Nov
28
2012
By Guest (not verified)
A friend of mine says she is going to receive an extra $9,000.00 bonus from social security, for waiting 6 months after her full retirement age to file! I've never heard of such a thing, is this possible?
Increased Social Security retirement benefits
Except for the case of an underpayment or similar issue, I'm not familiar with a one-time, lump-sum "bonus" payment for delaying retirement benefits.
I'm not sure of your friend's calculation method, but I can see how she might think she's getting $9,000 more in benefits OVER TIME by delaying initiation of retirement benefits.
For each month you delay retirement benefits, your monthly benefit increases by 0.67 percent. Now assume your friend gets the average monthly retirement benefit of $1,230. By delaying benefits for six months, an averge person would see a monthly increase of :
(0.0067 per month) x (6 months) x ($1,230 per month) = $49.45 dollars per month
So your friend likely will get a higher monthly benefit of $49.45 per month.
Now, assume your friend will live another 18 years (until age 84). Over those 18 years (216 months) she'll collect :
($49.45 per month) x (216 months) = $10,681.20
So over 18 years, an "average" person will receive something like $10,000 more by delaying Social Security retirement benefits by six months.
However, this figure should be netted against the $7,380 = (6 months) x ($1,230 per month) in foregone benefits during the six months of delay. So the total actual advantage to delaying six months is probably more of the order of $3,000. This also ignores time-value-of-money calculations.
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/13
http://www.ssa.gov/retire2/delayret.htm