Claiming Social Security at 62 delivers a smaller check for the rest of a retiree’s life. Waiting until 70 delivers a much larger one, but only after eight years of collecting nothing.
The choice sits inside every retirement plan, and the headline number, roughly $158,000 in skipped checks between 62 and 70, is the price of admission for the larger benefit that follows. The question is whether that trade is worth taking when the alternative is buying guaranteed income on the open market.
The Social Security Administration’s rules are straightforward. Claiming at 62 reduces the full retirement age benefit by up to 30%. Waiting past full retirement age adds roughly 8% per year in delayed retirement credits, capped at age 70. The gap between claiming at 62 and at 70 amounts to a benefit that is about 76% higher in nominal terms, before any cost-of-living adjustments are applied.
The Cost of Waiting
Take a worker with an average earnings history, and the early benefit at 62 runs in the neighborhood of $1,650 per month. Skipping eight years of those checks is where that roughly $158,000 figure comes from.
That is real money forgone, and it sits right at the center of every argument for claiming early. The calculation also assumes the retiree either has the assets to cover those years or is still working, and for many people that assumption simply does not hold, which helps explain why the average claiming age still hovers closer to 63 than 70.
For context, the median full-time worker earned $1,251 per week in the second quarter of 2026, while average annual household expenditures totaled $78,535 in 2024. That skipped income equates to roughly two and a half years of average household spending.
What Delaying Actually Buys
Waiting pays off in a benefit that stays indexed to inflation for life. The 2026 cost of living adjustment landed at 2.8%, and the underlying CPI reading of 332.6 in June 2026 reflects the kind of persistent price pressures that COLA is meant to address.
A private annuity purchased at age 70 with the same monthly payout would require an inflation adjustment to truly match, and those inflation-adjusted annuities carry a substantially higher price tag than nominal ones.
The Annuity Comparison
Annuity payouts are anchored to prevailing interest rates. The 10-year Treasury yield was 4.75% at the end of July 2026, and the upper bound of the federal funds rate was 3.75%. Those rates set the ceiling on what insurers can offer.
The FDIC national average 12-month CD rate is 1.68%, and Treasury I-bonds issued in the current period carry a composite rate of 4.26%, with a fixed component of just 0.9%.
A single-premium immediate annuity purchased at 70 by a healthy retiree currently pays roughly 7%-8% of the premium annually, but the payout is fixed. Adding inflation protection lowers the payout rate to around 5%. The implied “return” on the eight-year Social Security delay, once the higher benefit and lifetime COLA are counted, sits well above what a commercial insurer can price at these interest rates.
Where the Trade Breaks Down
Longevity is the swing factor. Break-even on the delay strategy typically falls in the early 80s. A retiree who does not expect to reach that age, or who has no assets to bridge the gap between 62 and 70, is looking at a different math problem.
Social Security’s own solvency outlook adds another wrinkle. Trustees project that the trust fund reserves will be exhausted in 2033, at which point payouts would be reduced absent legislative action.
The delay strategy remains the most reliable inflation-adjusted lifetime income available to most retirees. It is not free, and the $158,000 in forgone checks is the price. But the annuity market, priced against a 3.75% policy rate and a 1.68% CD baseline, is not currently offering a better deal.
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