If you don\u2019t have to take Social Security earlier than your full retirement age, or preferably 70, please don\u2019t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Her argument centers on a different claim, which is that most retirees fall outside that exception and stand to lose meaningful money by filing too soon.<\/p>\n
Each year a retiree delays claiming past full retirement age, their monthly benefit grows by about 8%, according to the Social Security Administration.<\/p>\n
That increase compounds with nearly annual cost-of-living adjustments, which apply to the higher base amount once a retiree chooses to wait.<\/p>\n
Why economists also point retirees to age 70<\/h2>\n
A 2022 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research supports Orman’s position with data.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Economists David Altig of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University, and Victor Yifan Ye built a model to calculate the optimal lifetime claiming strategy for American workers. <\/p>\n
More than 90% of retirees would benefit most from waiting until age 70, the researchers concluded.<\/p>\n
Only about 10.2% of retirees wait that long, a gap the same NBER paper described as both large and costly. The research found that workers ages 45 to 62 should generally wait until after age 65 to start collecting, not just after 62.<\/p>\n
More Social Security:<\/strong><\/p>\n The mismatch between the optimal strategy and actual behavior is the gap Orman is trying to close with her public comments this year. <\/p>\n Liquidity needs, health concerns, and fear of future benefit cuts all factor into why people claim early, despite what the NBER modeling shows about the lifetime cost of doing so.<\/p>\n Joe Elsasser, a certified financial planner and president of Covisum, said the clients he has who waited until 70 to claim are the happiest, due to the larger benefit payments they receive every month.<\/p>\n What’s more, they don’t have to worry as much about market fluctuations affecting their income.<\/p>\n Jessie Casson/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Part of the pressure toward early filing comes from headlines about Social Security’s finances running short in the years ahead.<\/p>\n The program’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund is projected to become depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032, the SSA’s trustees reported. <\/p>\n That depletion date moved up one quarter from the prior year’s projection, the trustees noted in their 2026 annual report to Congress.<\/p>\n If Congress takes no action before then, incoming payroll taxes would still cover about 78% of scheduled benefits, the trustees’ report found. <\/p>\n Orman addressed that fear directly, arguing that claiming early does nothing to shield any individual retiree from a future shortfall.<\/p>\n Filing at 62 means accepting a permanently smaller monthly benefit, one that holds regardless of any future congressional action. That is the tradeoff, a guaranteed reduction now, in exchange for hedging against a potential cut that may never materialize.<\/p>\n Claiming at 62 instead of the full retirement age permanently reduces a worker’s monthly benefit by about 30% for those with a full retirement age of 67, according to the Social Security Administration.<\/p>\n Waiting until 70 instead of full retirement age increases that same monthly benefit by roughly 24%, the Congressional Research Service has estimated.\u00a0<\/p>\n For a household relying heavily on Social Security as its primary source of income, the gap between filing at 62 and filing at 70 can mean a permanently larger check every year of retirement that follows.<\/p>\n Retirees should weigh their health outlook, other income sources, and household finances before settling on a claiming age, Elsasser said.<\/p>\n The cost of skipping that calculation can be steep. The median household headed by a worker age 45 to 62 leaves $182,370 in lifetime discretionary spending on the table by filing before 70, the NBER paper found.<\/p>\n The Social Security Administration’s online benefit estimator lets retirees model the exact gap between filing at 62 and filing at 70 using their own earnings record.<\/p>\n Rather than defaulting to age 62, Orman encourages retirees to run the numbers for their specific situation and choose the claiming age that makes the most financial sense.<\/p>\n Related: Social Security beneficiaries have reason to worry<\/strong><\/p>\n #Suze #Orman #calls #Social #Security #claiming #risk #retirees<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Suze Orman is pushing back against viral social media advice telling retirees to claim Social Security benefits at age 62, arguing that most workers stand to lose a meaningful amount… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[1015,6632,4221,418,1494,588,587,4220],"class_list":["post-8554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popular","tag-calls","tag-claiming","tag-orman","tag-retirees","tag-risk","tag-security","tag-social","tag-suze"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/.image\/NDA6MDAwMDAwMDAzMDg2MjA1\/retirees-at-home-discussing.jpg?profile=rss\")
What the 2032 trust fund deadline means for early filers<\/h2>\n
How the claiming decision reshapes a retiree’s monthly check<\/h2>\n
What Orman’s warning means for the average retiree<\/h2>\n