3 Ways to Make Your Social Security Benefits Bigger
The bigger your Social Security benefits are, the less income you'll need to generate from other sources such as your retirement savings. This can be particularly important if you are behind on saving for retirement, or have suffered some unfortunate losses from your investments. Fortunately, there are ways to increase your Social Security benefits both during your working years and after you retire.
You can claim your Social Security benefits as early as age 62, but doing so comes at a price. Claiming your benefits before you reach "full retirement age" results in a reduction of your benefit checks for the rest of your life. On the other hand, waiting until after full retirement age to start receiving benefits will make your benefit checks larger, thanks to the addition of delayed retirement credits. If you wait until age 70, you'll max out said credits. In fact, people with a full retirement age of 67 (which would be everyone born in 1960 or later) would increase their Social Security benefits by 24% if they waited until age 70 to claim them.
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Source: Fool.com
