2 thoughts on “Social Security strategy”

  1. The strategies are a crapshoot on longevity. You need to be in the ballpark about your and your spouse’s health. Live long, win big. Die early, lose big.

  2. SocSec provides benefits to spouses, and more benefits the longer you delay starting to take it. So the deal here is that the spouse A with the higher benefit claims their SocSec, but immediately suspends it, while spouse B claims whatever they’ll get in spousal benefit on A’s SocSec.

    Spouse B does not claim their own SS, so B’s benefit amount keeps increasing with time. Meanwhile, if I remember this right!, since A has suspended taking their own payments, their benefit amount also increases.

    Ultimately, both will claim their own SS at the higher levels because they delayed taking it, and in the meantime have collected however many hundreds of dollars a month in spousal benefits before Spouse B claimed for themselves (at which point the spousal benefits stop).

    Only works if both spouses are eligible for SS. Only works, as Iless says, if you live long enough.

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