Social Security Bridge Strategy

What’s the highest-return, lowest-risk investment available to a sixty-two-year-old? Delaying Social Security. A bridge strategy means deliberately spending more from your portfolio in your sixties so you can hold off claiming until 70, locking in a permanently larger, inflation-adjusted check for the rest of your life. You’re not depleting your savings. You’re converting a chunk of it into the best annuity money can buy.

The trade in plain terms

Claim at full retirement age, which is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later, and you get your full benefit. Wait past it, and your benefit grows for every month you delay, up to age 70. That increase is permanent, and it’s adjusted for inflation every year through the cost-of-living increase, which for 2026 is 2.8%.

The bridge is the funding mechanism for the delay. From the day you stop working until the day you claim, you cover your spending by drawing extra from the portfolio. You’re spending your own money early so the government sends you a bigger, guaranteed, inflation-proof check later. Most people get this exactly backward, claiming early to “protect” the portfolio, when delaying is the cheaper guarantee.

Why this beats buying an annuity

I’m skeptical of most private annuities, and the reason is simple. No insurance company can match what Social Security offers here. A private annuity rarely comes with full inflation protection, it’s priced on prevailing interest rates, and the insurer takes a cut. The Social Security delay is backed by the federal government, indexed to inflation, and the “price” is just the portfolio you spend in the meantime.

If your goal is a larger guaranteed income floor, you almost always buy it cheaper by delaying Social Security than by handing a lump sum to an insurer. So before anyone ladders annuities, I want the annuity ladder for income measured against this benchmark. The benchmark usually wins. Delay first, annuitize second, if at all.

The hidden tax bonus

Here’s the part the break-even calculators miss, and it’s worth real money for affluent households. The years you’re bridging, after the paycheck stops but before Social Security and before Required Minimum Distributions begin at 73 or 75, are usually the lowest-income years of your life.

That’s a gift. A low-income window is the cheap time to run Roth conversions, moving tax-deferred money into a Roth while you can fill up the low brackets at little cost. Every dollar you convert now is a dollar that won’t inflate your future RMD, which would otherwise raise your taxable income and your Medicare premium through IRMAA, the income-based surcharge. The bridge doesn’t just buy a bigger benefit. It opens a tax window you’ll never see again.

Where the bridge isn’t right

I’m absolute on principles and humble on predictions, so I won’t pretend delay always wins. The answer turns on facts you actually know, not forecasts.

• Health and longevity. If you have a serious condition that shortens your expected lifespan, the lifetime math tilts toward claiming earlier. The delay pays off only if you live to collect the bigger checks.
• Survivor coverage. For a married couple, the higher earner delaying also raises the survivor benefit the widow or widower will live on. That makes the higher earner’s delay more valuable, not less, and ties directly into spousal income continuity planning.
• Portfolio capacity. The bridge only works if spending more early doesn’t crack the plan. For a $3M-plus household it usually doesn’t. For a tighter one, it can.

The bridge strategy turns the question from “how do I protect my portfolio” into “how do I buy the most guaranteed income for the least cost.” The answer is sitting in plain sight, backed by the federal government, indexed to inflation, and almost nobody uses it on purpose. Spend a little of your own money now. Buy the best annuity on earth.