You’re finally old enough to apply for Social Security, but financially, you’re not quite ready to retire. So you decide to claim checks anyway while you continue to work and save for the future.
There’s nothing to stop you from doing this, but depending on your age, you could cost yourself some of your Social Security checks. Expect your monthly benefits to dip if your income exceeds the following thresholds.
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How the Social Security earnings test works
The reason you can lose some of your benefits if you’re working and claiming Social Security at the same time is the earnings test. This little-known rule applies only to those claiming Social Security before their full retirement age (FRA) — 67 for most people. If you’re over this age, you can earn as much as you’d like from your job, and your Social Security checks will continue as usual.
If you’ll be under your FRA for all of 2026, you’ll start seeing your benefits decrease once your income from your job exceeds $24,480. A part-time worker at a low-paying job may not encounter this limit at all and continue to receive Social Security benefits as scheduled. However, someone in a high-paying job could see marked differences in their checks for most of the year.
You lose $1 for every $2 you earn over $24,480 if you’ll be under your FRA all year. Some seniors could forfeit their entire checks that way if their income is high enough.
It’s a slightly different story for those who will reach their FRA this year. They lose only $1 for every $3 they earn over $65,160, and if they reach their FRA before earning this much, they won’t lose anything at all. This limit is unlikely to be a problem for you unless you earn a lot of money from your job or have a birthday late in the year. But it’s still possible to lose some of your benefits to the earnings test, even when this higher limit applies.
The upside to losing money to the earnings test
Fortunately, losses due to the earnings test are only temporary. When you reach FRA, the Social Security Administration recalculates your benefit. You’ll receive more money after that if you had some of your checks withheld in the past. This increase could be substantial, especially if you lost entire checks to the earnings test before.
There’s no way to opt out of this, so in the short term, you may need another strategy to help you cover your living costs. You might need to rely more heavily on your income from your job or on your personal savings to cover what your Social Security checks won’t.
