Yeah, it's a lot more complicated, but there's only so much one can add into an article without people's eyes glossing over. :) It is the top 35 years that define your benefits, but the SSA calculator uses a shortcut which looks at only the final year of earnings and they approximate what the other 34 years would probably have looked like. The article topic was about the premise of taking at 62 and investing it, and I ran scenarios with different earnings levels and it made very little difference - so earnings is surprisingly not a factor in the 62 versus 67/70 debate.