4 Things You Must Do Before You Claim Social Security
Even if you're entering retirement with a modest amount of savings, you'll probably end up relying on Social Security to some degree, so the better you're able to maximize those benefits, the happier you'll be. With that in mind, here are a few critical moves you must make before officially filing for benefits.
Your Social Security benefits are calculated by taking your 35 highest-paid years of wages, adjusting your earnings for inflation, and applying a special formula to those figures. But you can't claim your monthly benefit in full until you reach what's known as full retirement age, or FRA.
FRA isn't the same for everyone. It's based on year of birth, as follows:
Source Fool.com
