Laurence Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University who has been answering questions and writing columns about Social Security each week for the past two years on PBS NEWSHOUR’s website. OpenRetirement has asked Professor Kotlikoff to post a Q&A each day from those columns. He has also developed software, called Maximize My Social Security, to help retirees secure the highest lifetime Social Security benefits. You can find the software here: www.maximizemysocialsecurity.com
Question: My husband passed away unexpectedly at 58. We owned a small dental laboratory that he operated at that point because I could not. With not much income of my own, I took the survivors benefit at 59-and-a-half, knowing it would be reduced. My question is, what happens to my Social Security benefit? Based on my earnings, it would be $580 per month. Do I lose my benefit? My survivor benefit is almost triple this amount.
Answer: I’m sorry to hear about your husband. I’m also very sorry to say that you aren’t able to collect anything more based on your own work record since Social Security will give you the larger of either your own retirement benefit or your widows benefit. And even if you wait until you are 70 to collect your retirement benefit, when it will be as large as possible, it will, it seems, still be below your widows benefit.
Had you been able to get by on just your own retirement benefit, it would have been best, in your case, to have started your retirement benefit at age 62 and your widows benefit at full retirement age, when it would have been as large as possible. Between 62 and full retirement age, you would have received the larger of either your retirement benefit and, well nothing, because you would not yet have taken your widows benefit.
Wish I had better news, but Social Security forces people to pay FICA taxes for their entire working lives and often, as in your case, gives them nothing in exchange for all those contributions because of their receipt of a larger ancillary benefit. This is like a company telling a widow that it canceled her pension because her husband died and left her life insurance.
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