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> Except married people receive dramatically better benefits than single people. "better benefits" depends on their income distribution. There are folks who d

• Retric 15y ago
  It's true that the benefits from marriage A can decrease after marriage B. But, they are still higher than if everyone had been single the whole time. AKA the only time where X and Y getting married lowers their combined benefits if X or Y was married to someone else z before this and where receiving marriage benefits from this.
  • anamax 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure that my wife and I reduced our (future) SS benefits by getting married, and neither of us have been married before. (We definitely increased our income taxes significantly - welcome to AMT.) We both have decent incomes, so there's no "he'd have benefited from the low-income subsidy".
    • Retric 15y ago
      No, it does not work like that. The math on benefits are really simple you can take either your SS benefit or 50% of your living spouses or 100% of your dead spouses. Taking 50% of your spouses is a proxy for the 'low-income' subsidy where a single worker is supporting 2 people. There is a minor 'penalty' for taking SS early which is supposed to even out the expected benefit but this is calculated for each benefit separately. So, let's say you decide to retire at 62 and not wait till 68. You have 2 choices you can take your normal befit and gain nothing, or you can take your 50% your spouses benefit at 62 wait until 68 take your benefit calculated as if you had revived zero benefits. Net result your ahead. PS: Feel free to use there calculators to check this out: http://www.ssa.gov/planners/benefitcalculators.htm http://www.ssa.gov/planners/benefitcalculators.htm