Read This Before You Delay Your Social Security Benefits

The less money you save independently for retirement, the more likely you are to rely on Social Security once your career comes to a close. If you're an average earner, those benefits will replace about 40% of your former salary, which generally won't suffice to pay the bills. Therefore, you'll often hear that it makes sense to hold off on filing for Social Security as long as possible, because doing so allows you to boost your benefits for life.

Here's how that works: Your actual benefits are based on your average wages, adjusted for inflation, during your 35 highest-paid years of earnings. But you're not entitled to claim those benefits in full until you reach what's known as full retirement age, or FRA.

FRA isn't universal; it's based on the year you were born, and if that year is 1960 or later, you're looking at an FRA of 67. Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration (SSA) will let you claim benefits as early as age 62, but for each month you file ahead of FRA, those benefits will get slashed by a percentage that varies depending on how early you claim them.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com