Social Security Spousal Benefit Calculator

Spouse's benefits

Your benefit at each claiming age

The table follows the calculator: for the amounts and date of birth you entered, it shows the monthly total and the spouse part if you started at each age from 62 to 70.

Calculator output with SSA's reduction and rounding rules; the default row set is for the example in the calculator.

How the Social Security spousal benefit works

When a worker files for retirement benefits, the worker's husband or wife may qualify for a benefit based on the worker's earnings. The spouse must be at least 62 or be caring for a child who is under 16 or who gets Social Security disability benefits on the worker's record. The spousal benefit can be as much as half of the worker's primary insurance amount, the benefit the worker would get at full retirement age, depending on the spouse's age when benefits start. A current spouse cannot get spouse's benefits until the worker files for retirement benefits.

If you qualify for your own retirement benefit too, SSA always pays your own benefit first. When the spousal benefit is higher, you get a combination of the two that equals the higher spousal amount. SSA's own example: someone with a $1,250 retirement benefit and a $1,400 spouse's benefit gets the $1,250 plus $150 from the spouse's benefit, $1,400 in total, at full retirement age. If your own benefit is at least half of your spouse's full benefit, no spousal amount is added.

How claiming early reduces it

A spousal benefit started before full retirement age is reduced by 25/36 of 1 percent for each month early, up to 36 months, and by 5/12 of 1 percent for each additional month. SSA's example: with a $1,600 primary insurance amount, the base spousal benefit is $800; starting 36 months early cuts it by 25 percent, to $600, which is 37.5 percent of the worker's amount. With a full retirement age of 67, a spouse who starts at 62 gets 32.5 percent. Your own retirement benefit, if you have one, is reduced on a different scale: 5/9 of 1 percent a month for 36 months, then 5/12 of 1 percent.

Source: SSA Office of the Chief Actuary, benefit reduction for early retirement. The month counts apply to people born on the 2nd of a month; for most birthdays the earliest start is 62 and 1 month, one reduction month fewer. The calculator reproduces every amount in the table.

Two date rules matter. You must be 62 for the whole month to get benefits, so most people can start at 62 and 1 month; if you were born on the 1st or 2nd, you can start in the month you turn 62. And if you were born on the 1st of a month, SSA figures your full retirement age as if your birthday were in the previous month, while a January 1 birthday uses the previous year's row in the table.

If you also have your own benefit

This is where most spousal estimates go wrong. SSA does not simply compare the two amounts after they are reduced. It pays your own benefit, reduced for your age, and then adds the spouse excess: half of your spouse's primary insurance amount minus your own primary insurance amount, reduced separately with the spousal factors. In SSA's operations manual example, a $1,000 spouse benefit and a $400 own benefit leave a $600 excess; after reductions the excess pays $540 and the own benefit $380, for $920 in total.

In the default example, your spouse's full benefit is $2,400 and yours is $700, and you claim at 64 with a full retirement age of 67. Your own benefit is cut 20 percent to $560. The excess is $1,200 minus $700, or $500, cut 25 percent to $375. You would receive $935 a month, 39.0 percent of your spouse's full benefit. If you were born on or after January 2, 1954, you cannot pick one benefit and save the other: filing for either one files you for both. This is called deemed filing.

Waiting past full retirement age

The spousal amount grows the longer you wait, but only up to 50 percent at full retirement age. After that, delayed retirement credits of 2/3 of 1 percent a month (8 percent a year, for people born in 1943 or later) raise your own retirement benefit until 70, but not the spouse part. SSA figures the total without the credits, adds the credits to your own benefit and pays the difference as the spouse part, so in the default example the total stays at $1,200 from 67 to 70. Waiting helps only when your own benefit with credits ends up larger than the full spousal amount.

A child in your care, divorce and government pensions

A spouse who is caring for the worker's child who is under 16 or has a qualifying disability that began before 22 can receive the full spousal benefit regardless of age; it is not reduced for claiming early. Family benefits have a cap of 150 to 180 percent of the worker's benefit, and when the spouse and children together are due more than that, SSA reduces their benefits, not the worker's.

A divorced spouse can receive benefits on an ex-spouse's record if the marriage lasted at least 10 years and the divorced spouse is 62 or older and unmarried. Those benefits do not reduce what the worker or a current spouse gets. A divorced spouse can collect even if the ex-spouse has not started retirement benefits, as long as both are at least 62 and have been divorced at least two continuous years; the same calculator math applies.

A pension from work where you did not pay Social Security taxes no longer reduces Social Security benefits: December 2023 was the last month that the windfall elimination provision and the government pension offset could reduce them, including spouse's benefits.

What you actually receive

SSA rounds each reduction up to the next dime and rounds each monthly benefit down to the next lower dollar after any Medicare premium deduction. To estimate income tax on your benefits, use the Social Security benefits tax calculator. If you will keep working before full retirement age, the Social Security earnings test calculator shows how much SSA withholds, and the break-even calculator compares claiming ages for your own benefit. For how a surviving spouse files taxes, see the qualifying surviving spouse guide.