For anyone born in 1960 or later, full retirement age is 67. Claim at 62 and your check is cut by about 30% for life. Wait past 67 and it grows 8% for each year you delay, topping out at 70 at roughly 124% of your full benefit. Those percentages are set by law, not by the market, and they're the whole decision in three sentences.
The early-claiming argument is fair, so let's give it its due. A dollar at 62 can be spent, or it can let your other savings keep growing untouched. Some people have health reasons to doubt they'll see the crossover point, which lands somewhere around age 80 for most claiming comparisons. And some people simply need the money. None of that is bad math. Claiming early because you've thought it through is a decision. Claiming early because the money was sitting there is a default.
Here's the reframe I find most useful: waiting isn't a bet that you'll live long, it's insurance in case you do. A bigger check that arrives every month no matter how long you live is protection against the one risk retirees can't diversify away, which is outliving the money. Viewed that way, delaying is less like gambling and more like buying the largest inflation-adjusted annuity available at a price no insurer can match.
Married couples have an extra move on the board. When one spouse dies, the survivor keeps the larger of the two checks, not both. So the higher earner's claiming age sets the survivor's income for what could be decades. Delaying the bigger benefit protects two lives, not one. That single fact changes the answer for a lot of couples I work with.
A word of caution: I'm a licensed insurance broker, not a registered investment advisor, and this decision touches taxes, health, savings, and marriage all at once, so treat this as education rather than a recommendation. The claiming choice also pairs with the bigger question of how to turn savings into monthly income, which we walked through in Retirement Math. Get both decisions pointed the same direction and retirement gets a lot less mysterious.