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H died when he was 61. So he never collected SS or even applied for it. We were married for 38 years and still married at the time of his death. I am not remarried. When I turned 60 I applied for and got my widow's benefits from SS. I believe I get half of what he would have gotten from SS.
Do I need to change anything when I turn 62? I am hoping to hold out on applying for my own SS till FRA or at least get as close to it as possible. I am just trying to maximize my benefits.
Thanks in advance for your help. You folks have helped a lot and saved me a lot of money over the years!
I believe the rule is that you get the one that pays the most. That is the 1/2 of your husbands for a widows pension, or you get your own. You don't get both. So it will depend on your work history and your benefit. If you can get a higher benefit by continuing to work and increasing your own so that it is higher than your husbands, that might be the ticket.
H died when he was 61. So he never collected SS or even applied for it. We were married for 38 years and still married at the time of his death. I am not remarried. When I turned 60 I applied for and got my widow's benefits from SS. I believe I get half of what he would have gotten from SS.
Do I need to change anything when I turn 62? I am hoping to hold out on applying for my own SS till FRA or at least get as close to it as possible. I am just trying to maximize my benefits.
Thanks in advance for your help. You folks have helped a lot and saved me a lot of money over the years!
survivor benefits are based on few things. if you filed at 60 you get what he would have gotten at his full x.71 , . that is it as far as survivor benefits go .
if you held off until 62 you would have gotten his full x.81 but since you already took widow benefits game is over for that.
you could also check on filing for your later in life since you haven't already. Consult SS by making a appointment or going in and waiting. Apparently it depends on where you live as to which is best.
Since you started collecting Widows benefits at 60, that will stay the same as long as you collect it, plus COLAs if any. If you wait until your full retirement age to begin collecting your own you will get more than if you did it at 62, However if you wait past FRA you will also be entitled to extra credits on your record.
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't supposed to do anything at 62 to get a larger portion of what he would have collected.
My own SS will be higher than his and I am trying to wait to collect. I know I won't get his and mine. It's one or the other.
nope , once you file the deal is done .
the interesting thing about survivor benefits is if your husband didn't file than if you file at 60 or 61 you get 71% of his full. at 62 you get x .81% of his full ,but waiting past that gets you know more until your fra when you would have gotten 100% of his full.
so now the question is will your own be more than you are getting now ?
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't supposed to do anything at 62 to get a larger portion of what he would have collected.
My own SS will be higher than his and I am trying to wait to collect. I know I won't get his and mine. It's one or the other.
I too am a widow age 58 and am in the process of determining when to start collecting widow's benefits. As mathjak107 noted, once you begin collecting widow's benefits the only place you can go to from there is to collect on your own benefit. Here is part of a table located on the SSA web site where you plug in your birth year and using mine which is 1957 it calculates out the percentage of your widow's benefit at each age from 60 to survivor FRA. Also, if a survivor were to wait to FRA to collect a survivor benefit, the age is reduced, and in my case was 4 months probably related to my birth year. I could not copy and paste my entire scale but the benefit amount does go up some but not a lot in those years between 62 (80.7%) to FRA (100%).
Your Full Retirement Age For Survivors Benefits Is 66 And 2 Months
Remember, the earliest a widow or widower can start receiving Social Security survivors benefits based on age will remain age 60.
If you start receiving survivors benefits at age
60, you will get 71.5% of the monthly benefit because you will be getting benefits for an additional 74 months.
62, you will get 80.7% of the monthly benefit because you will be getting benefits for an additional 50 months.
65, you will get 94.6% of the monthly benefit because you will be getting benefits for an additional 14 months.
Note: If you're receiving widows, widowers, or divorced widows or widowers benefits, you can switch to your own retirement benefit as early as age 62.
what you have to remember too with survivor benefits is if your husband collected early ss you get the higher of the two. either what he was getting or his full with those percentages subtracted if you are filing early for widow benefits.
in this case there is only the one choice since the husband had not filed yet.
with widow benefits waiting until 63 or 64 gets you no additional increases .
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