Why would our SS estimated benefits go down?

[scrabbler1]

It looks like we don't have a clear answer yet.

Multiple people who post here have built their own worksheets that match the SS retirement benefit calculation. The SSA has a nice example here
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/retirebenefit1.html
which is easy to translate into an Excel worksheet.

My experience with this was that I came within a couple dollars of the SS numbers. Maybe that's the best option for the original poster.

I am one of those who have developed a spreadsheet which mimics the SS benefit calculation. It took some time, but when I was eventually able to download the AnyPIA calculator from the SSA website and run it successfully, the result was less tan $1 different from my own spreadsheet. And that included two years of working before I turned 22. True, my earnings in those two summers while in college were very small. Just for kicks, when I zero out those two earnings years, my projected SS benefit dropped by $2 a month, or just over 0.1%.

Every so often, I go to the SS website to cut and paste any updated set of wage indexing factors I see out there. That moves my projected SS benefit very slightly, if at all. I have not worked since 2008 so my earnings history has been frozen for the last 8 years.

 

[homestead]

From your benefit amounts, you seem to be hitting the max possible. That means that it simply doesn't matter whether your salary/earnings increases or not since you have been at or over the "Taxed Social Security Earnings" for many years now. Those extra earnings do not increase your future benefits anyways.

So your earnings have nothing to do with any changes.

I got my SSA statement and was pleasantly surprised that because I worked full time during high school, that I don't have any zeroes (0) for any of the top 35 years anymore. But I also read that working years before age 22 don't count, but I am not sure if that is true.

Another cool thing is that back in the 1980s, the max taxed SS earnings were under $50K a year.

We discussed the age 22 issue back in 2007 in this thread http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/question-about-ss-benefits-31323.html

I tested the SSA calculator and found it was using my years before age 22.
There is a link in my post to a historical SSA document which says years before age 22 are not counted.

 

[Fedup]

It shows my year before 22. Not a huge amount but at least it's not zero.

 

[Texas Proud]

It shows my year before 22. Not a huge amount but at least it's not zero.

I decided to check... I have 8 years of earnings prior to 22... only one year of any kind of 'good' earnings...


I have 32 years or earnings after graduating, so most of those years are not even used...