Suze Orman Slams ‘Bad Advice’ on Social Security and Urges Retirees to Maximize Their Payout

In a June 11, 2026 post on her blog titled What the Latest Social Security Buzz Gets Wrong, Suze Orman pushed back hard on a wave of social media voices urging Americans to claim Social Security the moment they turn 62. Her argument: filing early amounts to a permanent pay cut, and most retirees are far better served by waiting.

The math is not subtle. For anyone born in 1960 or later, Full Retirement Age is 67. Claiming at 62 locks in just 70% of your earned benefit, a permanent 30% reduction that cannot be reversed. Every cost-of-living adjustment then rides on that smaller base for the rest of your life. The 2026 COLA came in at 2.8%, and a percentage applied to a smaller check is a smaller raise in dollar terms, compounding against you year after year.

The verdict: Orman is right, and the math is not close

Orman’s position holds up under scrutiny. The popular “break-even” framing treats Social Security like a bet: waiting only pays off if you live past roughly age 79. In reality, it is longevity insurance. A woman in average health who reaches 65 has a 50% chance of living to 87, according to SSA actuarial data, placing her nearly a decade past the break-even threshold. That is the median outcome, meaning half of all 65-year-old women will live even longer.

Here is the basic mechanic. For each year you delay claiming between Full Retirement Age and 70, your benefit grows by about 8%. Three years of delay credits push your check 24% above the FRA amount and more than 75% above the age-62 amount.

The numbers are worth running concretely. A worker entitled to $2,000 a month at 67 collects $2,480 a month by waiting until 70, and only $1,400 a month by filing at 62. The gap between the early and late checks exceeds a thousand dollars every month, for life. That gap also receives the annual COLA. With CPI-W climbing from 315.945 in June 2025 to 328.829 in May 2026, the compounding effect on a larger base is real money. The Senior Citizens League projects a 3.8% COLA for 2027, driven by persistent tariff-related inflation, which would lift the average monthly benefit by roughly $73.62, from $1,937.53 to $2,011.15. A larger base check magnifies every dollar of that gain.

The other myth Orman addresses is that claiming early shields you from a future benefit cut. The 2026 Social Security Trustees Report, released June 9, projects the OASI trust fund will be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032. At that point, continuing payroll tax revenue would cover only about 78% of scheduled benefits, a 22% reduction. That timeline moved one year earlier than the prior report, partly because the One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated taxes on tips and overtime through 2028, reducing payroll-taxable income. The program’s 75-year funding gap has widened to 4.42% of taxable payroll, up from 3.82% a year earlier, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated in July 2026 that a typical dual-earning couple retiring at the start of 2033 could lose roughly $16,900 in annual benefits if Congress takes no action. Filing early simply means absorbing that potential cut from a smaller starting point. Social Security navigated a similar crisis in the early 1980s without forcing beneficiaries to absorb the full cost, and that historical precedent is worth keeping in mind.

The variable: your health and your need for income

One factor determines whether Orman’s advice applies to you. Claiming early genuinely makes sense in two situations: a current health condition that makes living into your mid-80s unlikely, or a real cash need because you cannot keep working and have no savings to bridge the gap. Outside of those two cases, the math favors waiting.

The need-for-income case is more common than people admit. Median household retirement savings for Baby Boomers sits at $270,000 per Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies survey data, while average annual consumer expenditures hit $78,535 in 2024. The personal savings rate fell to 2.7% in June 2026, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a sharp decline from prior years. A separate TSCL survey released in 2026 found that 44% of older Americans now rely entirely on Social Security for retirement income, up from 39% in 2025, the highest share the organization has ever recorded. For households with a modest nest egg, the early check can be a genuine survival tool, not just impatience.

For married couples, the calculus tilts even harder toward delay. The higher earner should wait as long as possible, ideally to 70, because the surviving spouse inherits the larger of the two benefits. Maximizing the higher earner’s check is, in effect, buying the longest-living spouse a bigger inflation-adjusted annuity for life. SSA data shows only about 8% to 9% of retirees actually wait until 70 or later, meaning roughly 91% lock in a permanently smaller check.

What to do this week

1. Pull your benefit estimate at SSA.gov for ages 62, 67, and 70. Write the three monthly numbers side by side. Seeing your own version of Orman’s $1,400 / $2,000 / $2,480 spread changes the conversation.
2. Calculate your household’s annual spending floor, then subtract any pension and portfolio withdrawal you can sustain. The gap is what Social Security needs to cover. If delaying still leaves the gap funded, delay.
3. If married, identify the higher earner and build the plan around that person waiting until 70. The lower earner can claim earlier if cash flow demands it.
4. Assess your health realistically. If a serious condition makes reaching 85 or beyond unlikely, the early-claim case is real. For everyone else, waiting produces the better lifetime outcome.

Orman’s bottom line is simple: wait until at least 67, and ideally until 70. The early check feels like found money. It is actually the smallest check you will ever cash, locked in for life.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to correct the personal savings rate to 2.7% for June 2026 per the Bureau of Economic Analysis (the prior figure of 3.7% was stale). New context was added on the TSCL finding that 44% of older Americans now rely entirely on Social Security for income, the widening of Social Security’s 75-year funding gap to 4.42% of taxable payroll, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s July 2026 estimate that a dual-earning couple retiring in early 2033 could lose roughly $16,900 in annual benefits under the depletion scenario.

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