Updated April 2026
One of the most consequential financial decisions you will make in your 60s is when to claim Social Security. Claim at 62 and you receive benefits for more years, but at a permanently reduced amount. Wait until 70 and you receive 77% more per month for the rest of your life.
The math favors waiting. The emotional reality makes it hard. Watching your savings decline while you sit on a benefit you could be collecting feels uncomfortable at best and reckless at worst. Many people claim early simply because they cannot stomach the drawdown.
There is a better approach. The Social Security bridge strategy uses your retirement savings deliberately during your 60s to fund a delay in claiming benefits. For many retirees, particularly those in good health with adequate savings, this strategy can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to lifetime income. At MJT & Associates, we model this decision carefully as part of a coordinated retirement income plan, accounting for taxes, withdrawal sequencing, Roth conversion timing, and individual circumstances.
How Social Security Claiming Ages Actually Work
You can begin claiming Social Security retirement benefits as early as 62. Claiming before your full retirement age results in a permanent reduction that lasts for the rest of your life, not just until you reach full retirement age.
For anyone born in 1960 or later, full retirement age is 67. Claiming at 62 means accepting a 30% permanent reduction in your monthly benefit. That reduction is also the base for all future cost-of-living adjustments, so its effect compounds over time.
Delaying past full retirement age produces the mirror image. For each year you delay between full retirement age and 70, your benefit grows by 8%. That growth is guaranteed and inflation-adjusted. Delay from 67 to 70 and your benefit is 24% higher than it would have been at full retirement age.
The full spread between claiming at 62 versus 70 is dramatic. A person entitled to $3,000 per month at full retirement age would receive $2,100 at 62 and $3,720 at 70. That $1,620 monthly difference, on an inflation-adjusted basis, lasts for the rest of their life.
What the Bridge Strategy Actually Does
Rather than claiming Social Security early because you need the income, the bridge strategy has you draw more heavily from retirement savings during your 60s. Those withdrawals bridge the gap between when you stop working and when you claim Social Security at 70.
Consider a concrete example. You retire at 62 with $800,000 in retirement savings. Your Social Security benefit would be $2,100 per month if claimed today, or $3,720 if you wait until 70. You need $5,000 per month.
Under the early-claim approach, you take $2,100 from Social Security and withdraw $2,900 monthly from savings, which is $34,800 per year from your portfolio.
Under the bridge strategy, you skip Social Security entirely until 70 and withdraw the full $5,000 monthly from savings, which is $60,000 per year from your portfolio during the bridge years. Your accounts decline faster in the short run. But at 70, your Social Security benefit starts at $3,720 rather than $2,100. That $1,620 monthly difference continues for life, and because you need less from your portfolio after 70, the strategy typically produces more total wealth over a long retirement.
The Numbers Over Time
Assume you retire at 62 with $1 million in savings. Your Social Security benefit is $2,500 at 62 or $4,425 at 70. You need $6,000 monthly.
Claim at 62
- Social Security covers $2,500 per month; savings cover the remaining $3,500
- You withdraw approximately $336,000 from savings between ages 62 and 70
- After 70, you still need $1,500 per month from savings
Bridge to 70
- Ages 62 to 70: you withdraw the full $6,000 monthly from savings
- You withdraw approximately $576,000 from savings during the bridge period
- At 70, Social Security starts at $4,425 per month
- After 70, you need only $1,575 per month from savings
From age 70 forward, the bridge strategy delivers $1,925 more per month in guaranteed, inflation-adjusted Social Security income. Over a retirement extending to 85, that additional stream totals more than $346,000, well exceeding the $240,000 extra drawn during the bridge period.
The after-tax advantage is also larger than it appears. Social Security is taxed more favorably than IRA distributions. Depending on your overall income, as little as 0% and at most 85% of Social Security benefits are subject to federal tax. Traditional IRA and 401(k) withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income at full value. Replacing some of those distributions with tax-advantaged Social Security income improves your effective tax picture meaningfully over a long retirement. For a deeper look at how withdrawal sequencing interacts with your tax bracket in retirement, see our article Asset Location and Tax-Efficient Withdrawal Sequencing in Retirement.
The Roth Conversion Window Inside the Bridge Years
There is a tax planning opportunity embedded in the bridge strategy that most people miss entirely.
During the bridge years, you are already taking larger distributions from retirement accounts and paying ordinary income tax on them. You do not yet have Social Security income layered on top. This combination, elevated withdrawals without Social Security, often places you in a higher bracket than in earlier working years but a lower bracket than you will face after 70, when Social Security, required minimum distributions, and other income stack simultaneously.
That creates a window for strategic Roth conversions. Converting additional pre-tax IRA funds to Roth during the bridge period means paying tax now at rates that may be lower than what you would face after 70. We explore the mechanics and timing of this approach in Is a Roth Conversion Right for You? Coordinating the bridge strategy with partial Roth conversions is one of the highest-value planning moves available to pre-retirees with adequate savings. Once you begin collecting Social Security, the options narrow significantly.
When the Bridge Strategy Makes Sense
The bridge strategy is not right for everyone. Here are the situations where it is most compelling.
You are in good health with a family history of longevity. Life expectancy for someone who reaches 65 is now 84 for men and 87 for women on average, and many people live considerably longer. If your health is good and your family has a history of long lives, the math strongly favors delaying.
You have adequate savings to fund the bridge. As a general framework, if you have at least 15 to 20 times your annual expenses in investable assets, a bridge strategy is feasible. For someone spending $60,000 per year, that means $900,000 to $1.2 million. The bridge should not require depleting savings to a level that creates anxiety or forces lifestyle changes.
Maximizing survivor benefits matters in your situation. When you die, your surviving spouse receives the higher of their own benefit or yours. Delaying to 70 and maximizing your benefit means maximizing what your spouse collects for the rest of their life. For couples where one person was the significantly higher earner, this is often the single most impactful retirement planning decision on the table.
You recently sold a business or experienced a liquidity event. Business owners who have exited often have the liquid assets to fund a bridge comfortably. The proceeds from a sale can support your lifestyle during your 60s while you let Social Security continue to grow. The guaranteed 8% annual delayed retirement credit compares favorably to almost any fixed-income alternative. We address the full context of post-sale retirement planning in The Entrepreneur’s Exit Plan: How to Retire from Your Business on Your Terms.
When Claiming Earlier Makes More Sense
Serious health concerns reduce your expected longevity. The break-even point for delaying from 62 to 70 falls somewhere in your late 70s to early 80s. If a health condition makes it unlikely you reach that age, claiming earlier often produces better total lifetime benefits.
Your savings are insufficient to bridge comfortably. If retirement savings are modest and you need Social Security to cover essential living expenses, the strategy is not feasible. Claiming at 62 or full retirement age becomes necessary rather than optional.
You face a job loss you cannot recover from. If you lose employment in your early 60s and are unable to find work, claiming Social Security may be the practical choice.
You are navigating a divorce. After divorce, Social Security claiming becomes more complex. You may be eligible for benefits based on an ex-spouse’s record if the marriage lasted at least 10 years. Understanding how those divorced spousal benefit rules interact with your own benefit and claiming age requires specific analysis that should happen before any final decision. We address this in both Gray Divorce: 5 Financial and Tax Considerations for Couples Over 50 and Divorce in Your 40s and Early 50s: The Financial Checklist Nobody Gives You.
Coordinating the Bridge Strategy with the Rest of Your Plan
The bridge strategy interacts with several other retirement planning decisions that need to be addressed simultaneously.
Healthcare coverage before Medicare. If you retire before 65, you need health coverage until Medicare begins. COBRA typically lasts 18 months. After that, ACA marketplace coverage or a spouse’s plan may be necessary. These costs need to be built into the bridge period budget from the start. For guidance on how taxes and Medicare premiums interact in retirement, see How to Reduce Taxes on Your Social Security Benefits.
Required minimum distributions. RMDs begin at age 73. If you have significant pre-tax retirement balances, those required distributions could push you into higher brackets in your 70s. Modeling the RMD trajectory is part of why partial Roth conversions during the bridge years so often make sense.
Sequence of returns risk. If markets decline significantly in the early years of your bridge period, withdrawing from a declining portfolio accelerates depletion. Keeping two to three years of expenses in cash or short-term bonds reduces the need to sell growth assets at depressed prices.
Spousal coordination. In a married household, the two claiming decisions should be modeled together. A common structure is for the higher earner to delay to 70 while the lower earner claims earlier, generating current income while preserving the maximum long-term and survivor benefit.
How to Implement the Bridge Strategy
- Model your specific numbers. Use an advisor or planning software to run claiming scenarios that account for your actual savings, expected returns, tax situation, other income, and longevity assumptions. General rules of thumb are not a substitute for analysis of your own numbers.
- Identify which accounts to draw from first. The general sequence is taxable accounts, then traditional retirement accounts, then Roth. But your specific tax picture may warrant a different approach, particularly if Roth conversions are part of the plan.
- Decide on Roth conversions during the bridge years. Determine how much to convert, in which years, and at what tax cost. Coordinate with your CPA so conversions are executed cleanly and reported correctly.
- Build a buffer against sequence of returns risk. Set aside two to three years of expenses in stable, accessible assets before relying heavily on equity withdrawals.
- File at the right time. Social Security benefits begin the month after you reach your target age. Applications can be filed up to four months in advance.
- Stay flexible. Up until the month you file, you can change your claiming age. After filing, you have a 12-month window to withdraw your application, repay benefits received, and restart the clock.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What is the break-even age for the bridge strategy?
The break-even point is when total lifetime benefits from delaying equal total benefits from claiming early. For delaying from 62 to 70, break-even typically falls between ages 78 and 82. But this calculation understates the full advantage of delaying because it ignores Social Security’s more favorable tax treatment, annual cost-of-living adjustments applied to a higher base, the survivor benefit impact for your spouse, and the portfolio preservation effect of replacing taxable IRA distributions with tax-advantaged Social Security income.
Q2: Should I claim at 62 and invest the money instead?
This strategy rarely works in practice. The delayed retirement credit provides a guaranteed 8% annual increase that is inflation-adjusted and lasts for life, which is difficult to beat after taxes in fixed-income alternatives. Taking benefits at 62 also means a permanent 30% reduction that applies to every future cost-of-living adjustment. Behavioral research consistently shows that people who receive Social Security income tend to spend it rather than invest it systematically.
Q3: How does the bridge strategy affect my spouse’s survivor benefit?
It is one of the strategy’s most powerful dimensions. When you die, your surviving spouse receives the higher of their own benefit or yours. By delaying to 70, you also maximize what your spouse collects for the rest of their life. For a couple with a significant earnings gap, this can represent decades of meaningfully higher income for the surviving spouse.
Q4: What if markets fall right after I retire and I’m in the bridge period?
This is a real risk. Withdrawing from a declining portfolio early in retirement can cause lasting damage to a retirement plan. The primary protection is maintaining two to three years of expenses in stable assets so you are not forced to sell equities at depressed prices. The bridge strategy should be stress-tested against a bad early market sequence before you commit to it.
Q5: Can I use the bridge strategy if I have a pension?
Yes, but it requires additional coordination. Some pension structures assume you will claim Social Security at a certain age and adjust payouts accordingly. Modeling the combined income from your pension, Social Security, and portfolio withdrawals under different claiming scenarios is the right starting point before deciding on a strategy.
Related Reading on the MJT Blog
- Is a Roth Conversion Right for You?
- Asset Location and Tax-Efficient Withdrawal Sequencing in Retirement
- How to Reduce Taxes on Your Social Security Benefits
- The Entrepreneur’s Exit Plan: How to Retire from Your Business on Your Terms
- Gray Divorce: 5 Financial and Tax Considerations for Couples Over 50
Conclusion
The Social Security bridge strategy is one of the most powerful tools in retirement income planning, and one of the most underused. The emotional difficulty of drawing down savings during your 60s prevents many people from capturing a lifetime income advantage that can be substantial.
The decision of when to claim Social Security is too important to make on a general rule of thumb. It deserves individual analysis that accounts for your specific savings, your health, your tax situation, your spouse’s situation, and the full interaction with Roth conversions, RMDs, and estate planning.
At MJT & Associates, we model this decision as part of a coordinated retirement income plan. We have seen firsthand how proper Social Security timing, integrated with a broader strategy, can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to a family’s wealth over retirement.
Ready to find out whether a bridge strategy makes sense for your situation? Contact us today to schedule a consultation.
