How Much More OAS Do You Get by Waiting?

How much more OAS do you get by waiting?

Each month you put off your Old Age Security pension past 65, the payment goes up by 0.6%. Wait the full five years to 70 and you get 36% more than you would at 65, and that larger amount stays with you for life. The increase stops at 70, so there is no extra for waiting longer.

The 0.6% rule, in plain terms

Old Age Security, called OAS, is a monthly public pension from the federal government. Most people who lived in Canada for enough years can get it starting at 65.

OAS does not shrink if you start at 65. Unlike CPP, where starting at 60 cuts your payment, 65 is already the earliest age for OAS, so the full amount is your starting point. Your only lever is waiting, which adds 0.6% for every month you hold off.

That works out to 7.2% more for each year you wait, and a top-up of 36% at 70. The bump is based on your own pension amount. If you lived in Canada for only part of your adult life, you get a partial pension, and 36% more of a small amount is still small.

What the increase looks like at each age

Say your OAS at 65 would be $800 a month. Here is what the same pension pays if you wait. These are made-up round numbers. Real amounts change every three months because OAS is adjusted for inflation, so check current figures on the OAS payment amounts page at canada.ca.

Age you start OAS	Increase	Monthly payment	Yearly payment
65	none	$800	$9,600
66	7.2%	$857.60	$10,291
68	21.6%	$972.80	$11,674
70	36%	$1,088	$13,056

The arithmetic for 70 is: 60 months of waiting times 0.6% is 36%. Then $800 times 0.36 is $288, and $800 plus $288 is $1,088 a month.

The residence rules come first

You need at least 10 years of residence in Canada after age 18, meaning years you actually lived here, to get any OAS at all, and 20 years to keep collecting it if you later move outside Canada. The full pension needs 40 years of residence after 18, and anything between 10 and 40 years gives you a partial pension. The details are on the OAS page at canada.ca.

The break-even math

Waiting means giving up payments now to get bigger ones later. The break-even age is the point where the bigger payments catch up with the money you skipped. It helps to see how long that takes.

For example, with that $800 pension:

1. At 65 you would collect $800 a month. Waiting to 70 means skipping 60 payments.
2. 60 times $800 is $48,000 of OAS you do not receive.
3. Starting at 70 pays $288 more each month.
4. $48,000 divided by $288 is 166.7 months, or about 13.9 years.
5. You come out ahead around age 84.

So if you live well past 84, waiting leaves you with more money in total. If you die before then, you collected less. Nobody knows their own date, which is why health and family history matter.

How the bigger payment is paid out

The increase is not a lump sum or a bonus. It is folded into your regular monthly payment and lasts as long as you live. It also moves with the same inflation adjustments as the rest of OAS, so the dollar gap between the two paths keeps growing.

What waiting costs you besides the missed payments

Three things are easy to overlook.

The GIS top-up waits too. The Guaranteed Income Supplement, a top-up for people with low incomes, only comes while you are getting OAS. Delay OAS and you delay the top-up as well. For a low-income household, that can matter more than the 0.6%.

A bigger pension can mean a bigger clawback. OAS is trimmed when your income is high, through a recovery tax. The income level where that starts changes every year, so check the recovery tax page at canada.ca. A larger OAS payment means more to claw back if your income is high.

You need money to live on from 65 to 70. Waiting only works if you can pay the bills in the meantime, from savings, a work pension, a job or CPP.

How to actually delay

Service Canada may sign you up on its own around age 65 if it already has your tax information. If you want to wait, you have to act. Apply for a later start, or tell Service Canada in writing that you want to defer, before payments begin. When you apply for OAS, name the month you want payments to begin, up to the month you turn 70, and send a deferral application up to 11 months before that month. Service Canada holds the start until then.

If you have already started OAS, you can still cancel within six months of your start date and pay back the payments you got. After those six months, you cannot pause it later to earn the increase.

The timing question works the same way for CPP, but the rules differ. Our post on how to delay CPP and OAS walks through the steps for both programs.

OAS is not CPP

Both are public pensions, but the timing rules are not the same. CPP can start at 60, and starting that early cuts it by 0.6% for each month before 65. After 65, CPP grows 0.7% for each month you wait, up to 42% more at 70. OAS has no early start, so 65 is the floor and 36% is the ceiling.

Does waiting always win?

No. The 36% bump is fixed, but whether it pays off depends on your health, your other income, whether you get GIS, and whether your spouse has a pension. Someone in poor health with plenty of savings may do better taking OAS at 65. Someone healthy with little income between 65 and 70 may do well by waiting.

This is a choice that depends on your situation, so run both paths with your own numbers. Our guide to CPP and OAS timing shows how the two decisions fit together.

A calculator that only adds up savings will miss half of this. When Can I Retire works out the age you can retire and how ready you are today, showing every step of the math with your OAS, CPP, pensions, taxes, inflation and the bridge years before benefits start counted, and you can run a free check at the signup page by uploading a statement or typing numbers.