When to Take Social Security in Michigan: A Timing Guide
If you’re within a few years of retirement, you’ve probably already run into conflicting advice about Social Security — take it early and enjoy it, or wait as long as possible for the bigger check. Both answers can be right, depending entirely on the details of your specific situation.
Deciding when to take Social Security in Michigan isn’t just a Social Security Administration question — it’s a retirement income question, a tax question, and often a spousal-benefit question all at once. My wife Katie and I actually work through this exact decision in our own household — I’ll share how our age gap and family health history point us toward two very different claiming strategies later in this post. First, here’s how to think through it.
1. The Three Ages That Matter: 62, 67, and 70
Every Social Security claiming decision revolves primarily around three ages:
- Age 62 — the earliest you can claim, but your monthly benefit is permanently reduced (often by 25–30% compared to your full benefit).
- Full Retirement Age (FRA) — 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later. This is the age at which you receive 100% of your calculated benefit.
- Age 70 — the latest it makes sense to wait. Benefits grow by roughly 8% for every year you delay past FRA, and that growth stops at 70.
2026 is actually a notable year for this: it’s the first year FRA has fully landed at 67 for everyone reaching that milestone, completing a phase-in that’s been underway for decades.
2. Why Waiting Isn’t Automatically “Better”
The math on delaying looks compelling on paper — an 8% annual increase is hard to beat anywhere else, guaranteed and inflation-adjusted. Social Security benefits also received a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for 2026, and that COLA applies whether you claimed years ago or are about to.
But the math only tells part of the story. The right age to claim also depends on:
- Your health and family longevity history
- Whether you have other income sources to bridge the gap if you delay
- Whether you’re still working
- Your spouse’s age, health, earnings history, and own claiming strategy
The typical Social Security break-even age is around 79 — but your family health history can push the right answer years in either direction.
This is exactly the kind of decision that benefits from being modeled out — not guessed at — as part of a broader retirement plan.
3. The Michigan Tax Angle Most People Get Wrong
Here’s some good news: Michigan does not tax Social Security benefits at the state level, regardless of your age or income. That’s true for every Michigan retiree, no exceptions.
Where it gets more complicated is everything else in your retirement income picture. Pensions, IRA withdrawals, and 401(k) distributions are taxed differently depending on your birth year, and 2026 marks the final year of Michigan’s multi-year phase-in of the retirement income exemption.
That matters for Social Security timing because the age you claim can shift how much of your other retirement income you need to draw down in the meantime — which can, in turn, affect your Michigan taxable income. We go deeper on the state tax mechanics in our post on pension income taxation in Michigan — worth a read alongside this one.
4. Married? Your Spouse’s Timing Matters as Much as Yours
If you’re married, Social Security timing usually becomes a two-person decision. A lower-earning spouse may be entitled to a spousal benefit worth up to 50% of the higher earner’s benefit at their full retirement age — and survivor benefits later on are directly tied to whichever spouse claimed, and when.
In many cases, it makes sense for the higher earner to delay (maximizing the eventual survivor benefit) while the lower earner claims earlier. In others, it’s the opposite. This is rarely intuitive without running the numbers for both spouses side by side.
5. Still Working? Watch the Earnings Test
If you claim Social Security before your full retirement age and keep working, the earnings test can temporarily reduce your benefit:
- Under FRA for the entire year: $1 in benefits withheld for every $2 earned above $24,480 (2026 limit).
- Reaching FRA sometime in 2026: $1 withheld for every $3 earned above $65,160, counting only earnings before the month you hit FRA.
- Once you reach FRA: no limit at all — you can earn any amount and keep every dollar of your benefit.
Withheld benefits aren’t gone forever — Social Security recalculates your monthly benefit upward once you reach FRA to credit you for what was withheld. But for many working Michigan retirees, this is still a strong argument for waiting until FRA to claim.
6. My Own Claiming Strategy: A Real Example of Age Gap and Health History
I figured I’d use my wife, Katie, and myself as a real-world example — since our situation shows how much age gap and family health history can shift the right answer.
Katie and I have a 5.5-year age gap: I’m 38, she’s 33. Our family health histories look very different. Katie’s grandparents lived into their 80s; none of mine made it past 80, and there’s a history of heart conditions on my side. I’m also the higher earner, so my Social Security benefit will be considerably larger than hers.
The typical Social Security break-even analysis puts the break-even point around age 79 — the age at which deferring your benefit starts to pay off financially. Factoring in our age gap and family health history, plus the fact that average U.S. life expectancy for men (76.5) trails women’s (81.4), it’s likely Katie will outlive me by a meaningful margin.
That points us toward a clear strategy for me: defer my benefit until at least my full retirement age of 67, and ideally until 70. Deferring my higher benefit means that if I pass first, Katie steps into my larger benefit as a survivor — protecting our household’s income for the rest of her life, not just mine.
Deferring my higher benefit means Katie can step into it as a survivor benefit later — protecting her income for the rest of her life, not just mine.
For Katie’s claiming age, the calculus is different — and it’s less about Social Security math and more about our broader tax strategy. Like many of my clients, our retirement savings are spread across Roth, pre-tax, and brokerage accounts, but we’ve leaned more heavily into pre-tax accounts (401(k), 403(b), and IRA) during our higher-earning years. That means our early retirement years are earmarked for Roth conversions — shifting pre-tax dollars into tax-free Roth dollars, ideally at a lower rate than we’re in now, and softening the eventual impact of Required Minimum Distributions.
So while claiming at 62 could make sense for Katie on paper, we’ll likely defer her claim by 2–3 years instead — not because of the Social Security math itself, but because it leaves more room in those early retirement years to execute our Roth conversion strategy without pushing our income into a higher bracket.
— Andrew Charbonneau, CFP®
Why This Decision Shouldn’t Be Made in Isolation
Social Security timing touches your taxes, your other retirement accounts, your spouse’s benefits, and your overall income plan. Claiming decisions are also largely irreversible after a short window, which makes this one of the few retirement choices worth stress-testing before you act.
As a fiduciary firm with transparent, disclosed compensation, we build Social Security claiming into every comprehensive retirement plan we put together for Michigan clients — not as a standalone decision, but as one piece of a coordinated withdrawal and tax strategy.
Not Sure When to Claim Social Security?
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Frequently Asked Questions
There’s no single best age — it depends on your health, other income sources, spousal situation, and tax picture. Age 62, your full retirement age (67), and age 70 are the three reference points, but the right choice is personal and worth modeling out.
No. Michigan does not tax Social Security benefits at the state level for any resident, regardless of age or income. Other retirement income, like pensions and IRA withdrawals, is taxed under separate rules.
You have a limited window — generally 12 months from when you first claimed — to withdraw your application and repay benefits received, effectively resetting your claiming date. After that window, your claiming decision is permanent (aside from the annual recalculation after reaching FRA if benefits were withheld under the earnings test).
Spousal and survivor benefits are directly tied to when each of you claims. A common strategy is for the higher earner to delay claiming (which increases the eventual survivor benefit) while the lower earner claims earlier — but the right approach depends on both spouses’ ages, health, and earnings history.
Your benefit is based on your highest 35 years of earnings, adjusted for inflation, and the age you claim. There’s no single number that applies to everyone — the average monthly retirement benefit in 2026 is around $2,071, but individual benefits vary widely based on lifetime earnings. The most accurate way to see your actual estimate is to create a free “my Social Security” account at ssa.gov, which shows your personalized projected benefit at age 62, your full retirement age, and age 70.
No — but scheduled benefits could be reduced if Congress doesn’t act. The Social Security Trustees’ 2026 report projects that the retirement trust fund will be depleted in 2032, at which point incoming payroll taxes would only cover about 76–78% of scheduled benefits — a reduction of roughly 22–24%. Trust fund depletion doesn’t mean Social Security disappears; it means the program would rely solely on ongoing payroll tax revenue unless lawmakers change the funding formula before then. Congress has addressed shortfalls like this before, most recently in 1983, and still has time to act.
Yes, if you meet a few requirements: your marriage lasted at least 10 years, you’re currently unmarried, you’re at least 62, and the benefit you’d receive based on your ex-spouse’s record is higher than your own. Claiming on an ex-spouse’s record doesn’t reduce their benefit or affect their current spouse’s benefit in any way. If you’ve been divorced for at least two years, you may be able to claim even if your ex-spouse hasn’t started collecting yet.
About the Author
Andrew Charbonneau, CFP®
Founder & Financial Advisor, Redwood Wealth Management
Auburn Hills, MI | redwood-wealth.com | (248) 266-1386
Andrew is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional and fiduciary advisor serving Michigan families across Oakland County. He specializes in retirement income planning, tax strategy, and comprehensive financial planning for professionals and families in Auburn Hills, Rochester Hills, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, and Royal Oak.
