Retirement Age Milestones: 59½ to 73

Educational explainer, not financial or tax advice. The ages below are set by statute and agency rule — sources are irs.gov and ssa.gov as noted. Figures are current as of September 2026 and change over time; this site is not affiliated with any government agency.

Retirement planning across a 401(k), a Roth IRA, and a taxable investment account looks like one continuous curve — money compounds, then draws down. The law, though, is not continuous. Six specific ages change what the accounts and the benefit programs will do, and every one of them is a hard line: the day before, one set of rules; the day after, another. This page lays out each milestone, what mechanically changes at it, and where the official rule lives. It pairs with the Retirement Calculator, which projects balances across these ages without caring which side of any line you stand on.

The six ages at a glance

59½ — the early-distribution line

Before age 59½, distributions from most tax-advantaged retirement accounts — traditional 401(k)s and IRAs among them — generally face a 10% additional federal tax on top of the ordinary income tax the withdrawal already owes. That stacking is the mechanical point: a traditional-account dollar withdrawn early is taxed as ordinary income and then charged the additional 10%. The tax code lists exceptions to the additional tax, and which ones apply to which account type is exactly the kind of detail worth reading at the source: irs.gov. After 59½, the additional tax generally falls away and ordinary income tax remains for traditional accounts, while qualified Roth withdrawals are tax-free because those contributions went in after tax. The half-year is not a typo — the statute really is written at 59½.

62 — earliest Social Security claim

Age 62 is the earliest a Social Security retirement benefit can be claimed, and claiming then locks in a permanent reduction relative to the full-retirement-age amount. "Permanent" is the word doing the work: the reduction does not phase out later. The size of the reduction depends on birth year and claiming month, and ssa.gov publishes the exact schedule. Whether an early, reduced benefit or a later, larger one produces more total dollars depends on longevity, other income, and the rest of a household's arithmetic — inputs that differ for every person, which is why this page describes the mechanics and stops there.

65 — Medicare, not Social Security

Age 65 is when Medicare eligibility begins for most people. It is easy to conflate with the Social Security retirement age because 65 once served both roles, but the two have diverged: Medicare stayed at 65 while the Social Security full retirement age moved later. The practical consequence for planning arithmetic is a possible gap — someone who stops working before 65 has to price health coverage for the years until Medicare begins, a real line item that sits outside every investment projection. Eligibility details are at ssa.gov.

67 — full retirement age

Full retirement age is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later; earlier birth years fall between 66 and 67 on a schedule published at ssa.gov. Claiming at full retirement age draws the unreduced benefit — the baseline against which the age-62 reduction and the post-67 increase are both measured. For multi-account planning, 67 is a natural anchor year: the Retirement Calculator and the Retirement Withdrawal Calculator can model a portfolio that carries spending alone before a benefit starts and shares the load after, whichever start year you test.

70 — delayed credits stop

Between full retirement age and 70, a delayed Social Security claim earns delayed-retirement credits that increase the eventual benefit. At 70 those credits stop accruing: there is no benefit increase for waiting past 70, so delay beyond that age gives up months of payments and buys nothing. That makes 70 the one milestone with a purely arithmetic edge — after it, the waiting trade-off has only a cost side. The credit percentages by birth year are at ssa.gov.

73, rising to 75 — required minimum distributions

Required minimum distributions from traditional 401(k)s and IRAs currently begin at age 73 under the SECURE 2.0 Act, and the starting age is scheduled to rise to 75 beginning in 2033. The annual amount is a defined quotient: the account balance on the prior December 31, divided by the IRS life-expectancy factor for your age from the Uniform Lifetime Table at irs.gov. A missed or short RMD triggers a 25% excise tax on the shortfall, reduced to 10% if corrected in a timely manner. Roth IRAs have no lifetime RMDs for the original owner, and since 2024 Roth 401(k) accounts are also exempt — one reason a plan that mixes traditional and Roth balances behaves differently after 73 than before. The RMD Calculator computes the quotient from your balance and age, and the companion guide RMD Rules Explained walks through the table mechanics in detail.

What the ages do — and what they don't decide

Notice what the milestones are: boundaries, not recommendations. Nothing at 62 says to claim at 62; nothing at 70 says to wait until 70. The statutes define what each choice costs and pays, and the right combination for a given household depends on inputs no statute knows — health, other income, account mix, a spouse's benefits. That is why this site computes rather than recommends: the calculators show what a set of assumptions produces, and changing an assumption shows its price. Contribution limits for 401(k)s and IRAs are part of the same picture but change annually, so this page states none — the current figures are published at irs.gov each year.

Frequently asked questions

Not financial or tax advice: an educational summary of statutory ages as of September 2026, sourced to irs.gov and ssa.gov as noted. Congress and the agencies change these rules — SECURE 2.0's moving RMD age is the proof — so confirm any consequential figure with the official source or a licensed professional before acting on it. See the methodology page for how this site keeps rule-year data current.