T. Rowe Price (TRP) announced a new free tool called Social Security Optimizer to help decide when to start claiming Social Security benefits. You enter information like age, marital status, life expectancy, spousal information, and “Monthly Benefit Amount At Full Retirement Age”. It will ask you to register with your email address, but it is otherwise free. (After you register, you also get access to other free TRP tools.)
The new tool, which provides tailored insights through analysis of an individual’s specific circumstances, estimates when to begin claiming Social Security and how much they should expect to receive. Social Security Optimizer can also model life expectancy to see what claiming strategies will yield the most amount of money over time based on the inputted life expectancy. Individuals are guided through a short series of questions. The tool will then estimate the optimal age to take Social Security, the optimal age for their partner to take Social Security, and the amount of benefit the individual (and their partner) will receive, given their assumed life expectancy. The Social Security Optimizer also pairs broader education and resources to help individual investors and plan participants make more informed decisions.
Based on my initial tests, the tool is on the basic side. They do recommend a specific claiming strategy and provide some useful background information about how Social Security works, but it doesn’t go into much detail about all of the possible scenarios. I was honestly hoping for something more full-featured given that in March 2023, T. Rowe Price announced that it was acquiring Retiree Inc., which included several advanced software tools for both individuals and professional financial advisors like SSAnalyzer.com, Income Solver®, and Social Security Solutions™.
I’d still recommend checking it out, as Social Security claim timing is a big decision and I think exploring and using all available information is a good idea. These tools can introduce a lot of people to ideas that they would have not otherwise considered, like perhaps having one spouse claim as early as possible (age 62), and then have the other claim as late as possible (age 70).
Other free third-party Social Security tools that I recommend trying out include Open Social Security and SSA.tools.
A reminder that this tool (and all the others) will help to maximize the total income that you receive from Social Security. Often this means one or both spouses delay their claim date to age 70. This works out fine if you have alternative sources of income while you delay your claim start date. However, if you need the Social Security income to retire sooner (often now), then that is a new variable to work in. Income that lets you retire and stop working today when you are younger and healthier may be worth more than what comes out of some discounted interest rate analysis.
I’ve also found there is often a behavioral psychology element. For example, if one spouse stops working first while the other continues to work, the non-working spouse may feel an urge to have their “own income” and want to start claiming Social Security as soon as possible.
