Suze Orman Says the Biggest Financial Gift You Can Leave Your Spouse Is One Social Security Decision

Picture a couple in their early sixties. He spent 35 years in a higher-paying career. She stepped in and out of work to raise kids and care for aging parents, so her earnings record is thinner. They are both healthy, the mortgage is nearly gone, and they have enough in savings to cover a few years of expenses. The question: when should each of them start Social Security?

This is exactly the situation Suze Orman returns to repeatedly on her podcast, and her answer is direct. The higher earner should wait as long as possible, ideally to age 70. The reasoning is simple: whichever spouse outlives the other keeps the larger of the two benefits for life. Orman frames maximizing that number as one of the most important financial gifts a person can leave their partner. A recent forum thread captured the stakes vividly: a woman in her sixties wrote that her husband kept pushing to claim at 63 to “lock it in,” and she wanted to know whether she was right to push back. By Orman’s standard, she was.

Why the survivor benefit is the whole ballgame

When one spouse dies, Social Security stops sending two checks. The survivor keeps the larger benefit, and the smaller one disappears. That reality means the higher earner’s claiming age effectively sets the income floor for a widow or widower who may live another 10, 15, or 20 years on their own. Survivor benefits also include any delayed retirement credits the deceased spouse earned, so waiting past full retirement age (FRA) directly lifts what the survivor ultimately receives.

The math is concrete. Claiming at 62 permanently reduces a benefit by roughly 30% compared with FRA, which is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Waiting past 67 adds delayed retirement credits worth about 8% per year up to age 70. On a $3,000 FRA benefit, claiming at 62 shrinks the monthly check to roughly $2,100, while waiting to 70 grows it to about $3,720. That gap exceeds $1,600 a month for as long as the survivor lives. Every future cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) then compounds off that higher base. The 2026 COLA came in at 2.8%, meaning a larger starting benefit captures more inflation protection in real dollars, year after year. Early projections for the 2027 COLA run between 3.5% and 3.6%, which would only widen that compounding advantage further.

One additional change has expanded the survivor benefit calculus for many households. The Social Security Fairness Act, signed into law on January 5, 2025, repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. Those two rules had reduced or eliminated Social Security spousal and survivor benefits for roughly 2.8 million public-sector workers, including teachers, firefighters, and law enforcement officers. With both provisions now gone and monthly benefits already adjusted, the survivor benefit strategy carries even more weight for couples where one partner spent a career in a government job.

The “what if benefits get cut” worry

Many readers ask: what if Social Security runs out of money before I turn 70? The question deserves a direct answer. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund is projected to deplete its reserves in the fourth quarter of 2032, one quarter earlier than the prior year’s estimate, according to the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report. At that point, incoming payroll taxes would cover about 78% of scheduled benefits, translating to an automatic cut of roughly 22% unless Congress acts. For context, the average retired worker was collecting about $2,084 per month as of June 2026; a 22% reduction would trim that check to roughly $1,626. Congress has intervened before, notably in the early 1980s, and retains a range of options on both the revenue and benefit sides.

Here is what most people miss. An across-the-board reduction would trim early claimers and delayed claimers by the same percentage. A larger base benefit still wins on either side of that math. Orman addressed this directly in a June 11, 2026 blog post titled “What the Latest Social Security Buzz Gets Wrong,” published two days after the Trustees Report’s release. She called early claiming a permanent pay cut and pushed back against a wave of social media advice urging people to file at 62 out of fear. She has made the same point on air: “don’t start claiming at 62 because you don’t think it’s going to be there when you’re 67.” Her clarification is also worth noting: the advice is about claiming age, not retirement age. Drawing down a 401(k) or IRA through your sixties to bridge the gap before filing is often exactly the right move.

How the pieces connect

Delaying to age 70 usually means drawing more from savings in the meantime. That is the whole point. Every dollar spent from an IRA in your late sixties is a dollar that will not inflate a required minimum distribution (RMD) at 73, and it purchases a permanently higher, inflation-adjusted, government-guaranteed income stream. Think of it as converting a slice of your portfolio into the most durable form of longevity insurance available.

The lower-earning spouse has considerably more flexibility. Claiming earlier, sometimes even at 62, can provide cash flow while the higher earner’s benefit keeps growing. And if that lower earner is eventually widowed, their smaller check gets replaced by the survivor benefit regardless of when they filed.

What to actually do with this

Two priorities are worth settling before anyone files. First, protect the higher earner’s number. The claiming age on the bigger benefit is the single lever with the longest-lasting consequence in a household, and filing early is one of the hardest financial decisions to reverse. Second, coordinate as a couple rather than as two individuals. Timing the smaller benefit is mostly a cash-flow decision. Timing the larger benefit is about protecting the surviving spouse. Those are different problems, and treating them identically is where most households leave the most money on the table.

Health, work status, and savings all shift the picture, and there are real situations where claiming early is the right call. For a healthy couple with enough in savings to bridge the gap, though, the higher earner waiting to age 70 is one of the most consequential steps they can take for the person they love most.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to include the title of Orman’s June 11, 2026 blog post (“What the Latest Social Security Buzz Gets Wrong”), to note that the Social Security Fairness Act restored benefits for approximately 2.8 million public-sector workers, to add the average retired worker benefit figure of $2,084 per month from the SSA’s June 2026 data, and to include early projections for the 2027 COLA running between 3.5% and 3.6%.

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