If the much older spouse has no earnings, display the sliders a little better. about social-security-tools

[Gregable]

Ah, good catch. I broke this while trying to set the spouse's minimum value based on the self's value.

[Gregable]

Fixed the broken sliders by allowing the lower earner slider to move freely in this specific case.

However, I'm not convinced this is the correct behavior anyway. In this specific case, it seems like there is only one choice for the lower earner - to file at the same date as the higher earner, even if that date is age 80 for the lower earner.

Can the lower earner file at age 70 if she/he gets a $0 benefit until age 80?

I think that in this specific case, the right thing to do would be to display greater than age 70 on the slider and lock the value to the specific date that the higher earner slider has selected.

[stkeros]

Can the lower earner file at age 70 if she/he gets a $0 benefit until age 80?

I think that in this specific case, the right thing to do would be to display greater than age 70 on the slider and lock the value to the specific date that the higher earner slider has selected.

If one has no personal earnings, there is no reason to file so age 70 and come and go. But if one has any personal earnings at all, one should surely file at the latest by age 70. No one would not do so, except in error.

The question is then, how to handle one with no earnings, who can turn 70 prior to a spouse with earnings turning 70? In this particular case, perhaps just leave things as-is, and one can see that moving the slider from age 62 to age 70 has no effect. But then they can see that the spousal benefit starts when the spouse files. Teaching someone to "make sure they file at some point before the spouse does!" may be out of scope for this tool.

[Gregable]

I'm OK with that solution for now. I'll leave this open as a lower priority request to see if I can do something slightly better down the road.

It's what I would imagine is an uncommon corner case: spouse with no earning record that is 8 years older than spouse with earnings record.