We’ve mentioned delayed retirement credits in earlier pages. Let’s just sum up here. After you reach full retirement age, you can increase your Social Security by 8 percent per year until age seventy. In other words, you can rack up valuable credit on your benefits by not taking them until you reach age seventy. The benefit increase would be 32 percent if your full retirement age is sixty-six. Considering that almost half of Americans rely on Social Security for 50 percent of their retirement income, that 32 percent increase through delayed retirement credits can make a big difference in the quality of life during retirement.
If you don’t take reduced Social Security benefits at sixty-two and you take full advantage of delayed retirement credits, your retirement benefits will increase by 76 percent between the age of sixty-two and seventy if your full retirement age is sixty-six. Think about that the next time you yearn to take your retirement benefits at age sixty-two. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say your reduced monthly retirement benefit at sixty-two was $1,000. That amount would go up to $1,760 at age seventy, or a difference of $760 per month. That’s the equivalent of $9,120 per year. If you live to age eighty, that’s a whopping $91,200 for the ten-year period!