Retirement

2017 Brings New Changes to Full Retirement Age

January 6, 2017 • By

Reading Time: 2 Minutes

Last Updated: August 19, 2021

3 elderly people siting on a stoopEvery worker’s dream is to enjoy a secure retirement. Social Security is here to secure today and tomorrow. Part of that commitment is ensuring you have the most up-to-date information when you make your retirement decisions.

As the bells ring in the New Year, they also bring changes for new Social Security retirement beneficiaries. Full retirement age is 66 and two months for people born 01/02/1955 through 01/01/1956.  They are eligible to receive permanently reduced retirement benefits when they turn 62 in 2017.

Full retirement age is the age at which a person first becomes entitled to full (unreduced) retirement benefits.  It had been 65 for many years.  However, beginning with people born in 1938 that age has been gradually increasing until it reaches 67 for people born in 1960 and later.

As the full retirement age continues to increase, there are greater reductions in benefits if you claim them before you reach full retirement age.  For example, if you apply for benefits in 2017 at age 62, your monthly benefit amount will be reduced nearly 26 percent.

You can find your full retirement age, along with other important information, on our website.

Some things you must remember when you’re thinking about retirement:

  1. You may start receiving Social Security benefits as early as age 62 or as late as age 70. The longer you wait, the higher your monthly benefit will be.
  2. Your monthly benefits are reduced permanently if you start them any time before full retirement age.
  3. If you die, your retirement date can affect the payment to your surviving widow or widower.  If you started receiving retirement benefits before full retirement age, we cannot pay your surviving spouse their full retirement age benefit amount.  We base their benefit on the amount of your reduced benefits.
  4. If you elect to receive benefits before you reach full retirement age, you should understand how continuing to work  affects your benefits.

You can learn more by reading our publication, When to Start Receiving Benefits or visiting our Retirement Planner.

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About the Author

Jim Borland, Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Communications

Jim Borland, Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Communications

Comments

  1. Rod

    Disability insurance benefits are paid as though the beneficiary attained full retirement age when he or she started receiving disability benefits. This benefit amount should not change over time except for cost-of-living increases, and it should not change when the benefit is automatically converted to a retirement benefit when the beneficiary attains full retirement age. If your benefits were actually reduced when your benefits were converted to retirement benefits, you should contact Social Security for an explanation.

  2. José A.

    joseau08@yahoo.com

    I was retired with disabilities and when I reach my full benefit year, my benefits was reduced. Why? I no choose my disability it was an accident in my job.

  3. Tony S.

    OASI has a problem with bothy supply and demand in that they seem to force people over the age of 70 to receive maximum benefits although they continue to have high incomes they do not even pay OASDI taxes on and pay very little to nothing for the poor whose demand for an adequate standard of living is not insured until age 65 when they become eligible for SSI and Medicaid. Paying too much to rich people, who evade taxation by OASDI on all their income, before they actually retire or need more money to pay the bills, at age 70, is tantamount to robbing the poor who receive OASI benefits less than SSI $733 (2016). Maybe $733 (2016) should be the minimum OASDI benefit for the working rich at age 70 and the poor.

    People get drafted President at age 70 because Baby boomers are so unaccountable for child welfare, civilly, economically and politically due to tyranny of the majority and national delinquency under the Slavery Convention of 1926, with whom WWII is better than Vietnam for attempting to evade and defeat the taxes of a civilian, but Baby Boomer plagiarized generation x that threatens to take away your boom boom. Baby Boomer just can’t count higher than me, a poorer rich man than Donald Trump’s two skyscrapers filled with computer processors equals the computing capacity of the human brain (except Baby Boomers who drop pennies from the top of the building). I, a generation x disinherited homeless person, on the other hand was plagiarized for two skyscrapers and find them to be stupider than a properly used computer that I agree is much less powerful processor than the human mind traditionally expressed in writing that the computer is really good at processing. The Internet might be safer than the library these days.

    Rich people begin paying for the Medicare Ponzi scheme at age 65. Maybe they and other rich people should continue to pay after Medicare is abolished for the extortionate premiums of 2016 and 2017 and social security beneficiary health is insured for free by Medicaid, but if there is one thing the government could do to spare rich old people it is to stop robbing them with health insurance premium inflation and treat them with Medicaid like everyone who was ever ripped off by the 2.9% HI tax. Out-of-pocket medical expenses drive elder poverty up from 9% to 16%. Men who retire tend to sit on the couch until they die without someone to pay them to work = force x distance. Women, maybe because they are better cooks, and maybe because their old bones tolerate body fat and disability better than men, do much better in retirement and many retire early and spend half their life on social security, like me, a male disability beneficiary, whose ten year survival was dependent on passing the Marine Corp physical fitness test (PFT) 50-100 crunches, push-ups and 3 mile run everyday to keep Hospitals & Asylums two hundred and five year history away.

    Please use your Baby Boomer seniority in the computer age to end to the war of attrition regarding an annual 3% COLA and 3% raise in federal minimum being needed to compete with 2.7% average annual inflation by passing the Social Security Amendments of January 1, 2016-17 http://www.title24uscode.org/ss2017.htm

  4. M

    It’s all bull. I’m 66 & have to wait until the middle of the month for payment yet people collecting SSI who have never put a dime in get a check on the 1st plus food stamps etc. young people with bogus diagnosis of ailments. Speech defects, anger problems, & more nonsense. Drawing on the system. It’s easy to give away other peoples money and interest earned .

    • BDCompton

      Sure you were told you benefit would be paid, on or near your birthday. If you know of someone involved in fraudulent activity, why do you not do you civil duty and, file a complaint with the SS office, or the US attorney.?

    • OLATUNJI A.

      Please try to be a bit more compassionate to the unfortunate ones. Disabled people need our (including government) assistance at all times because they did not, more often than not, cause their unfortunate circumstances.

  5. Aleida B.

    I was born March 1959 what is my full retirement year ?

  6. Harvey P.

    This very good information

  7. John B.

    If you didn’t work during your lifetime chances are you’ll get more in SSI than most people that have worked 35 years or more. Sad, but so true.

    • Rod

      The average retirement benefit paid is $1,180.80, while SSI pays only a maximum of $735.00. In addition, SSI payments are reduced for any other income received, even gifts, while Social Security retirement benefits are not, unless you are working, under the full retirement age, and have annual earnings that exceed $16,920 this year. Also, Social Security retirement benefits can also provide benefits for auxiliary family members and eligible survivors, while SSI provides no family or survivor entitlement.

    • BDCompton

      That is sad that you think that way. You must have some kind of grievance against the system .

    • Bubba

      Or you can denounce your American citizen, go to Mexico to become a citizen, jump the border and come back, get free college, and social security.

  8. Carmen V.

    I was born in January 1957. When can I get my full SS.

  9. DaveH

    Hey, Mr. Borland, you “neglected” to mention it’s going to get even worse as soon as the Republicans and Trump completely gut Social Security when they soon turn this into law: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/solvency/SJohnson_20161208.pdf

    • BDCompton

      You probably are a Democrat or support them. I see no effect imminent until 2034.

    • Pete

      just a sour idiot lib snowflake!

  10. vrd

    what money social security paid me for disability would have been cost me only $2 month in private company and i would have got more money and i paid $120k in ssi and medicare taxes. i never worry about loosing a benefit, family and listening to people jealous on me for taking a disability benefits. i would have better insurance plus money in my retirement account as well as disability money.

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