Model Social Security claiming ages

Beyond Payday lets you model claiming Social Security at any age from 62 to 70 — drag one slider and the projection instantly recalculates your monthly benefit, using the same reduction and delayed-credit rules the SSA uses.

Before you start

• Retirement planning is a Pro feature (included in the 30-day trial).
• Get your real benefit estimate from SSA.gov first — Beyond Payday adjusts whatever amount you enter for the age you choose; it doesn't calculate a benefit from your earnings history.
• You need permission to update retirement settings.

Steps

1. Go to Retirement (opens in a new tab) and open the Social Security settings card.
2. Turn on Include Social Security.
3. Drag the medal on the Age you start your checks slider to the age you want to model, anywhere from 62 to 70.
4. Enter Your monthly check if you start at X — your estimated benefit at that exact age, from your SSA statement. If you move the slider again later, Beyond Payday recalculates this amount for you automatically.
5. If you're married, repeat with Age Spouse starts their checks and Spouse's monthly check if they start at X. A spouse with no work record of their own still sets a claiming age and leaves the check at $0: the projection gives them the spousal benefit. The spouse's slider starts at 67 until you move it.
6. Set Yearly raise on your checks — it defaults to 2.5%. This is the yearly raise Social Security gives to keep up with inflation, called a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA.
7. Scroll up to see how the change ripples through your projection.

How the projection handles it

• Reduction and delayed credits: claiming before 67 (Full Retirement Age) permanently reduces your benefit — as much as 30% at 62. Claiming after 67 increases it — up to 24% at 70.
• Yearly raise: your benefit grows every year by that rate, both before and after you start claiming.
• Spousal benefits: if you're married, the projection automatically checks whether you'd get more from 50% of your spouse's full benefit than from your own — and uses whichever is higher. This works even if one of you has no work record: leave that person's monthly check at $0 and they still get up to 50% of the other's benefit once the other has started claiming. Spousal amounts are capped at your Full Retirement Age benefit and reduced if claimed early; they don't get the bonus for delaying past 67 that your own benefit gets.
• Still working before Full Retirement Age? If you claim early and keep earning active income, the projection applies Social Security's earnings test: it withholds $1 of benefit for every $2 you earn above the SSA's current annual limit (the app keeps this updated), or $1 for every $3 in the year you reach Full Retirement Age. Withholding stops once you reach it.
• Taxes: Social Security isn't always fully taxable. The projection uses the IRS's formula, based on your "provisional income" (your other income plus half your Social Security benefit), to work out how much — 0%, up to 50%, or up to 85% — counts as taxable.

Good to know

• Beyond Payday uses Full Retirement Age 67 for these calculations. If you were born before 1960, your actual SSA full retirement age may be a bit earlier — check your exact FRA at SSA.gov.
• Survivor benefits are modeled when you set Plan until age below 95 in the Retirement Age settings. At that age, that person's benefit stops and the surviving spouse keeps the higher of the two benefits, as Social Security does. As at SSA, a survivor benefit started before the survivor's full retirement age (67) is reduced, down to 71.5% at 60, and if the person who died had claimed early it's limited to the larger of what they were collecting or 82.5% of their full benefit. Without a spouse, the projection simply ends at that age. Left at the default of 95, no death is modeled.
• The slider only goes from 62 to 70 because those are the real minimum and maximum Social Security claiming ages.
• Pro members can ask Beth to compare claiming at different ages side by side.
• Guided setup asks this same question in plain language — see Set up your retirement plan with guided setup.