Increasing The Eligibility Age For Social Security Pensions
Summary
Social Security faces a long-term financing problem. Many young workers believe the problem is so severe they may never receive a Social Security check. The most logical solution to Social Securitys financing problem is to trim promised benefits and increase payroll taxes moderately. A sensible way to reduce future benefits is to increase the early eligibility age and normal retirement age for retirement pensions. This reform is justified by the substantial increase in life spans that has occurred since Social Security was established in the 1930s. An increase in life spans, when the normal retirement age remains unchanged, is equivalent to a sizable increase in lifetime Social Security benefits.
Increasing the retirement age is unpopular with voters. Unfortunately, so are all other reforms that would restore Social Security to solvency, including tax hikes and cuts in the formula for calculating full pensions.
What If I Delay Taking My Benefits
If you retire sometime between your full retirement age and age 70, you typically earn a “delayed retirement” credit for your own benefits . For example, say you were born in 1960, and your full retirement age is 67. If you start your benefits at age 69, you would receive a credit of 8% per year multiplied by two . This means your benefit would be 16% higher than the amount you would have received at age 67.
Working After Full Retirement Age Faq
Retirees may work while collecting Social Security benefits, but those younger than their FRA will be subject to the retirement earnings test .
Under this test, if your earnings exceed a certain limit , you will temporarily forfeit some or all of your benefits. Once you reach full retirement age, your benefit is recalculated and you may receive most of that money back.
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It’s Probably A Higher Amount Of Income Than You’d Think
There is a maximum Social Security benefit seniors can receive. In 2022, it’s $4,194. This generous retirement benefit is available to people who earned the highest possible average wage and wait as long as possible to claim Social Security benefits.
So what is the highest possible average wage, and what salary would you need in order to hit this target? Here’s what you need to know.
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Ssa Benefits And Medicare
So lets go back to how your full retirement age and Medicare may interact. The biggest thing is that in the past, at age 65, you both got your SSA benefits and became Medicare eligible. This meant you could use your SSA benefits to help pay for Medicare. However, with the full retirement age being at least a year or more past 65, you need to think carefully about when you take your SSA benefits if you want to use them for Medicare costs.
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Do Social Security Benefits Increase After Full Retirement Age
Asked by: Branson Gerhold
You can start receiving your Social Security retirement benefits as early as age 62. However, you are entitled to full benefits when you reach your full retirement age. If you delay taking your benefits from your full retirement age up to age 70, your benefit amount will increase.
Important Things To Know About Social Security Benefits
Now before we dive into how this may impact Medicare decisions, there are three things to keep in mind.
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What’s Full Retirement Age
Full retirement age is when you’re eligible to receive full Social Security benefits. Your full retirement age depends on your birth year: For anyone born in 1960 or later, full retirement age is 67. For those born in 1955 through to the end of 1959 , full retirement age ranges between 66 and 2 months and 66 and 10 months. If you were born before 1955, you’ve already reached age 66 and full retirement age.
Full Retirement Age Vs Early Retirement Age
While understanding your full retirement age is a key part of the puzzle, its different from when you may start claiming Social Security benefits. Thats your early retirement age, which is 62 regardless of what year you were born. And while all Americans may start receiving benefits when they turn 62, doing so will decrease the amount of each monthly payment.
Heres a bit of the Social Security Administrations official jargon, which is essential for getting a complete picture of your benefits. Full retirement age is how old you must be to receive your full primary insurance amount , or the base-rate Social Security benefit youre eligible for given your lifetime earnings history.
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How Social Security Helps Pay For Medicare
In addition to automatically enrolling you in Medicare, if you are receiving Social Security or Railroad Retirement Board benefits, your Medicare Part B premium will be automatically deducted from your monthly benefit payment.
If you are not receiving Social Security or Railroad Retirement Board benefits yet, you will get a bill called a Notice of Medicare Premium Payment Due . Bills can be paid for by check or money order, a credit or debit card, or through online bill pay services.
In conclusion, as youre starting to think about Medicare and retirement, do some research and make sure you understand how your Social Security benefits can or will play a role.
Footnotes
At What Point Does One Stop Paying Social Security Tax
You are not required to pay any Social Security tax past the wage base limit, which for 2021 is $142,800. So if you earn $142,000 or more, the most you will pay in Social Security tax is $8,853.60. If you make less than $142,000, the most you will pay in Social Security tax will be less than that. The wage base limit for 2022 is $147,000.
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How Do You Become Eligible For Social Security Benefits
To be eligible for Social Security benefits in retirement, you must earn at least 40 “credits” throughout your career. You can earn up to four credits each year, so it takes 10 years of work to qualify for Social Security.
In 2022, you must earn $1,510 to get one Social Security work credit and $6,040 to get the maximum four credits for the year. And yes, that means that it is possible to have money withheld for Social Security and never get it back. The minimum is the minimum.
How To Lower Your Social Security Taxes
There are several remedies available for those who are taxed on their Social Security benefits. Perhaps the most obvious solution is to reduce or eliminate the interest and dividends that are used in the provisional income formula.
Therefore, the solution could be to convert the reportable investment income into tax-deferred income, such as from an annuity, which will not show up on the 1040 Form until it is withdrawn. If you have $200,000 in certificates of deposit earning 3%, which translates into $6,000 a year, that will be counted as provisional income.
But the same $200,000 growing inside an annuity, with the interest reinvested back into the annuity, will effectively yield a reportable interest of $0 when computing provisional income.
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Does Working After Full Retirement Age Increase Social Security Benefits
Working after full retirement age could increase your Social Security benefits. Your benefits are based on average wages over your 35 highest-earning years .
Even after you’ve reached full retirement age, and even if you’ve already claimed benefits, the Social Security Administration continues to recalculate your average annual wage to account for new income. If your earnings after FRA are higher than previous years and raise your average wage for your 35 top-earning years, your benefits could rise accordingly.
How Do Social Security Benefits Increase After Age 66
If you start receiving benefits at age 66 you get 100 percent of your monthly benefit. If you delay receiving retirement benefits until after your full retirement age, your monthly benefit continues to increase. … 67, you’ll get 108 percent of the monthly benefit because you delayed getting benefits for 12 months.
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How To Plan For Future Benefits
In 2000, the average age at which people retired was roughly 61 or 62. Two decades later, it’s around 66, according to government data, Warshawsky said.
“Just in 20 years, we’ve seen a substantial increase in the retirement age,” Warshawsky said. “People really, really are working longer.”
Anecdotally, Elsasser said he sees more people retiring earlier than they had anticipated as their work prospects change.
That highlights the importance of planning ahead, so you anticipate whatever your retirement years bring. Admittedly, that can be tricky, given that Social Security could be susceptible to change.
If you’re 60 and up, there is less reason to worry any prospective changes would affect your benefits, Elsasser said.
But if you’re 45 to 60 years old, it’s reasonable to plan for benefit reductions of about 5%, he said. For those who are even younger, a 10% to 15% cut is possible.
Moreover, people of all ages should also plan for worst-case scenarios in which the program does reach a point where it can only pay a portion of benefits, which may prompt as much as a 24% benefit cut for retirees.
“The real importance of planning is just making sure you have all your bases covered,” Elsasser said.
Retired Workers Should Also Consider Cost Of Living
There are 38 states that don’t tax Social Security benefits, but they’re not necessarily a better option. Retired workers should also consider the cost of living in each state. The Missouri Economic Research and Information Center is a great source of information.
On a quarterly basis, MERIC publishes a cost of living index that considers prices across six spending categories: grocery, housing, utilities, transportation, health, and miscellaneous. The baseline score is 100. Any state with a cost-of-living index below 100 is less expensive than average, and any state with a cost-of-living index above 100 is more expensive than average.
Here is how the states that tax Social Security benefits stack up:
- Colorado: 105.1
- West Virginia: 88.5
As indicated above, six states that tax Social Security benefits actually have a below average cost-of-living score, and three of them — Kansas, Missouri, and West Virginia — rank among the 10 least expensive states in the U.S.
Finally, retired workers should consider quality of life when deciding where to live. In fact, that’s probably the most important piece of the puzzle. Living in close proximity to friends and family can make life more enjoyable, and happiness is priceless.
The $18,984 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook
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Will Full Retirement Age Change Again
Though the last legislative change to full retirement age was in 1983, Carroll warns that a future increase in full retirement age is a likely component of a comprehensive Social Security reform package. The culprit for this likely change is our increasing longevity.
More people are living long enough to claim Social Security than in the past, and theyre then spending more years receiving benefits. This makes the program significantly more expensive today than when it was founded, Carroll says. To keep Social Security solvent and provide the same level of benefits, the bar to receive Social Security either needs to rise, taxes have to increase or both.
When Will You Collect
The SSA calculates your benefit amount at your full retirement age . This depends on the year you were born. FRA by birth year is:
- 19431954: age 66
- 1955: age 66 and two months
- 1956: age 66 and four months
- 1957: age 66 and six months
- 1958: age 66 and eight months
- 1959: age 66 and 10 months
- 1960 and later: age 67
The monthly amount you are eligible to receive at your FRA is considered your full benefit, but it is not your minimum or maximum benefit.
You have the option to file for early retirement as early as age 62. But, you may choose to delay taking your benefits until as late as age 70.
There are many reasons why you might choose to take early retirement or to delay it. That choice has a direct impact on the amount of your monthly payment. If you opt for early retirement, you are choosing a lower monthly payment for the rest of your life. By choosing to delay your benefit to any age between your FRA and age 70, you lock in an increase.
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Do You Get More Social Security At 63 Than 62
Monthly Social Security payments are reduced if you sign up at age 63, but by less than if you claim payments at age 62. A worker eligible for $1,000 monthly at age 66 would get $800 per month at age 63, a 20% pay cut. If your full retirement age is 67, you will get 25% less by signing up at age 63.
Questions Regarding Social Security
If you have questions regarding Social Security, you may want to visit the Social Security Administration’s website at www.socialsecurity.gov to find your answers. If you prefer to speak to someone directly, the SSA is available to speak with callers Monday thru Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. The toll-free number is 800-772-1213.
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How Do I Increase My Social Security Benefits After Retirement
To increase your monthly benefit, don’t start taking Social Security payments right when you reach full retirement age. The longer you wait, the more you’ll get each month. If you want to get the highest possible amount of Social Security benefits each month, you need to wait until age 70 to retire.
Why Did The Full Retirement Age Change
Full retirement age, also called “normal retirement age,” was 65 for many years. In 1983, Congress passed a law to gradually raise the age because people are living longer and are generally healthier in older age.
The law raised the full retirement age beginning with people born in 1938 or later. The retirement age gradually increases by a few months for every birth year, until it reaches 67 for people born in 1960 and later.
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Taking Social Security: How To Benefit By Waiting
For those who are able to do so, it may make sense to wait even longer, because youll receive a larger monthly benefit even more than your full benefit. Every month past your full retirement that you delay, Social Security will increase your check by about 0.7 percent per month.
If your full retirement age is 66, then heres how much your check would increase:
| Retirement age | New benefit | A $1,000 check becomes |
|---|---|---|
| $1,320 |
So if your full retirement age is 66, then if you can wait two more years and claim benefits at age 68, youll increase your monthly check by 16 percent. In this case, if your full benefit were $1,000 a month, your new benefit would become $1,160 per month. And youll still receive cost of living adjustments on top of this amount, typically raising your payout a little each year.
Workers have other ways to grow their Social Security benefits, too, but its important to start early.
What Is My Full Retirement Age
Full retirement age for future beneficiaries will fall between the ages of 66 and 67. This is the age at which you can expect a full, unreduced benefit from Social Security. If you delay filing for benefits until after your full retirement age, you can expect a benefits increase of up to 8% per year until you reach age 70.
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This Is The Salary Needed To Max Out Your Social Security Checks
In 2022, you would need to earn $147,000 to be on track for the maximum Social Security benefit of $4,194. Here’s why.
As mentioned, Social Security benefits are based on average wages. Your average wage is calculated by:
- Adjusting all of your wages over your career to account for wage growth.
- Adding up the wages you earned during the 35 years when your earnings were highest.
- Calculating your monthly average wage over the 420 months included in your benefits calculation.
You get benefits equaling a percentage of this average wage, which is called your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings, or AIME. But there’s a catch.
Social Security sets a limit on how much money is included in the benefits calculation. It’s called the Wage Base Limit. If you earn above this amount, you won’t pay Social Security taxes on any extra earnings, and the extra money won’t be part of the calculation of your average wage. The wage base limit is the reason why there’s a maximum average wage in the first place, and thus the reason why there’s a maximum Social Security benefit.
The wage base limit also changes over time. In 2023, for example, it will be $160,200, so you’d need to earn that much next year to be on track to max out Social Security benefits in the future. Every single year for at least 35 years, you’d need to earn the inflation-adjusted equivalent of this amount.