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Keystone is a private demonstration page. It is not the Social Security Administration and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any government agency. Applying at ssa.gov is free.
Retirement · Survivors · Disability
The month you claim sets your check for the rest of your life
Same work record, same person: 70% of your benefit at 62, 124% at 70. That gap is the single largest number most people never have explained to them. Here is how the arithmetic actually works — with nothing to buy at the end of it.
2026 figures · every number on this page links to ssa.gov
70%
of your full benefit if you claim the month you turn 62 and you were born in 1960 or later. The reduction is permanent.
124%
if you wait until 70 instead. Delayed retirement credits add 8% a year and stop the month you turn 70 — never wait longer.
$0
what Social Security charges to apply, to replace a card, or to appeal a decision. There is no paid fast lane.
There are 97 months between your 62nd birthday and your 70th.
You can start your benefit in any one of them, and every one pays a different amount for the rest of your life. Nobody at Social Security will tell you which to pick — that part is yours.
The four programs
Four different things get called “Social Security”
They are funded differently and tested differently. Qualifying for one tells you almost nothing about the others.
Retirement
70% – 124% of your full benefit
Age 62+ · 40 credits
From your own record. 40 credits — about ten years of covered work — and built from your highest 35 years of indexed earnings.
Survivors
Up to 100% at survivor full retirement age
Widow(er)s · children · some parents
From a deceased worker’s record. Survivor full retirement age is its own figure, between 66 and 67; a widow or widower can start at 60 reduced, or 50 if disabled.
Disability (SSDI)
Your full benefit, with no age reduction
Insured workers under full retirement age
From your own record, not reduced for age. Five-month waiting period, and Medicare normally starts after 24 months — immediately for ALS.
SSI
Needs-based, not from your record
65+, blind or disabled · limited income
Run by SSA but funded from general taxes. It counts income and what you own, so decades of work can still miss — and no work can still qualify.
Start here
Your full retirement age is a date, not a round number
It is fixed by the year you were born — never 65, and for most people not 66 either. Choose your birth year and the rest of this page follows.
Year you were born
Full retirement age
67 years
The month you reach it, not the January of that year.
If you claim at 62
70%
of your full benefit, permanently — this does not bounce back at full retirement age.
If you claim at 70
124%
of your full benefit, permanently. Waiting past 70 adds nothing at all.
Born on 1 January? The previous year’s rule applies. 2026 is the last year anyone reaches a full retirement age under 67.
Source: ssa.gov — normal retirement age table and the early/late retirement rules.
One page, no sales pitch
Tell us the year you were born and we will send the sheet that matches it
Your birth year changes every other number here, so the sheet is built around it rather than around averages.
Your full retirement age, to the month
What claiming at 62, at that age, and at 70 each pays as a percentage
The 2026 earnings limits, and what actually happens to money withheld
The four appeal levels and the 60-day deadline on each
The thing almost everyone gets wrong
Working while you claim early does not lose you the money
Claim before full retirement age and keep earning, and Social Security withholds part of your payment. Nearly everyone believes that money is gone. It is not — at full retirement age those months are removed from your reduction, and your payment rises permanently.
$34,000
Withheld across 2026
$4,760
$1 held back for every $2 earned above $24,480. Only wages and self-employment count — pensions, IRA withdrawals, interest and capital gains do not.
What happens at full retirement age
Recomputed, not refunded
Every withheld month is stripped out of your reduction factor, giving a permanently higher monthly check — not a lump sum. How much you get back depends on how long you live.
Different limit in the year you reach full retirement age: $65,160 in 2026, $1 withheld for every $3, counting only the months before the month you reach it. From that month on there is no earnings test at all — you can earn anything.
“We will recalculate your benefit amount to give you credit for the months we reduced or withheld benefits due to your excess earnings.”
Social Security Administration, How Work Affects Your Benefits (EN-05-10069)
Money left on the table
Five rules that pay people who never think to ask
None of these is obscure. All of them are things SSA will apply if you claim them, and will not chase you about if you do not.
A marriage that lasted ten years still counts
Divorced
Married at least 10 years, single now, and 62 or older? You can claim on your ex-spouse’s record. It costs them nothing, and they are not notified. Divorced two years or more, you can claim even before they file.
Survivor and retirement benefits are two separate decisions
Survivors
A widow or widower need not take both at once. Start a survivor benefit at 60 and leave your own growing at 8% a year until 70, or the reverse. SSA will not choose the better order for you.
Your children can be paid on your record while you are alive
Children
When a parent starts retirement or disability benefits, unmarried children under 18 — 19 if still in high school — can be paid on that record, as can a child disabled before 22. The child’s payment does not come out of the parent’s.
If a pension used to cut your Social Security, that rule is gone
Repealed
The Social Security Fairness Act, signed on 5 January 2025, repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. Teachers, firefighters, police officers and some federal employees whose benefits were reduced because of a non-covered pension are no longer subject to either offset.
A year missing from your record is a smaller check forever
Your record
Your benefit comes from your highest 35 years of earnings. Fewer than 35 and the empty years count as zero. An unreported year stays missing until you prove it — read your earnings record before you file, not after.
ssa.gov/myaccount — free
Free, today, in ten minutes
The record your benefit is computed from is one you can read right now
A my Social Security account at ssa.gov costs nothing and shows you the same figures SSA will use. Errors are far easier to fix while you still have the paperwork.
Your earnings, year by year
Check every year you worked appears, and that the amount looks right. A missing year is a permanently smaller benefit.
Your estimate at 62, at full retirement age, and at 70
The same three numbers this page is about, calculated on your actual record instead of an average.
Whether you have your 40 credits yet
In 2026 each credit takes $1,890 in covered earnings, up to four a year. Forty is the entry ticket for retirement benefits.
What to bring if a year is wrong
W-2s, tax returns or pay stubs for the year in question. SSA will correct the record, but the evidence has to come from you.
Social Security will never do any of this
Impersonation is the most common fraud aimed at people in the middle of a claim, and it works because the caller sounds official and in a hurry. Every item below is something the real agency does not do.
- Suspend or cancel your Social Security number — that is not a thing that exists
- Demand payment by gift card, wire transfer, cryptocurrency or cash in the mail
- Threaten you with arrest or legal action to make you act immediately
- Ask you to move money into a “safe” or “protected” account
- Charge a fee for a replacement Social Security card
- Promise a benefit increase in exchange for a payment or a personal detail
Report impersonation at oig.ssa.gov. The reliable tell is urgency: a real notice from SSA arrives by mail and gives you time to respond.
Straight answers
Questions people actually ask
- Is 65 still the retirement age?
- No, and it has not been for a long time. 65 is when Medicare starts. Full retirement age for Social Security is 66 and 10 months for people born in 1959, and 67 for everyone born in 1960 or later.
- Does claiming early ever make sense?
- Often, yes. The 30% reduction at 62 is real, but so is needing the money, being in poor health, or having no other income between leaving work and 67. This page is here so the trade-off is a decision rather than an accident.
- Will Social Security still be there?
- The 2026 Trustees Report projects the combined trust funds can pay all scheduled benefits until 2034, after which payroll taxes would cover about 83% unless Congress acts. A real problem — but not “gone entirely”, a claim worth distrusting when the person making it is selling something.
- How much does it cost to apply?
- Nothing. You can apply online at ssa.gov, by phone, or at a field office. Representatives who help with claims must have their fee agreement approved by SSA, and nobody can charge you simply to submit an application you could file yourself.
- When in the month will I be paid?
- By date of birth: 2nd Wednesday for the 1st–10th, 3rd for the 11th–20th, 4th for the 21st–31st. Anyone paid since before May 1997, or also receiving SSI, is paid on the 3rd.
- What if I am turned down?
- Four levels — reconsideration, a hearing before an administrative law judge, the Appeals Council, then federal court — with 60 days from each decision to move to the next. Missing that window is the most common reason a good claim ends.
Go straight to the source
The official pages, none of which cost anything
- ssa.govThe Social Security Administration. Apply, appeal, and read the rules first-hand.
- my Social Security accountYour earnings record and your own benefit estimates, free.
- Full retirement age tableThe statutory table this page’s birth-year picker is built from.
- How work affects your benefitsSSA’s own publication on the earnings test and what happens to withheld payments.
- Report Social Security fraudThe Office of the Inspector General, for impersonation and scam reports.
- Eldercare LocatorFree local help from Area Agencies on Aging, funded by the Administration for Community Living.
One email, then we leave you alone
Take the sheet, then go and read your own record
It takes about ten minutes at ssa.gov and it is the only version of these numbers that is actually about you. The sheet is there so you know what you are looking at when you get there.