Question: I will be 66 on Oct. 3 of this year and plan to quit my full-time job on Dec 31. Would I be better off to file for retirement as of Oct. 1 and thus draw both my paycheck and my Social Security for November and December or wait until Jan. 1 to collect Social Security benefits? I make approximately $65,000 per year.
Answer: In my answer, I’m going to assume that you can’t collect spousal, widow’s, divorcee spousal, or divorcee widow’s benefits. In other words, I’m going to assume you were never married or were married for less than 10 years before getting divorced. Under these assumptions, your best course of action is to wait until 70 to collect your retirement benefit when it will be 32 percent higher, on an inflation-adjusted basis, than its value if you take it at age 66. If you are taking your benefit earlier than 70, which it sounds like you are, there may be an advantage to starting your benefit in August or September.
As I wrote in this column, there are cases involving those, like you, who lose benefits via the earnings test, who can get a free month’s benefit. I’d ask Social Security to tell you what precisely you’d get and when if you file for your retirement benefit a month or two before full retirement age.
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