It’s important to know a few facts about DRCs. For one – the delayed retirement credits are accumulative, not compounding. If your Full Retirement Age is 66 (if you were born between 1943 and 1954), you can accrue a full 32% in DRCs. This means that the amount of benefit that you would normally receive at FRA (which is your Primary Insurance Amount, or PIA) would be multiplied by 132% at your age 70. If your FRA is above age 66, your maximum delayed retirement credit is something less than 32% – as little as 24% if your FRA is 67.
Delayed retirement credits stop once you reach age 70, no matter when your Full Retirement Age is.
If you are delaying your benefit to achieve the delayed retirement credits and you die before reaching age 70, your DRCs stop at your death. Your surviving spouse will be eligible for a Survivor Benefit with delayed retirement credits as of the date of your death. Even if your spouse delays receiving the Survivor Benefit after your death, no more delayed retirement credits will accrue to that benefit.
For example, if you died at the age of 68 years and 6 months, your surviving spouse will be eligible for a Survivor Benefit that is 120% of your Primary Insurance Amount (PIA). If your PIA is $1,500 that means your surviving spouse is eligible for a benefit equal to $1,800.
The same is true if you decide at some point before your own age 70 to go ahead and file. I get this question every once in a while, since most examples of File & Suspend illustrate the individual doing a file & suspend at Full Retirement Age and then delaying benefits until age 70. But it’s not a requirement that you delay until age 70 – if you delay until, for example, age 67, you’ll achieve an increase of 8% since you waited a year before filing for your benefit.
You can file at any time after you’ve reached Full Retirement Age to achieve this 2/3% increase for each month. There’s no requirement to File & Suspend before filing for the delay credits either. It might be part of your strategy to File & Suspend if you’re delaying your own benefit but want to provide a Spousal Benefit for your better half. On the other hand, you might not want to File & Suspend if you plan to file a restricted application for Spousal Benefits based upon your spouse’s record.
Lastly, DRCs only affect your own retirement benefit. There are no delayed retirement credits for Spousal or Survivor benefits by delaying past FRA.