Same here, as soon as I could retire with full benifits I did.
When I was eligible for SSA I did.
Everybody thinks they are going to live forever so they get greedy and hold out for more SSA money.
The truth is, none of us know how much time we have on this earth and we are not garranteed one more minute.
Also, as someone else said, you wait too long you may not be healthy enough to enjoy whst you held out for.
Most of this stuff is individual.
One thing is purely mathematics.
You can find many calculators online about what age collecting Soc Sec gets the most dollars before death. These will usually say age 70 gets the most before normal life expectancy.
And there are articles about getting it early because death may be closer than “normal” and also articles about how Soc Sec may be cut.
My point in all this is back to the calculators. They all, ALL, find the “breakeven age”. At what age does collecting at 62 stop having an advantage in total collections over age 70 . . . this is presented as the definitive question.
It’s not. There is another question. “Suppose I collect early and the breakeven occurs before I’m dead and so the people collecting at a later come out ahead . . . By How Much?”
The calculators never look past breakeven age. If you do, you will find you don’t accumulate even a 10% difference until about 95 or whatever (which the vast majority of us won’t reach).
So yes, they are ahead, but only by a small amount, and by going early you have money before arthritis robs you of mobility or other problems, before death, arrive. The right threshold is not year of death. It’s year of life getting unpleasant.