About that Social Security headline you saw last week

A reader emailed us last Tuesday. She had seen yet another article about Social Security “running out of money by 2034,” and her brother had been calling her for weeks to tell her she should claim her benefits as soon as she possibly could, because otherwise there would be nothing left for her. She is sixty-one. The brother is sixty-three. He had already claimed at sixty-two. He felt strongly that she ought to do the same.

She wanted to know whether to believe him.

A small note before we get into it. Almost every woman we talk to in her sixties has a version of this brother. Sometimes the brother is a son. Sometimes the brother is a friend at book club. The opinions are always strong. They are not always backed up by what the Social Security Trustees actually wrote in their report.

Here is the short answer. The headline is not exactly wrong, and it is not exactly right, and the action it usually drives — claiming Social Security earlier than you otherwise would — is almost always the wrong response for women specifically.

Let me explain.

What the headline actually says

What the Social Security Administration’s Trustees report each year is a projection about a specific trust fund, called the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund. As of the most recent report, the projection is that this fund’s reserves will be fully depleted sometime in the early 2030s. After that point, payroll tax revenue coming in would still cover roughly seventy-seven to eighty percent of scheduled benefits.

So the headline version, “Social Security goes broke in 2034,” compresses two different things into one phrase. The trust fund reserves do run out around then. But benefits do not stop. They continue, paid from current payroll tax revenue, at something like three-quarters of the promised amount, until Congress changes the math. That distinction matters, because the size of the cliff is very different from the size of the trim.

There is also a long history, going back to 1983 the last time Congress addressed this, of projected depletions being addressed before they actually happen. The exact mechanism is a political question and we are not in a position to predict it. The pattern is that Congress acts, usually later than it should, and almost always with some combination of small benefit adjustments, gradual tax adjustments, and a reset of the trust fund’s runway.

That is the substance of the news.

It is not a hedge. It is a discount on both sides.

Why claiming early because of the news is usually the wrong response

Here is where the math gets specific.

The Social Security benefit you collect for the rest of your life is determined, in large part, by the age at which you first claim. Claiming at age sixty-two gives you a permanently reduced benefit. Claiming at your full retirement age gives you the full amount. Claiming at age seventy gives you a permanently increased one. The size of the difference is meaningful — roughly a seventy-seven percent swing between claiming at sixty-two and claiming at seventy, for someone whose full retirement age is sixty-seven. That number comes from the Social Security Administration’s published actuarial reduction tables, not from us.

Now overlay that with longevity. Women born in the mid-1960s have a median life expectancy in the mid-eighties, give or take a few years and a few variables. Which means many women are claiming a benefit that has to carry them through twenty-five or more years.

Here is the part most articles do not mention. If you claim early to “lock in” a benefit before any reform, and reform does eventually happen, the reform will almost certainly apply to your benefit too. The trust fund situation will not respect the date on which you started collecting. What you will have done is locked in a smaller starting amount, which then gets adjusted further by whatever Congress eventually does.

What we say to clients in this conversation

The honest answer is that the right claim age depends on a handful of things, and the trust fund headline is not one of them.

It depends on whether you are still working. On whether you are married, divorced, or widowed. On your spouse’s earnings record, if there is one. On your own health. On your other income sources. On whether you have a reason to need cash flow earlier in retirement. On what the rest of your portfolio looks like, and what your spouse’s claim plan looks like if you are married.

If those things point to claiming at sixty-two, you should claim at sixty-two. If they point to seventy, you should wait to seventy. The headline about the trust fund does not, on its own, change any of those underlying factors. It just changes the emotional temperature of the conversation.

Most of our job in this conversation is to take the temperature back down, walk through the factors that actually matter for the woman across the table, and make sure the decision she lands on is the one her own life is asking her to make rather than the one a magazine cover is asking her to make.

What’s worth doing this month

If you are anywhere near a Social Security decision, two small things are worth doing this month.

Pull your most recent Social Security benefit estimate

First, pull your most recent Social Security benefit estimate from ssa.gov/myaccount. The estimate is updated each year and reflects your most recent earnings record. Knowing your actual number, at each of the three claim ages, takes the conversation out of the abstract.

Write down the relevant spouse or ex-spouse dates

Second, if you have a spouse or an ex-spouse, take ten minutes to write down the relevant dates. The dates of marriage, of divorce if there was one, and of any spouse’s death are unreasonably consequential under Social Security’s rules, and most people cannot tell you any of them off the top of their head. Writing them down is the kind of small, unglamorous step that quietly pays back a thousand times.

That is enough planning for one Tuesday.

Every story is different, and every plan worth its name reflects that. If you would like to talk through what is going on in your world, our strategy session is forty-five minutes, virtual, and meant for listening, not selling. We use the time to ask the questions worth asking, to hear what is on your mind, and to understand what you are hoping a plan can do for you. Nothing is decided in the room. It is a conversation, and a careful one.

Or if you would rather start with the full guide we wrote on the four planning decisions every woman approaching retirement should be making with her eyes open, the PDF is at the link below.

— Anika

Note: Social Security rules and projections change, sometimes year to year, and the laws around retirement move quickly. This post reflects the 2025 Trustees Report and the rules as we understood them in June 2026. Confirm the current figures before acting on them. Last reviewed: June 2026.

Disclosures:

Names and specific figures in client examples are illustrative. Specific outcomes depend on your individual circumstances. Statistics are drawn from the sources listed above; where a figure is a projection or industry estimate, it is described as such. Rose Line Retirement is a women-led retirement planning practice operating under Theus Wealth Advisors, an independently owned and operated Registered Investment Adviser. The content here is general education, not personal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, please speak with a qualified financial advisor, CPA, or attorney.