Between age 62 and your full retirement age (which depends on your birth year, see http://www.ssa.gov/retire2/retirechart.htm, you can earn up to $13,560 a year without triggering a recall of some or all of the benefits. That amount is indexed to inflation and will increase each year.
Under another law, up to 85 percent of your benefits can be taxed. How much will be taxed depends on income from other sources, including how much your wife earns. While you might like to have some independent spending money, you and your wife should have a long conversation about your long term future. Your benefits will go up for each year of deferral and the increase will very likely be worth more than the maximum your wife could contribute to her 401(k) plan. Better still, she's so much younger than you are it's nearly a lead pipe cinch that she will be the major beneficiary of your delaying taking benefits.
How important is this? One economist has used the word "caddish" to describe the behavior of men who take benefits early because it has such a large impact on the long term security of their spouses. I think that's loaded language, but it gives you and idea of the broad change in household welfare that comes from delay.
Scott
