Читать книгу Social Security For Dummies - Peterson Jonathan, Jonathan Peterson - Страница 57

Your first question is probably this: How much Social Security am I going to get? The answer: It depends. The first step is knowing your full retirement age. If you collect Social Security before reaching your full retirement age, you’ll get less each month — potentially a lot less, for the rest of your life. If you collect Social Security after reaching your full retirement age, you’ll get more each month.

Your full retirement benefit is the amount you get if you wait until your full retirement age to begin collecting. But what the SSA calls your full benefit is not the biggest benefit you can get. You can actually get a lot more than your full benefit by waiting until you’re 70 to begin collecting — 32 percent more if your full retirement age is 66, and 24 percent more if it’s 67. The SSA uses your full benefit as the starting point when it decides how much you or your dependents will receive (see the next section for details).

The earliest age at which you can start collecting retirement benefits is 62, and the latest is 70. Your full retirement age falls somewhere in between. Table 3-1 shows a person’s full retirement age based on his or her year of birth.

TABLE 3-1 Full Retirement Age Based on Year of Birth

Year of Birth*	Full Retirement Age
1937 or earlier	65 years
1938	65 years and 2 months
1939	65 years and 4 months
1940	65 years and 6 months
1941	65 years and 8 months
1942	65 years and 10 months
1943–1954	66 years
1955	66 years and 2 months
1956	66 years and 4 months
1957	66 years and 6 months
1958	66 years and 8 months
1959	66 years and 10 months
1960 and later	67 years

* If you were born on January 1, refer to the previous year. Full retirement age may be slightly different for survivor benefits.