SLEDGE: Drawing on one’s own plus spouse’s

Q: My wife and I are both eligible to collect our full Social Security benefit at age 66. She wants to retire early, though, and I want to keep working until I’m 66. Can she get her own benefit at age 62 and then draw a benefit on my record once I retire?

A: Yes. If she has at least 40 work credits, she can start receiving a reduced retirement benefit at age 62, no matter what plans you have planned about continuing working. When it comes to retirement benefits, married couples who each have enough work credit for entitlement are treated independently. Since her full retirement age is 66, she’ll have a 25 percent reduction applied to her benefit at 62. Then when you apply for benefits at age 66, the Social Security Administration will check to see if the amount she’s getting on her own record is less than what she’d be entitled to on your record as a spouse. If it is, then she can start receiving a benefit on your record as well. Note that her own retirement benefit will continue, though; we’ll just add a spouse’s benefit to it. This is called “dual entitlement.”

Here’s how it works. Let’s say her full retirement benefit is $600. At age 62, she’d collect about 75 percent, or around $450. (The figures are not exact unless a beneficiary’s birthday falls at the very beginning of the month.) Then let’s say you retire four years later, at age 66, with an unreduced benefit amount of $1600. Her spouse’s benefit is figured using 50 percent of your full amount — $800. That’s the total amount she would have been able to receive had she not previously elected reduced retirement benefits; in that case, she’d get all $600 due her on her own record, plus an additional $200 as a spouse on your record. But since she’d taken her retirement benefit at age 62 at the reduced rate of $450, then the unreduced spouse’s benefit of $200 she’d be eligible for if she was full retirement age when your entitlement began will be added to her reduced retirement benefit of $450, for a total combined retirement/spouse’s benefit of $650.
If her own unreduced retirement benefit had been more than 50 percent of your full benefit, then spouse’s benefits wouldn’t apply, since she could receive more on just her own record.

A final word: If you should die before her, having begun your entitlement at full retirement age, and she is full retirement age or older at the time of your death, she will receive a widow’s benefit equal to 100 percent of your full amount, without regard to her prior entitlement on either her record or yours.
Be sure she knows that she can apply for retirement benefits online at http://www.socialsecurity.gov.