ThinkAdvisor revealed the most recent in an ongoing sequence of Social Safety claiming case research earlier this month, discovering the optimum claiming state of affairs for the pattern married couple at hand could be to attract their advantages sooner than the utmost claiming age of 70.

That end result, primarily based primarily on the truth that the couple had a extremely uneven earnings historical past and a small however significant hole in longevity expectations, shocked some readers, and it sparked quite a lot of insightful discussions with each readers and retirement consultants that continued into this week.

Most not too long ago, one Scott D. wrote in to level out the elemental significance of the longevity expectations that go into such claiming calculations, arguing the conclusions within the case examine, whereas correct, may additionally probably mislead. Social Safety projections are solely nearly as good because the assumptions fed in, he emphasised, particularly the accuracy of longevity projections.

The Case of the Excessive-Incomes Husband

The case examine in query entails a married couple, Bruce and Debbie, each born in 1962 however with very totally different work histories. Specifically, Bruce is a excessive lifetime earner, whereas Debbie didn’t earn sufficient credit to be eligible for Social Safety advantages from her personal work report.

Each spouses have a full retirement age of 67, and given the particulars of their scenario, Debbie can’t start accumulating spousal advantages till Bruce recordsdata. Lastly, Bruce’s assumed longevity is 85, whereas Debbie’s is 87.

Underneath such a set of circumstances, the case examine reveals, Bruce’s and Debbie’s optimum claiming strategy is to not look forward to Bruce to show 70 earlier than claiming, even if this strategy would ship the best month-to-month profit for every member of the couple — together with after Debbie turns into a widow.

Moderately, the optimum claiming technique would as an alternative contain Bruce submitting at age 67 for his full employee good thing about $2,302. Debbie may file on the identical time for her full spousal good thing about $1,151, and he or she would finally change into eligible for a full survivor good thing about $2,302.

Although their month-to-month checks could be smaller, this strategy would end in $788,435 in complete lifetime advantages going to the couple, with $499,534 paid to Bruce and $288,901 going to Debbie — including a projected $15,000 to the age-70 claiming complete.

A Deceptive Outcome?

As Scott admitted, the calculator certainly “doesn’t lie,” and on this pretty distinctive scenario, it calculates that this couple would have total earned $15,000 extra for claiming at age 67.

“Nonetheless,” Scott wrote, “I imagine the evaluation misses a number of essential gadgets which might be related to the dialogue and which reduce the probability that pre-70 utilization of Social Safety is definitely advantageous.”