Clark Howard Says Delaying Social Security Locks In an 8% Raise Every Year. One Listener Did the Math and Found a $2,000 Medicare Catch.

I’ve been watching the Clark Howard claiming-age debate for years, and as someone who writes about retirement income planning weekly, I have no position in any advisory product mentioned here. A listener wrote into The Clark Howard Podcast with a complaint that should make every near-retiree pause. On the November 16, 2018 “Clark Stinks” segment (“Americans are eating less fast food”), the listener took Clark to task for repeatedly telling callers to delay Social Security until 70 without warning them that the bigger benefit could push them into a higher IRMAA bracket, bumping their Medicare Part B and Part D premiums, which are pulled directly out of the Social Security check.

The complaint stings because Clark’s advice has been remarkably consistent for years. “Wait till your 70th birthday. It’s the greatest gift to wait those four years,” he told one 66-year-old caller. He cites the roughly 8% annual increase you lock in for every year you delay past full retirement age, and he is mathematically right. The listener’s point is that “right on the benefit side” can still leave you worse off after Medicare claws part of it back.

Where the listener has a point

IRMAA stands for Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount. It is a surcharge Medicare adds to your Part B and Part D premiums when your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) from two years prior crosses certain brackets. The brackets work as cliffs. One dollar over a threshold can raise your monthly Part B premium by roughly $75 to $80 at the first tier and several hundred dollars at the top tiers (illustrative 2026 figures based on the program’s tiered structure). Multiply by 12 months, then by two spouses on Medicare, and a single bracket jump can quietly cost a couple $1,800 to $2,000 a year.

Here is the mechanic Clark skipped past. Suppose your full retirement age benefit is $3,000 a month. Claim at 67 and you collect $36,000 a year. Wait to 70 and that 8% per year delay credit pushes it to roughly $3,720 a month, or about $44,640 a year. That extra $8,640 of taxable Social Security stacks on top of your Required Minimum Distributions, pension income, dividends, and any Roth conversions. If you were sitting $5,000 below the first IRMAA threshold before claiming, the larger check just shoved you over it.

The break-even, redone with IRMAA in it

Clark’s standard break-even is roughly age 82: claim at 70 instead of 67, and you recoup the foregone checks by your early 80s. Layer in an IRMAA surcharge of, say, $2,000 a year for a couple, and the break-even slides out by a year or two. The case for delaying still holds. The point is that the “greatest gift” framing isn’t free.

In my own reporting, I’ve found the case for delaying still wins for one specific reason Clark gets right: longevity insurance. Remaining life expectancy at 65 is now about 20.5 years, and the risk of outliving your money matters more than a few thousand dollars of Medicare surcharges. A larger inflation-indexed check at 90 is worth more than the IRMAA hit at 72.

The variable that flips the decision

The one number that decides whether IRMAA should change your claiming plan: your projected MAGI two years after you start the bigger benefit. If your retirement income plan keeps you comfortably below the first IRMAA threshold (roughly $106,000 single or $212,000 joint in recent years, illustrative), delaying to 70 is close to a free lunch. The surcharge never triggers.

If you’re already pushing against a threshold from RMDs and a pension, the math gets uglier. Adding $8,000 to $10,000 of extra Social Security might land you in tier two for both spouses. That is when the listener’s gripe is most justified, and that is when claiming at full retirement age, or doing aggressive Roth conversions before 70, becomes the smarter play.

What to actually do

1. Pull your most recent Form 1040 and estimate your MAGI at ages 72 to 75, including projected RMDs from every traditional IRA and 401(k) you own.
2. Look up the current IRMAA brackets on Medicare.gov and mark where you land under two scenarios: claiming at full retirement age versus claiming at 70.
3. If delaying pushes you across a bracket, model Roth conversions in your 60s to drain pre-tax balances before RMDs start. Lower future RMDs, lower future MAGI, lower IRMAA.
4. Run the numbers on the SSA.gov estimator or the paid Maximize My Social Security tool Clark recommends, then layer the IRMAA surcharge on top yourself. Neither tool does it for you by default.

The listener wasn’t wrong to call Clark out. Delaying to 70 is still the right answer for most healthy retirees with longevity in the family. It just isn’t a free decision, and pretending it is leaves people surprised when Medicare quietly takes a bite out of the bigger check they waited eight years to collect.