Claim at 62 and Invest It Sounds Smart. A 63-Year-Old Tried It and Spent the Checks Instead.
Picture a man, 63, one year into early Social Security. He filed at age 62 with a plan: take the checks and invest every dollar. A year later, the brokerage account looks roughly the same. The deposits got absorbed by…
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Picture a man, 63, one year into early Social Security. He filed at age 62 with a plan: take the checks and invest every dollar. A year later, the brokerage account looks roughly the same. The deposits got absorbed by a roof repair, a daughter’s wedding, nicer dinners, and a car payment. He still has the permanently smaller benefit. The investment account never saw the light of day.
This is the version of the “claim early and invest it” plan that never gets featured in podcasts. The strategy, often associated with Dave Ramsey’s case for taking Social Security at 62, depends on iron discipline. The math can work. The behavior usually does not. On retirement forums, people confess they meant to invest every check and watched ordinary life consume it instead.
The number that does not bend
Claiming at 62 with a full retirement age (FRA) of 67 locks in a permanent reduction of about 30% from the benefit someone would have received at 67. On a $2,000 FRA benefit, that works out to roughly $1,400 a month for life instead of $2,000. The $600 gap never returns at 67 or at 75. Cost of living adjustments (COLAs) apply to the smaller base, so the dollar gap widens with every annual increase.
The numbers look even starker in the real world. According to SSA data, the December 2025 average monthly benefit for a 62-year-old new beneficiary was $1,335, compared with $2,521 for a 67-year-old new beneficiary. That $1,186 monthly difference follows a retiree through every COLA for the rest of their life. Despite that gap, more than a quarter of new Social Security beneficiaries still file at 62.
Every year someone delays past FRA, up to age 70, adds about 8% to the monthly check. That increase is guaranteed and requires no bull market or personal discipline to capture. The crossover point where cumulative lifetime income from waiting surpasses cumulative income from filing early typically falls around age 78 for someone who delays from 62 to 67.
The invest-it plan has to clear two hurdles. Every check must move into an investment account, and the after-tax return has to beat the guaranteed increase from waiting. With the FDIC national average 12-month CD yielding 1.68%, the safe path falls well short of that bar. Stocks can clear it, but only if the money actually makes it into the account.
Suze Orman is a fan of waiting it out, saying on her podcast: “Most of the time it absolutely makes no sense at all taking Social Security before your full retirement age.”
Why life beats the spreadsheet
Money sitting in a checking account finds a home. A grandchild’s tuition, a furnace that quits, a vacation that feels long overdue. That pull intensifies when households already feel stretched, and the past year has delivered no shortage of financial stress. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index hit a record low of 44.8 in May 2026, driven by surging gas prices and tariff concerns. It then recovered to 49.5 in June and climbed further to 55.2 in July 2026, a five-month high, as gas prices eased. Even so, the July reading remains 11% below its level from a year ago, and one-year inflation expectations, while ticking down to 4.2%, stay well above the historical range. That is not a backdrop in which a 63-year-old willingly redirects a Social Security check into a brokerage account month after month.
The Social Security deposit lands in the same checking account that pays the cable bill. Unless an automatic sweep moves it into a separate investment account the day it arrives, and that account is never touched, the plan fights gravity. When the broader mood is this strained, gravity tends to win. The check gets absorbed into whatever feels most urgent that week.
Where it fits with the rest of the picture
For a retiree with a pension, a working spouse, or a 401(k) producing income, claiming early can work. The early check funds today’s lifestyle while other assets grow. Someone with a serious health diagnosis or a family history of shorter lifespans has a legitimate case for filing sooner. Filing at 62 is rational for retirees with poor health or limited savings, where the breakeven age of roughly 78 may never arrive.
There is another dimension to the timing decision worth considering. The 2026 Social Security Trustees Report, released in June 2026, projects that the OASI trust fund will be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032, at which point incoming revenue would cover only about 78% of scheduled retirement benefits, absent congressional action. That timeline adds urgency for anyone weighing the trade-offs between claiming now versus waiting for a larger check that the program may one day need Congress to fully guarantee.
Most other people get more value from waiting. Social Security is the one piece of retirement that grows risk-free when you delay, adjusts for inflation, and keeps paying as long as you live. Spending down savings between 62 and 67 to postpone claiming often buys a larger, inflation-protected lifetime income stream than the same dollars would generate sitting in a brokerage account.
What to sit with before filing
- Be clear-eyed about the deposit account. If the check lands in checking and nothing automatic moves it out the same day, you are running the spend-it strategy with extra steps. Set up the sweep before you file, or assume the money is gone.
- Weigh the reduction against everything else you have coming in. A roughly 30% smaller benefit for life is among the hardest retirement decisions to undo. A claim can be withdrawn only within 12 months of filing, and only once.
The right claiming age depends on health, marriage, savings, and the work you can still do. The plan that looks best on a spreadsheet is only as good as the version of you who has to follow it for the next 30 years.
Editor’s note: This update refreshes the FDIC national average 12-month CD yield to 1.68% (July 2026, up from 1.65% in June), extends the consumer sentiment section to include the July 2026 final reading of 55.2 along with the easing of one-year inflation expectations to 4.2%, and adds context from the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report projecting OASI trust fund depletion in Q4 2032 with 78% of benefits payable at that time.
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Gerelyn Terzo is the author of dividend investing handbook "Dividend Investing Strategies: How to Have Your Cake & Eat It Too." A veteran financial journalist, she covers agri-finance for outlets like Global AgInvesting and the broader stock market and personal finance for 24/7 Wall Street. She began at CNBC and later helped launch Fox Business in New York. Gerelyn currently resides in Woodland Park, Colorado and dabbles in nature photography as a hobby.
