Retiring
at 67

What changes
at 67

67 is the age the system was designed around. For anyone born in 1960 or later, it’s the full retirement age (FRA) for Social Security — meaning you receive 100% of your calculated benefit, with no early-claiming reduction. The earnings test disappears: you can work and earn unlimited income without any benefit being withheld. Medicare has been covering your healthcare for two years. Every retirement account has been penalty-free since 59½.

The challenges that define earlier retirement ages — account access penalties, healthcare gaps, bridge strategies, ACA subsidy optimization — don’t exist at 67. The planning at this age shifts entirely to optimization: should you take Social Security now or delay to 70 for a 24% increase? How should you sequence withdrawals across account types to minimize lifetime taxes? How do you position your tax-deferred accounts before RMDs begin at 73?

Claim now
or delay to 70

At 67, the Social Security question is cleaner than at any earlier age. There’s no reduction for claiming now — you get 100% of your benefit. The only question is whether to take it or delay for the 8%/year increase through age 70. No other investment offers a guaranteed, inflation-adjusted 8% annual return backed by the U.S. government.

The numbers: for someone with a $2,400/month benefit at 67, delaying to 70 increases it to $2,976/month — an extra $576/month, or $6,912/year, for life. That’s inflation-adjusted, meaning the gap widens every year. By age 85, the annual difference exceeds $9,000. Over a retirement lasting to 90, the cumulative additional income from delaying is roughly $140,000–$170,000 in today’s dollars.

The breakeven age is typically 80–82. If you live past 82, delaying to 70 pays more in total cumulative benefits. Average life expectancy for a healthy 67-year-old is about 84 (men) to 87 (women). For couples, the math tilts further toward delaying: the surviving spouse inherits the higher of the two benefits, extending the value of the delay into the longest-lived scenario. This is effectively longevity insurance — it pays the most precisely when you need it most.

The cost of delaying is three more years of portfolio withdrawals. If your spending is $65,000/year and Social Security would have covered $28,800 of that, delaying means pulling an extra $86,400 from your portfolio over three years. For someone with $1 million or more in savings, this is a modest draw. For someone with $500,000, it’s a more significant commitment. The Social Security timing guide covers the breakeven math in detail.

Want to model this with your own SSA numbers? The Social Security timing guide walks through claiming ages, spousal strategies, and the breakeven calculation step by step.

Withdrawal strategy
at 67

At 67, withdrawal sequencing becomes the primary tax lever. You likely have three account types: tax-deferred (traditional IRA/401(k)), tax-free (Roth), and taxable (brokerage). The order you draw from these accounts determines your tax bill each year — and the cumulative impact over a 20+ year retirement can be substantial.

The conventional approach — draw taxable first, then tax-deferred, then Roth last — is a reasonable starting point. Taxable accounts generate capital gains regardless of whether you sell (through dividends and distributions), so drawing these down first minimizes ongoing tax drag. Tax-deferred accounts come next, converting withdrawals to ordinary income. Roth accounts grow tax-free and come out tax-free, so they’re most valuable when left to grow longest.

But the optimal strategy often deviates from the conventional order. If you have a large tax-deferred balance and RMDs at 73 will push you into a high bracket, it may be better to draw from tax-deferred accounts now (while your bracket is lower) and let Roth continue growing. If you’re claiming Social Security at 67, that income fills part of your brackets — so the marginal tax rate on additional traditional withdrawals may be higher than you expect. A year-by-year projection that shows the tax impact of different withdrawal sequences is the only way to identify the right order for your situation.

Roth conversions:
the window narrows

If you’ve been doing Roth conversions since your early 60s, 67 is when the window starts to close. Claiming Social Security at 67 adds taxable income to your return — up to 85% of your benefit is taxable at most income levels — which fills part of the low tax brackets that make conversions attractive.

In 2026, a married couple filing jointly can convert roughly $133,000 before any of it hits the 22% bracket — the standard deduction shelters the first $32,200, and the 12% bracket covers the next $100,800. If Social Security adds $24,000 in taxable income (85% of a $28,000 annual benefit), conversion space drops to about $109,000. That’s still substantial — but less than the $133,000 available to someone who delayed SS.

If you’re delaying Social Security to 70, the window stays wider for three more years. Without SS income, the full bracket space is available for conversions at 67, 68, and 69. This is one of the strongest arguments for delaying SS if you have a large tax-deferred balance: the combination of a higher future SS benefit and three more years of optimal Roth conversions can save tens of thousands in lifetime taxes.

Either way, you have six years before RMDs begin at 73. Each conversion done now reduces the tax-deferred balance that RMDs are calculated against. A $100,000 conversion at 67 might cost $12,000 in taxes today but prevent $4,000–$6,000 per year in additional taxes during the RMD years (ages 73+). Over 17 years of RMDs (73 to 90), the savings compound.

RMDs are
6 years away

Required Minimum Distributions begin at 73 for most retirees. At that point, the IRS requires you to withdraw a minimum percentage of your tax-deferred account balance each year, whether you need the money or not. The percentage starts at roughly 3.8% at 73 and increases each year. These distributions are taxed as ordinary income and count toward MAGI for IRMAA calculations.

If your tax-deferred balance at 73 is $800,000, your first RMD is about $30,200. At $1.2 million, it’s $45,300. Combined with Social Security, these mandatory withdrawals can push you into higher tax brackets and trigger IRMAA surcharges that wouldn’t apply at a lower income level. The problem compounds: tax-deferred accounts continue to grow (you’re only withdrawing the minimum), so RMDs increase every year even as the percentage rises.

The six years between 67 and 73 are your last window to reduce the balance that RMDs are calculated against. Every dollar converted to Roth or withdrawn strategically before 73 is a dollar that doesn’t generate mandatory taxable income for the rest of your life. Roth accounts are exempt from RMDs entirely — they grow tax-free and come out tax-free on your schedule, not the government’s.

How much
you need

A 67-year-old planning to age 90 has a 23-year retirement horizon. That’s shorter than the 30-year period the 4% rule was built for, and historical safe withdrawal rate research supports a rate of about 4.0–4.3% for this timeframe. But at 67, Social Security covers a significant share of spending, which changes the math.

For someone spending $65,000/year with a $28,000 Social Security benefit starting at 67, the portfolio only needs to generate $37,000/year. At a 4% withdrawal rate, that requires about $925,000. If you delay Social Security to 70 (increasing the benefit to roughly $34,700), the portfolio needs to generate $30,300/year after age 70 — requiring about $758,000. But you also need three years of full spending ($195,000–$225,000) from the portfolio while waiting.

Healthcare costs are lower at 67 than at any pre-65 retirement age. Medicare Part B premiums run about $185/month per person in 2026, plus supplemental coverage (Medigap or Medicare Advantage). Total out-of-pocket healthcare costs for a 67-year-old couple on Medicare typically run $8,000–$15,000 per year — dramatically less than the $30,000–$60,000 faced by early retirees on ACA plans. The exception is IRMAA: higher earners can add $2,000–$10,000 per person, per year in surcharges.

The net result: the savings target at 67 is significantly lower than at 55 or 62 (and lower still at 70), partly because the time horizon is shorter and partly because Social Security covers a meaningful chunk of spending. But the tax optimization decisions — withdrawal order, Roth conversions, RMD positioning — can shift your lifetime tax bill by $50,000–$100,000 or more. The savings target gets you in the door; the strategy determines how efficiently that money lasts.

Model your
retirement at 67

At 67, the planning is about tax-efficient execution. Social Security timing, withdrawal sequencing, Roth conversions, and RMD positioning all interact — and the decisions you make in the first few years of retirement echo through decades of tax returns and Medicare premiums. A year-by-year projection is the only way to see how these variables play out together.

Drawdown Arc runs a year-by-year projection from 67 through your plan-to age. It draws from each account type with the correct tax treatment, applies federal brackets, and shows your tax bill, withdrawal amounts, and portfolio trajectory for every year. You can test claiming Social Security now versus delaying to 70, adjust your withdrawal priority, and see how each decision affects your taxes and portfolio longevity.

Set your retirement age to 67, enter your account balances, and see the full picture. The free version handles federal taxes and year-by-year drawdown. Pro adds state taxes, scenario comparison, and PDF reports — so you can put “claim at 67” and “delay to 70” side by side and see the lifetime difference.