One Social Security mistake is silently draining retirement accounts—here’s what you need to know.
Transcript:
Bob Powell: So one of the big mistakes that people make with Social Security is to claim early. The earliest age at which you can claim Social Security is age 62. And that’s when you get the reduced benefit. And that reduced benefit is for the rest of your life. And so I think oftentimes people say, well, I’m going to claim social security at age 62 because it’s my money or Social Security is going away, so I might as well claim it while I can. And those are actually the wrong reasons to claim Social Security. One of the things that you want to think about when you’re claiming Social Security is, how can I thinking about especially if you’re in a household, how can I think about creating the largest benefit I can for my surviving spouse, especially if you’re in a couple? And one of the things that happens oftentimes is the highest wage earner will claim Social Security benefits without regard to their surviving spouse, who may be the lower wage earner. And oftentimes, what you want to do is to make sure that the surviving spouse receives the highest possible benefit. One of the things that we know in this country is that about 10% of widows in this country live in poverty, and one way to sort of avoid that from happening is to make sure that you’re claiming social security at the latest age possible that makes sense for you and your spouse, so that if you should pass on, the benefit that your survivor receives is the highest possible.
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