Full Retirement Calculator

Your Social Security full retirement age is not 65 for everyone: it is set by your birth year, and it controls three permanent outcomes. This full retirement age calculator finds your exact FRA, then shows what your monthly check looks like at 62, at FRA, and at 70 from your estimated benefit at FRA, plus the break-even age where waiting pays off. One input most lookup-only tools skip: the claiming age you are actually considering.

Quick Answer

Your full retirement age, by birth year

Congress raised the FRA from 65 through the 1983 amendments, phasing it in by birth cohort as people lived longer, and the schedule is codified at 42 U.S.C. 416(l). The pattern is two plateaus joined by two slides: 65 for 1937 and earlier, then two months added per birth year from 1938 to 1942, then 66 flat for 1943 to 1954, then two months per year again from 1955 to 1959, then 67 for 1960 and later. One quirk catches people out: Social Security treats you as attaining an age on the day before your birthday, so if you were born on January 1, you follow the previous year’s schedule. The tool takes a birth year only, so if your birthday is January 1, enter the previous year to get the right FRA. If you claimed early once and now wonder what the other path would have paid, the Social Security early retirement calculator looks at the same decision from the early-claim side.

Born	Full retirement age	Benefit at 62, on a $2,000 FRA benefit
1937 or earlier	65	$1,600 (20.0% reduction)
1938 to 1942	65 plus 2 months per year	$1,583 to $1,517
1943 to 1954	66	$1,500 (25.0% reduction)
1955 to 1959	66 plus 2 months per year	$1,483 to $1,417
1960 or later	67	$1,400 (30.0% reduction)

Table note: the 1938 to 1942 and 1955 to 1959 rows span several FRA values, so the age-62 figures are the range across each slide, computed with the same monthly reduction formula the tool uses. The SSA publishes the same table for a $1,000 FRA benefit, where the 1960 and later row reads $700 at 62.

Claiming early: what each month costs you

The reduction is monthly, not yearly, so every month you claim early trims the check permanently. For the first 36 months before FRA the cut is 5/9 of 1% per month, which is 20% for three full years, and for each month beyond 36 it is 5/12 of 1% per month. For the example worker with an FRA of 67 and a $2,000 PIA, claiming at 62 is 60 months early: 36 months at 5/9 of 1% gives 20%, plus 24 months at 5/12 of 1% gives 10%, for a 30% reduction to $1,400. Claiming at 63 costs 25%, at 64 costs 20%, at 65 costs 13.3% ($1,733), and at 66 costs 6.7% ($1,867). Claiming at 62 instead of 67 forfeits $600 a month, or $7,200 a year, for life, which is why the early decision deserves more than a shrug. Two honest limits of this tool: it works in whole claiming years, while Social Security computes month by month, so a claim at 62 and 6 months would fall between the whole-year figures; and it uses your PIA as given, so a wrong PIA gives a wrong answer at every age.

Waiting past FRA: delayed credits to age 70

Waiting past FRA adds delayed retirement credits of 2/3 of 1% per month, which is 8% per year, for anyone born in 1943 or later, and the increase stops at 70. From an FRA of 67, waiting to 68 adds 8% for $2,160, to 69 adds 16% for $2,320, and to 70 adds 24% for $2,480 on a $2,000 PIA. There is no gain from waiting longer than 70, and one timing trap: if you delay past 65, still sign up for Medicare at 65, because late Part B and Part D enrollment can cost more. A second limit worth stating: workers born before 1943 earned delayed credits at lower rates, from 3% a year up to the 8% rate, so the tool’s 8% rate is the right one for today’s claiming decisions but not a universal historical rate. The credits are also applied with a lag in the year you claim, with the remainder arriving the following January, which the tool’s comparison figures smooth over.

The break-even age, worked out loud

The break-even age answers a different question from the monthly check: at what age does waiting overtake starting early in total dollars received. For the prefilled worker, $1,400 a month starting at 62 catches up to $2,000 starting at 67 only at age 78.7, because the later claimer collects bigger checks for the rest of life. The arithmetic is simple: the early claimer banks five years of smaller checks first, then the later claimer’s $600 monthly advantage grinds that head start down, and 200 months after age 62 the two totals meet. Break-even is not a recommendation by itself. It ignores cost-of-living adjustments, taxes, and how long you actually live, and it says nothing about needing income at 62, health, or a spouse whose benefit depends on your record. Once benefits start, see how the check fits your total retirement income with the retirement withdrawal calculator, and check where your savings stand alongside benefits with the net worth by age calculator.

Note on the break-even figure: it is computed by comparing total amounts received. For any early claim age, the months after FRA equal the monthly benefit at that claim age times the months from claim to FRA, divided by the monthly advantage of waiting to FRA, and the break-even age is FRA plus that span. At the prefill claim age of 62 this still gives 78.7; at claim ages 63, 64, 65 and 66 it gives 79.0, 79.0, 80.0 and 81.0. An earlier version of this calculator scaled the age-62 gap instead, which gave the right answer at 62 but overstated the break-even age badly at later early claim ages, so the formula was corrected to this cumulative comparison.

Working while you collect: the 2026 earnings test

You can work while collecting before FRA, but the earnings test withholds benefits above a limit, and the withheld amounts are not lost: Social Security recalculates at FRA to credit back the months benefits were withheld. In 2026, if you are under FRA for the entire year, $1 is withheld for every $2 earned above $24,480. In the year you reach FRA, the limit is $65,160 and the withholding rate softens to $1 for every $3, counting only earnings before the month you reach FRA. Starting with the month you reach FRA, there is no earnings limit at all. This matters for the claiming decision: if you plan to keep working to 67 anyway, filing at 62 while earning well above the limit mostly defers the checks while keeping the reduction, which is the worst of both worlds. Note that only earnings from work count toward the test; pensions, investment income, and retirement account withdrawals do not.

What rival calculators get wrong

The full retirement age calculators ranking today are decent at the lookup but thin on the decision, and a few are wrong in ways that matter. The most common error is inventing the benefit itself: one popular tool estimates the FRA benefit as roughly 40% of current income, then multiplies it by 1.5 for married couples and 1.3 for widows as a stand-in for spousal and survivor benefits. None of those multipliers is a Social Security rule, and a PIA guessed from income can be hundreds of dollars off. Lookup-only tools are the second gap: they return an FRA and stop, leaving you to work out the reduction, the credits, and the break-even yourself. The strongest rival gets the lookup right, including the January 1 attainment rule, but still leaves the benefit math to you. This page keeps the lookup exact, computes the monthly check at 62, FRA, and 70 from your actual PIA, and shows the break-even age in the same view, while stating its whole-year and 1943-and-later limits in the open instead of hiding them.

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