Social Security strategies for married couples: Maximize your benefit

Social Security timing is one of the most consequential choices you’ll make about your retirement income. When to claim is a decision you make on your own, but if you're married, it's rarely one you make alone. Your claiming age affects your spouse's income too, which means the smartest strategy usually isn't "what's best for me" but "what's best for us."

Claim too early, and you may permanently reduce a benefit you'll depend on for the rest of your life. Wait too long, and you may need to draw down other savings faster than planned in the meantime. There's no single right formula here—each spouse's earnings history, age, health outlook and expected retirement timeline all factor in.

Whether Social Security income is the bedrock of your retirement income or a cushion to your other assets, the strategies below can help you and your spouse turn two individual choices into one coordinated plan.

How long you and your spouse expect to live—and the age gap between you, if there is one— shapes how much retirement income you'll ultimately get. Social Security spousal benefits and survivor benefits can have an impact as well. While each of you will ultimately file for benefits individually, it helps to make these decisions together.

Your own monthly benefit calculation is based on your highest 35 years of earnings, adjusted for inflation, and the age when you claim. If you claim before your full retirement age (FRA), which is 67 for most people, your monthly benefit will be reduced. For someone with an FRA of 67 who claims at 62, that benefit may be as low as 70% of their full amount. Waiting beyond FRA can increase your monthly benefit until age 70.

“The biggest mistake I see couples make is that the main breadwinner looks at their life expectancy instead of the life expectancy of either them or their spouse," says Andrew Mortenson, Thrivent financial consultant in West Bend, Wisconsin.

"It's not just about how long you are going to live. It's about how long either of you are going to live. If there is an age gap between spouses, protecting the higher Social Security benefit is especially important."

Full retirement age is when you're entitled to 100% of your Social Security benefit—that's 67 for most people, depending on your birth year. Claim earlier, and your monthly check shrinks. Wait longer, up to age 70, and it grows.

The deemed filing rule means that when you claim Social Security, you're automatically applying for whichever is higher—your own benefit or a spousal benefit—not just one or the other. You'll always receive your own benefit first, and Social Security tops it up to the higher spousal amount if you qualify for one.

This matters because you may have heard advice to "claim spousal now, then switch to your own benefit at 70." That strategy doesn't work anymore for almost anyone at retirement age today, deemed filing applies to anyone born on or after January 2, 1954, which covers nearly everyone claiming benefits now.

If both spouses retire at age 70 in 2026 and meet the maximum income requirements, the maximum monthly retirement benefit they can each receive is $5,181 per month, or $62,172 per year.

Together, their monthly Social Security income would be $10,362 per month, or $124,344 per year. These amounts are before taxes and subject to annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs).

The Social Security Fairness Act, signed in 2025, eliminated two rules that reduced benefits for certain retirees who receive pensions from work not covered by Social Security.

1. The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) lowered a person’s own Social Security benefit if they also received a pension from a job that didn’t pay into Social Security.
2. The Government Pension Offset (GPO) reduced or eliminated spousal or survivor benefits for those same workers.

With both rules now repealed, spouses are no longer penalized, so they can now qualify for full survivor or spousal benefits.

This change mainly impacts public sector workers such as teachers, police officers, firefighters, federal employees and others who receive pensions from work that did not pay into Social Security. Overall, more than three million people may see higher monthly payments.

For married couples where one spouse has a non-covered pension, this can mean a meaningful jump in monthly income, potentially hundreds of dollars a month in spousal or survivor benefits that would have been reduced or denied before 2025.

Married couples have several ways to coordinate when they claim Social Security. The four approaches below can offer different advantages depending on your earnings histories, health, retirement timeline and income needs.

If one spouse has significantly higher lifetime earnings, the lower-earning spouse still can claim their own retirement benefit first. Once the higher-earning spouse files, Social Security automatically adds a spousal top-off if it would bring the lower earner's total benefit higher, so you'd end up with the higher, combined amount without doing anything extra.

This works differently than it used to. Before 2016, some people could claim only a spousal benefit while letting their own retirement benefit keep growing until age 70—sometimes called the Social Security spousal loophole. That strategy, along with a related one called file-and-suspend, was eliminated by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. Today, because of deemed filing, claiming any benefit means you're automatically claiming both and Social Security pays whichever is higher, not one now and a switch to the other later.

Hypothetical example^*: Your monthly benefit at your full retirement age (FRA) of 67 is $1,200. Your spouse's is $3,000, and they're three years younger than you.

• Age 67: You file and start collecting your own $1,200 a month.
• Age 70: Your spouse turns 67 and files. Because you're now eligible for a spousal top-off, Social Security automatically raises your monthly benefit to $1,500—half of your spouse's $3,000. Your spouse collects their full $3,000.

Compare that to waiting until you turn 70 to file for your own benefit instead. It would grow to $1,488 a month (124% of $1,200), almost identical to the $1,500 spousal amount. But you'd have given up the $43,200 in benefits you collected between ages 67 and 70 by filing early ($1,200 x 36 months). In this case, filing at 67 and later receiving the automatic spousal top-off gets you nearly the same monthly income as delaying, plus three extra years of payments.

Waiting to claim Social Security until your FRA, which is 67 if you were born in 1960 or later, guarantees 100% of your benefits. For each month beyond your FRA that you wait to claim benefits, up to age 70, you get delayed retirement credits. If you were born in 1943 or later, your monthly benefit grows by two-thirds of 1% (≈ 0.6667%) for each month you wait, which means that your monthly benefit grows by 8% (0.6667% × 12 ≈ 8%) for each year you hold off claiming.

Hypothetical example^*: Your monthly benefit at your FRA of 67 is $2,500. If you wait until 68, it could increase to $2,700. At 69, it could increase to $2,900, and at 70, to $3,100. If your spouse’s full monthly benefit is $2,000 at 67, it could increase to $2,160 at 68, $2,320 at 69 and $2,480 at 70.

The second strategy showed how waiting can grow each spouse's benefit by roughly 8% a year, up to age 70. This strategy takes a more targeted version of that approach: only the higher-earning spouse waits until 70, while the lower-earning spouse claims earlier, often at their FRA, or sooner. That way, you still capture most of the growth advantage on your larger benefit, but your household starts collecting some income well before both of you turn 70.

"Many couples will choose to start the lower benefit earlier, knowing that one will drop off when the first person dies," says Eric Berg, Advice Service & Digital Tools consultant at Thrivent. "Couples trying to maximize benefits for the survivor often will try to delay the higher benefit."

Hypothetical example^*: Similar to the previous example, your monthly benefit at 67 is $2,500. It grows to $3,100 at age 70. Your spouse’s full monthly benefit is $2,000 at age 67 and grows to $2,480 at age 70. By waiting, your monthly benefit grows by $600. Your spouse’s benefit only grows by $480. Since the advantage of delaying is a percentage increase, not a flat-dollar amount, the higher-earning spouse will gain more by waiting than the lower-earning spouse will. The bigger the difference in your benefits, the larger this difference will be.

Just as waiting past your FRA grows your monthly benefit, claiming before FRA shrinks it, permanently. The earliest you can claim is age 62, and the earlier you file relative to your FRA, the smaller your monthly check will be for the rest of your life.

There's one case where filing early still can make strategic sense for couples:

"If you have a spouse who will be relying on spousal benefits (only available when the other spouse has filed), they may consider filing earlier to open the window for the spousal benefit," Berg says.

Hypothetical example^*: You and your spouse reach FRA at the age of 67, but you both decide to claim at 62. Your full benefit will be reduced by the maximum, which is 30%. Instead of getting $3,300 at 67, you will get $2,310 at 62. Your spouse’s reduced benefit will be $1,820 based on a full benefit of $2,600. Together, the two of you will get $4,130 a month instead of $5,900. However, you’ll each be getting payments five years longer than you would otherwise.

There's no single best strategy. The right one depends on your household, not a formula. What matters more is how Social Security fits alongside things like pension income, investment withdrawals and your broader tax strategy, since that's what ultimately determines how well your retirement income plan works, and how long it lasts.

A Thrivent financial advisor can help you compare claiming scenarios in that broader context. Together, they can help you and your spouse build a Social Security strategy that fits your full retirement plan.