When should I file to get the maximum Social Security benefit?

You receive the highest benefit payable on your own record if you start collecting Social Security at age 70. 

Once you reach your full retirement age, or FRA, you can claim 100 percent of the benefit calculated from your lifetime earnings. Full retirement age is 66 and 8 months for people born in 1958 and 66 and 10 months for those born in 1959. It settles at 67 for people born in 1960 and later.

But if you hold off a few years, you can earn delayed retirement credits that increase your eventual benefit — by two-thirds of 1 percent for each month you wait.

Let’s say you were born in January of 1959. You will reach full retirement age in November 2025. If you put off filing for Social Security until you turn 70, you’ll get 38 months of delayed requirement credits, good for a little more than 25 percent over your full retirement benefit. If the benefit you’re entitled to at FRA is $1,800 a month, at 70, it would be about $2,256.

Here’s how that $1,800 full benefit could grow for those who wait:

Keep in mind

You can claim benefits later than 70, but there’s no financial reason to do so. Delayed retirement credits stop, and your payment tops out, at that age.