I am 60 and receiving SSDI from my late husband's account. He was also on SSDI at the time of his death. Would it be worthwhile to file and suspend at my full retirement age of 66 and 4 months and wait until 70 so pick up the extra 32%? Does this even apply in my case?

Hi,

I'm not sure from your description exactly what type of benefits you currently receive, but I assume you mean that you are drawing widow's benefits, and that you are not receiving disability benefits based on your own account.

Based on those assumptions, you would never want to file and suspend benefits on your own record. Instead, it will likely be best for you to simply continue receiving widow's benefits until you reach age 70, at which time you will want to file on your own record if your own benefit rate is higher than your widow's rate. By the way, if your full retirement age is 66 & 4 months, the maximum amount of delayed retirement credits that you can earn by waiting until age 70 to start drawing benefits on your own record is 29.33%, not 32%.

You may want to consider running the maximization software available on this website in order to be sure that you choose the best filing strategy.

Best, Jerry