SS Estimate

[Jerry1]

I found an old thread that sort of answered my question. What happens to my SS estimate if I retire early. Of course the standard estimate assumes I will keep making my same income until retirement. I found the estimator (from a different thread) and entered in a scenario for retiring at 57 and earning no future income. The only information it gave me was the estimate for collecting at 62. It went from $1,983 to $1,888.


Question - how do I roll that forward to FRA and 70? Or, any other year after 62?

Thanks.

EDIT
I found a schedule that will take me from FRA (67 for me) to any month through turning 70. So how do I get from the 62 estimate to 67 (100% of the benefit)?

[braumeister]

If I'm not mistaken, you can download the AnyPIA calculator from the SS website and enter zeros for the last years to get a very accurate calculation. I did that and when I actually started collecting, the difference between actual and calculated was about a dollar or two.

[Walt34]

The online estimator does that too. It's been a few years for me, but after you get the first estimate there's a screen that allows you to get estimates for years following 62 or whatever year you first put in. Just enter "zero" for those years and you'll get a good estimate. Mine was within a dollar or two also.

[Jerry1]

I could not find the online estimator. I downloaded AnyPIA, but I haven’t done all the input yet.

[Dtail]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerry1 I found an old thread that sort of answered my question. What happens to my SS estimate if I retire early. Of course the standard estimate assumes I will keep making my same income until retirement. I found the estimator (from a different thread) and entered in a scenario for retiring at 57 and earning no future income. The only information it gave me was the estimate for collecting at 62. It went from $1,983 to $1,888. Question - how do I roll that forward to FRA and 70? Or, any other year after 62? Thanks. EDIT I found a schedule that will take me from FRA (67 for me) to any month through turning 70. So how do I get from the 62 estimate to 67 (100% of the benefit)?

You can accomplish it with the below link. IIRC, you can pick any date up to 3 points of data for each comparison.

https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/estimator.html

[Al18]

The link below is simpler to use than the calculator's on SSA.gov


Simply copy and paste your SS work history into the link below and your SS benefit is calculated and shown on a yearly basis from age 62 to 70


https://socialsecurity.tools/app.html

[Jerry1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al18 The link below is simpler to use than the calculator's on SSA.gov Simply copy and paste your SS work history into the link below and your SS benefit is calculated and shown on a yearly basis from age 62 to 70 https://socialsecurity.tools/app.html

Thanks. That worked pretty well and matched (within reason) the amounts I was able to estimate using some percentages I found online.

By not working, I lose about $95 per month if I take at 62, $219 at FRA and $328 at 70. Not enough to change my plans, but not completely immaterial.

Oh well, nothing much I can do now (at least nothing I'm willing to do). There was an interesting blurb though. The lowest of my 35 years is about $40K. Therefore, there'd be no SS impact from working unless I can exceed that. Good to know that if anything incentivized me to think about work again, it wouldn't be in order to increase my SS.

[wmc1000]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al18 The link below is simpler to use than the calculator's on SSA.gov Simply copy and paste your SS work history into the link below and your SS benefit is calculated and shown on a yearly basis from age 62 to 70 https://socialsecurity.tools/app.html

Great easy to use website Thanks! It confirms the numbers I had previously gotten running different scenarios at the SSA website!

[Scuba]

Thank you for posting this! Very easy to use. I just checked mine and as compared to the SS website calculations, my age 62 benefit will be $398/year lower, FRA will be $612/year lower, and age 70 will be $932/year lower. Certainly not enough to make a material difference to our projections or to work longer for, but good to know.

[Perryinva]

Once you get 35 years of any decent income (over $50k -60k) at /past the 2nd bend point, the differences are all pretty small. Never a good reason to continue to work to increase SS @ that point. Once there is 35 years of maxed out earnings, the difference is even smaller as only 15% of the top almost 50% of Adjusted Monthly Earnings is added to the PIA.

[gauss]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al18 The link below is simpler to use than the calculator's on SSA.gov Simply copy and paste your SS work history into the link below and your SS benefit is calculated and shown on a yearly basis from age 62 to 70 https://socialsecurity.tools/app.html

Ok - To clarify how this works for others.

• The site is run by a third-party-- not the Social Security Administration
• You need to log into your own ssa.gov account to pull up your earnings record -- outside of the third-party site
• You copy/paste the earnings record into the third party page
• The site makes the calculations offline using JavaScript

I was quite concerned when I first saw the discussion here, but now I feel better about this.

-gauss

[gauss]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Perryinva Once you get 35 years of any decent income (over $50k -60k) at /past the 2nd bend point, the differences are all pretty small. Never a good reason to continue to work to increase SS @ that point. Once there is 35 years of maxed out earnings, the difference is even smaller as only 15% of the top almost 50% of Adjusted Monthly Earnings is added to the PIA.

+1
My criteria for deciding that I had "worked enough" with regards to SS benefit was even more relaxed. I probably had 10 of the 35 years with $0 earnings or less than a few thousand. This reflects my 22 years of full time professional employment combined with much smaller earnings (ie summer jobs etc) before this

Once my cumulative lifetime earnings were such that I was past the last "bend point" in the PIA formula I concluded that future SS contributions would not accrue to my benefit nearly as much as my former earnings (15% return vs 90% and 32% on the other segments of the PIA formula).

A simple visualization of lifetime earnings (AIME) vs SS Benefit (PIA) is available in the upper right hand corner of this SS page.

My bottom line is don't get hung up on the 35 years, but know where your lifetime earnings are compared to the "bend points".

-gauss