-317290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}