Dave Ramsey’s Social Security Advice Is Unpopular Among Experts – But It’s Probably Right for a Very Specific Reason

1 hour ago 3

Michael Williams

Tue, June 16, 2026 astatine 9:18 AM CDT 5 min read

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Ramsey's "invest the checks" logic is flawed due to the fact that delaying Social Security delivers a guaranteed 8% yearly increase, beating risk-adjusted banal marketplace returns each time.
Waiting until 70 pays astir $13,000 much per twelvemonth than claiming astatine 62, with the break-even constituent falling astatine ages 80 to 82, which is good wrong mean beingness expectancy.
Most Americans assertion astatine 62 retired of necessity. With mean 401(k) balances astir $246,500 astatine retirement, burning savings to hold Social Security creates unsafe sequence-of-returns risk.
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Dave Ramsey has spent years telling listeners that the accepted contented connected Social Security is wrong. His position: assertion astatine 62, the earliest property you can, and put each check. "It usually makes consciousness to instrumentality it earlier and put it," helium has argued connected his show, calling the programme a "mathematical disaster" helium wants retired of arsenic accelerated arsenic possible.

A bald, light-skinned antheral with a achromatic beard and glasses is speaking into a metallic microphone. He wears a achromatic blazer implicit a acheronian striped garment and gestures with some hands, palms open, 1 manus showing a golden ring. The inheritance is simply a acheronian bluish partition patterned with achromatic 'MUSIC CITY THEATRE' and 'SiriusXM SATELLITE RADIO' logos.

Almost each status planner disagrees. The Social Security Administration mechanically increases your monthly cheque by astir 8% for each twelvemonth you hold claiming up to property 70, and reduces it by up to 30% if you assertion astatine 62. Following Ramsey and getting the mathematics incorrect means locking successful a smaller cheque for the remainder of your life, with nary take-backs.

The verdict: close answer, incorrect crushed

Ramsey is astir apt close that astir Americans should assertion early. His reasoning, that you'll bushed the strategy by investing the checks, does not clasp up.

The 8% yearly summation from delaying is simply a guaranteed, government-backed instrumentality connected a watercourse of payments that lasts your full beingness and partially adjusts for inflation. Historical banal returns of 7% to 10% annually are an mean crossed decades, not a warrant successful immoderate fixed year. On a risk-adjusted basis, a guaranteed 8% beats an expected 8% astir each time. If you person the currency travel to hold and you unrecorded to a mean beingness expectancy, waiting wins.

Here is the break-even mathematics Ramsey skips. Imagine your afloat status property payment astatine 67 is $2,000 a month. Claim astatine 62 and the cheque drops to astir $1,400. Wait until 70 and it grows to astir $2,480. Over a year, that is $16,800 astatine 62 versus $29,760 astatine 70, a spread of astir $13,000 each azygous year, for life. The break-even constituent wherever the delayed claimer catches up successful full dollars received sits astir property 80 to 82. Live past that, and waiting was the amended fiscal trade. Remaining beingness expectancy astatine property 65 is present astir 20.6 years, which puts the mean 65-year-old comfortably past the break-even line.

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