Social Security For Dummies. Jonathan Peterson

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СКАЧАТЬ the way, if you’ve established your own earnings record with Social Security, that could change things. In that case, your payment is the greater of the benefit you’ve earned yourself or the amount you qualify for as a dependent spouse.

      For workers with a full retirement age of 67, claiming the spousal benefit early reduces benefits by as much as 17.5 percent for those claiming at 62 to a little over 4 percent for those claiming at 66. Suppose your spouse has begun collecting his or her full retirement benefit of $1,000 per month. If you wait until you reach your full retirement age of 67, you get $500 per month in spousal benefits. If you start as soon as possible, at 62, you get about $325. You can get more details on what the spousal benefit means to you, and how your amount is affected by when you claim it, at www.ssa.gov/oact/quickcalc/spouse.html.

Social Security applies a monthly reduction rate to spousal benefits taken before full retirement age. The rate is of 1 percent per month for each of the first 36 months before full retirement age, and of 1 percent for each month before then.

      

If a dependent spouse starts collecting before reaching his or her full retirement age, the amount is reduced. But unlike some benefits, it doesn’t work the opposite way: Social Security provides no “bonus” for waiting past full retirement age. The upper limit of a dependent spouse benefit is 50 percent of the benefit that would go to the breadwinner at full retirement age. (The breadwinner can’t push the spousal amount higher by delaying collection of benefits past his or her own full retirement age.) Note: A spouse who has reached full retirement age will get 50 percent of the breadwinner’s full retirement benefit, even if the breadwinner begins collecting before full retirement age.

Table 3-3 shows the monthly reductions that affect spousal benefits taken by a dependent spouse before reaching full retirement age. It also shows that the monthly reductions differ, based on year of birth.

      Your decision about when to collect benefits also has a major effect on the amount of Social Security you leave behind for a surviving widow or widower. If you die, your spouse (at his or her full retirement age) can get 100 percent of your benefit. That means the bigger a benefit you wait to receive, the more you leave your surviving spouse. You could look at it this way: A retirement benefit you claim at 70 is 76 percent more than what you get if you start at 62. That much larger benefit is what you could leave a surviving spouse, who may rely on it for a long time.

      Widows and widowers also face timing decisions. They can collect their survivor benefit as early as 60, but with a substantial reduction. (I’m speaking here about aged widows and widowers who are not disabled or raising children — factors that allow for earlier eligibility.) Generally, it will cost the surviving spouse about 30 percent of the benefit to take it at 60, when compared to waiting until full retirement age.

      

Social Security offers a lot of material online about survivors’ benefits and other categories of benefits. To find out more about survivors’ benefits, go to www.ssa.gov/pubs/10084.html.

TABLE 3-3 Primary and Spousal Benefits at Age 62^*

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			Primary	Spouse
Year of Birth	Normal or Full Retirement Age	Number of Reduction Months	Amount	Reduction	Amount	Reduction
1937 or earlier	65 years	36	$800	20%	$375	25%
1938	65 years and 2 months	38	$791	20.83%	$370	25.83%
1939	65 years and 4 months	40	$783	21.67%	$366	26.67%
1940	65 years and 6 months	42	$775	22.5%	$362	27.5%
1941	65 years and 8 months	44	$766	23.33%	$358	28.33%
1942	65 years and 10 months	46	$758	24.17%	$354	29.17%
1943–1954	66 years	48	$750	25%	$350	30%
1955	66 years and 2 months	50	$741	25.83%	$345	30.83%
1956	66 years and 4 months	52	$733	26.67%	$341	31.67%
1957	66 years and 6 months	54	$725	27.5%	$337	32.5%
1958	66 years and 8 months	56	$716	28.33%	$333