Dear Liz:<\/b> My best friend was able to get a 50% bump in his Social Security monthly benefit due to his wife having a higher monthly benefit. <\/p>\n
My wife didn\u2019t work enough to qualify for Social Security, but I did. Can she get the spousal benefit from my record?<\/p>\n
Answer: <\/b>Your wife can qualify for an amount that\u2019s up to half of your benefit at full retirement age, provided you\u2019ve already applied for Social Security. The amount she gets would be reduced if she applies before her own full retirement age, which is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later.<\/p>\n
You mentioned your friend getting a 50% \u201cbump\u201d in his benefit, but that\u2019s not how spousal benefits work. Your friend\u2019s spousal benefit was compared to the benefit he earned on his own work record, and he would get the larger of the two amounts \u2013 not both.<\/p>\n
Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist for NerdWallet.<\/a> <\/a>Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or by using the \u201cContact\u201d form at asklizweston.com.<\/a><\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Liz: My best friend was able to get a 50% bump in his Social Security monthly benefit…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":261612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[64,255,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-261611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-personal-finance","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}