Forest Hill's Jeff Judge in Kiplinger: Your Social Security claim date is a tax decision

By Jeff Judge, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®, Managing Partner, Chesapeake Financial Planners, Forest Hill, MD.

Most people pick a Social Security claiming age the same way: run the break-even math and go with whatever wins if you live long enough. Claim at 62 and your check is reduced for life. Wait until 70 and it rises roughly 76 percent, but you give up eight years of payments.

When Kiplinger asked me to write about this, my point was simple. Claiming age is also a tax decision. Up to 85 percent of your Social Security benefit can be taxed federally, and the income thresholds that trigger it have not moved since 1984. For a married couple, that line sits at $44,000 in combined income. Cross it, and every extra dollar can pull 85 cents of your benefit into taxable territory on top of your regular bracket.

For families here in Baltimore County and around Towson, this shows up quietly. Someone retires at 62, waits to claim, and spends those years pulling steady income from an IRA without ever touching Roth conversions or capital gains harvesting, the two moves that are cheapest exactly during that low-income window. In Perry Hall I have sat with couples who did everything else right and still walked into a bracket they never modeled.

The takeaway: before you lock in a claiming age, run your full tax picture out 20 to 30 years, not just the benefit math. The years between retirement and claiming are some of the cheapest tax years you will ever have.

This piece builds on "How to Coordinate Claiming Social Security With Your Tax Bracket," in Kiplinger (August 2026).

Jeff Judge, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®, is Managing Partner at Chesapeake Financial Planners in Forest Hill, MD. Book an intro call.