How Know Your Break-Even works
Updated November 2026
What a break-even age is
A break-even age is the age where two claiming ages have paid you the same total. Claim early and you collect smaller checks for more years. Claim later and you collect bigger checks for fewer years. Add the checks up as the years pass and the later claim starts behind, then catches up at one specific age. Live past that age and waiting paid more. That age, computed from your own benefit, is the number this page exists to give you.
How the Social Security formula works, in plain words
Start with your full retirement age: the age where Social Security pays 100 percent of the benefit you earned. It depends on your birth year. Born from 1943 to 1954, it is 66. It then climbs two months per birth year, so born in 1957 it is 66 and 6 months, and born in 1960 or later it is 67.
Claiming early cuts the check, month by month. For each of the first 36 months you claim before full retirement age, the benefit drops by 5/9 of 1 percent. For each month earlier than that, it drops by 5/12 of 1 percent. At a full retirement age of 67, claiming at 62 is 60 months early: 36 months at the steeper rate cost 20 percent, the other 24 cost 10 percent, and the check is cut by 30 percent. That cut is permanent. It does not end when you reach full retirement age.
Waiting past full retirement age raises the check. Each month of delay adds 2/3 of 1 percent, which is 8 percent a year, for everyone born in 1943 or later. The raise stops at 70. At a full retirement age of 67, claiming at 70 pays 124 percent of the full benefit.
A worked example
Take the numbers this calculator opens with. A benefit of $2,000 a month at a full retirement age of 67. Claim at 62 and the 30 percent cut leaves $1,400 a month. Claim at 67 and the check is the full $2,000. Claim at 70 and it would be $2,480.
Now add the checks up. The 62 claim starts five years sooner, so it leads for a long time. The 67 claim gains $600 a month, every month, and closes the gap at 78 years and 8 months: the break-even age. By then, both claims have paid $280,000. Live to 85 and the totals are $386,400 for claiming at 62 against $432,000 for claiming at 67, a gap of $45,600. Live to 90 and the gap grows to $81,600. Die before 78 and 8 months, and the early claim paid more. That is the whole decision, priced.
Where to find your own number
The calculator needs your estimated monthly benefit at full retirement age. It is printed on your Social Security statement, which the Social Security Administration gives you free in a my Social Security account and by mail. Type the statement figure, not a guess from a headline: a wrong benefit figure buys wrong checks and wrong totals all the way down this page, and the wrong birth year moves the break-even age itself. Your full retirement age comes from the birth-year chart in the Sources below; if you were born on January 1, Social Security counts you under the year before.
How to read your result
Your break-even age is the headline: the age where waiting starts paying. The two claim cards show the monthly check at each age and the cut or raise behind it. The lifetime table shows the totals at 80, 85 and 90 and names which claim is ahead at each age, so you can weigh the bet against your own health and family history. The chart and the year-by-year table carry the same totals for every age to 100.
What the math takes as given, and what it leaves out
The math holds your monthly amount flat in today's dollars and prices your own retirement benefit only. It leaves out cost-of-living raises, which Social Security applies to both claims; taxes on benefits, which depend on your other income; spousal and survivor benefits, which follow a different formula and are often the bigger decision for a couple; the earnings test, which can hold back checks if you work before full retirement age; and Medicare premiums. A break-even age is the start of the claiming decision, priced honestly. It is not the whole decision, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Sources
- Social Security Administration, Retirement Age and Benefit Reduction: the full-retirement-age chart by birth year and the reduction for claiming at 62.
- Social Security Administration, Delayed Retirement Credits: 2/3 of 1 percent per month, 8 percent per year, for anyone born in 1943 or later, stopping at age 70.
- Social Security Administration, Full Retirement Age chart: full retirement age by year of birth, including the January 1 note.
Educational information only, not financial advice. Consider a qualified professional for decisions about your specific situation.