Key Takeaways
- A widower who retired at 59 has lived on his late wife’s Social Security survivor benefit since 60, and he plans to switch to his own benefit somewhere between 65 and 67.
- For every year he waits past 67, his own benefit grows 8%. Switching at 70 instead of 67 makes it 24% bigger for the rest of his life.
- If his own benefit at 67 is $2,500 a month, waiting until 70 raises it to $3,100 a month. That’s $7,200 more a year.
- He says the survivor check is very small, so living on it for three more years would cost him a few thousand dollars a year from savings. He can also switch in any month before 70 if that gets hard.
If you’ve lost a spouse, Social Security lets you live on a survivor check while you hold off on your own benefit. That’s good news, because holding off can be worth thousands of dollars a year for life. You only get the full value if you wait long enough before you switch.
That’s why a post from a widower in the r/Bogleheads forum this week caught my eye.
Living on his late wife’s check
He lost his wife a few years ago and retired at 59 with no debt and his home paid off. At 60 he started drawing her survivor benefit. He calls it “very, very small,” but he says it covers his basic bills. He pulls a few thousand dollars a year from about $30,000 in cash accounts to pay for car and house insurance and taxes. The rest of his savings, almost $400,000, sits in an S&P 500 index fund that he doesn’t touch.
He plans to switch to his own benefit at 65 to 67. He expects that check to be “a substantial increase” that covers everything. He asked whether his plan was a bad one and said this week had him rethinking it. He can’t control what his stocks do from here, but he can control when he switches. Right now he’s planning to switch up to three years before the age that pays the most.
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He only gets paid the bigger check
He’s entitled to two benefits: the survivor benefit from his wife’s work record and a retirement benefit from his own. He never gets both in full. Social Security pays him only the higher of the two. Since he has claimed only the survivor check, his own benefit is still unclaimed, and he gets to decide when to take it.
His full retirement age is 67. For each year he waits past that, his own benefit grows 8%, or 2/3 of 1% a month, up to age 70. Three years of waiting makes his check 24% bigger.
The survivor check won’t grow while he waits, because delayed credits only raise a retirement benefit. Taking it at 60 also locked in the biggest cut the rules allow: 28.5% of his wife’s full benefit. That helps explain why the check is so small. When he switches, the survivor check stops and his own check replaces it.
What waiting until 70 is worth
He didn’t say how big his own benefit is, so let’s say it’s $2,500 a month at 67. If he switches then, that’s his check. If he waits until 70, three years of 8% raises push it to $3,100 a month, which is $2,500 plus 24%. That’s $600 more a month, or $7,200 more a year, for life.
Both paths start out the same way and split at 67:
| Metric | Switch at 67 | Switch at 70 |
|---|---|---|
| From 67 to 70 | $2,500 a month | The survivor check |
| From 70 on | $2,500 a month | $3,100 a month |
| A year, from 70 on | $30,000 | $37,200 |
Source: Social Security’s delayed retirement credits; a hypothetical $2,500 full benefit at 67.
Waiting means giving up the difference between $2,500 and the survivor check for the 36 months from 67 to 70. Even if the survivor check paid nothing, he would miss out on $90,000 over those 36 months. The extra $600 a month would make that back in 150 months, or by about age 82 and a half. The survivor check does pay something, so in reality he gives up less and breaks even sooner.
He doesn’t have to wait the full three years, either. Each month past 67 adds 2/3 of 1%, so switching at 68 would pay $2,700 a month and switching at 69 would pay $2,900. Switching at 65, the early end of his plan, works the other way: if he claims his own benefit before 67, it gets cut.
The cash has to last three more years
The hard part is living for three more years on a check he calls very small. He meant his $30,000 of cash to last until 65 to 67. Waiting until 70 means three more years of those few-thousand-dollar draws, and some of that money may have to come out of the stock fund. That’s a real cost for someone who is still short of the $500,000 he wanted before he starts withdrawing 3% to 4% a year.
But a few thousand dollars a year gets him a check that’s $7,200 a year bigger for life. Every extra dollar from Social Security is a dollar he doesn’t have to take out of stocks in a bad market. Waiting only loses if he dies before he makes back the checks he skipped, which happens by his early 80s at the latest.
Frankly, I’d plan on 70 and keep 67 as the fallback. The survivor check is doing its job: it pays the bills while his own benefit grows. He doesn’t have to decide anything until 67, and after that he can switch in any month up to 70. So he can watch how his cash holds up and make the call then.
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