You might be eligible to receive early retirement once you are 62 years old. You can still receive early retirement even if you have applied for disability and are waiting for a decision on your claim. If you do take early retirement while you have a disability application pending, your back pay will be reduced by the amount of money you receive in early retirement benefits. Let’s look at an example of how this works. Pretend you received a total of $8,000 in early retirement. You are eligible for $10,000 in backpay once your disability application is approved. Social Security will subtract $8,000 (how much you received in early retirement) from $10,000 (how much backpay you were eligible for). Your backpay would be $2,000.
Moving forward after you are approved for disability, you will receive the full amount of your Social Security benefit. It will not be reduced. When you reach full retirement age (67 years old), you will get the full retirement amount monthly.
