There’s no single key to happiness in retirement, but understanding your Social Security benefits can go a long way toward helping you (and your family) maximize your income as you age. To make the most of your benefits, you need to understand how they’re calculated as well as who qualifies. We dug into the first part recently, looking at classic Social Security calculations. In this article, we’ll look at what you need to do to qualify for Social Security, as well as how spousal and survivor benefits work.

Qualifying for Social Security

To qualify for Social Security, you must earn 40 credits, which essentially nets out to 10 years of work. For accuracy, let’s break it down a little bit further.

• The government gives you a credit for every X amount of income you make in covered earnings, or income that’s subject to Social Security tax. That X changes every year based on inflation; in 2025, it’s $1,810.
  • Any earnings from a traditional W-2 job count towards a credit, since Social Security tax (6.2%) is automatically withheld from these.
  • If you’re self-employed / not employed in a W-2 role, your earnings count as a Social Security credit so long as you pay the so-called self-employment tax. This tax, technically called SECA (after the Self-Employment Contributions Act), is 12.4%, as it covers both the employer and employee contributions to Social Security. 
  • Note: We have not included Medicare tax, which is also withheld from a W-2 paycheck and covered under SECA, here for clarity.
• You can only earn four credits per year. In other words, once you hit $7,240 in covered earnings in 2025, you can’t earn any additional credits for the year.

If you’ve earned 40 credits (at least 10 years of work), and are a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident (green card holder), as well as a few other exceptions, you qualify for Social Security benefits.

One thing to keep in mind: Your Social Security benefit is based on your 35 highest-earning years. If you only work 10 years, your average earnings will still be divided out over a 35-year average; so essentially 25 of those years will be zero. 

This can significantly reduce the size of your benefits, which can create a dilemma for parents who take a career break to care for their children. This is where questions about spousal benefits and survivor benefits tend to arise.

Social Security: spousal benefits

In married couples where one partner qualifies for Social Security, the other spouse may qualify for up to 50% of their spouse’s benefit. As you might expect, there are conditions involved. In short, you must:

• Be at least 62 to claim spousal benefits; you won’t receive the full 50% until you hit full retirement age (sometimes abbreviated FRA).
• Full retirement age is 66-67; the exact age varies depending on when you were born. (If you were born after 1960, it’s 67.)
• Still be married to your spouse. 
• Your spouse must be collecting benefits already.

If you are divorced, the rules are slightly different. In that scenario, you don’t need to wait for your spouse to start taking their benefits to qualify. However, you cannot be remarried, and you must have been married to the spouse in question for at least 10 years. 

Claiming spousal benefits will not impact your spouse’s benefits. If you and your spouse are still married and you both wait until full retirement age to begin claiming benefits, you may be entitled to 150% of the working spouse’s benefit amount.

If you are entitled to your own Social Security benefits—say you’ve worked 20 years over the course of your career but took a break to raise children—you can only get one set of benefits_, your own or your spouse’s. It’s possible that spousal benefits will be greater than choosing to claim your own benefits.

 The important thing to note here is that the government does not allow you to “stack” benefits and claim your own in addition to your spouse’s. The good news is, you don’t have to do these calculations on your own; the Social Security Administration will calculate your benefits when you apply and automatically pay you whichever benefit is larger.

Social Security: survivor benefits

If your spouse dies, you may qualify for up to 100% of their Social Security benefits, assuming you wait until full retirement age. As with normal Social Security, you can begin claiming survivor benefits earlier (60 years old) but the amount will be reduced.

As you might expect, exceptions apply. If you and your spouse had an underage child at the time of their death, you may qualify to receive benefits before you turn 60. There are exceptions to the age rule if you or the child are disabled. 

To qualify for survivor benefits, you cannot be remarried, and you must have been married for at least nine months, with a few exceptions. For instance, if you have a child together prior to the nine months or if your spouse died accidentally. The government views accidental death as an unexpected health condition (not pre-existing when you got married), military service, or a classic ‘accident’ like a car crash.

You can also qualify for survivor benefits if you and your spouse were divorced at their time of death, assuming you’re 60 or older and haven’t remarried.

 As with spousal benefits, survivor benefits cannot be stacked with individual benefits. If you also qualify for Social Security benefits from your own time working, the government will look at your options and pay you whichever benefit amount is higher.

Planning for Social Security benefits

With so many conditions surrounding Social Security benefits, it can be difficult to formulate a strategy for maximizing your benefits. Add ongoing reforms to how Social Security is calculated (and funded) and the planning can become even more complex.

A financial advisor may be able to help. We can look at different benefit calculations for your work history as well as your spouse’s. But we can do more than that. We can also look at how your Social Security benefits fit in with any other income you may be receiving in retirement, whether that’s required minimum distributions (RMDs) from a traditional retirement account, annuity payments, or withdrawals from a Roth IRA, to name just a few. A good advisor will go even further to assess what your goals are after retirement—are you hoping to leave an inheritance to your family or a cause you care about? If so, that might impact how you handle income planning in retirement.

If you have questions about your family’s circumstances and how Social Security benefits might fit into your broader financial plan, set up a meeting with our team to discuss.