Veterans and Social Security

[Nords]

The additional $1200 was not reported in my SS record of earnings. I got the impression that it gets added once you apply.

From the other posts here, I'm just wondering if the military credit isn't already figured into the estimate they send out every year.

I certainly agree that there seems to be a lack of consistency in what we hear from various SS bureaucrats.
My guess is that the website calculator does not give the military service correction, but the annual estimate they send you includes it.

For a decade or so I was one of those [-]anal-retentive[/-] careful guys who compared the mailed statements to the online calculator. (Navy "lost" a data tape in the late 1990s and actually failed to report earnings for about 30% of the active-duty folks. I caught it on spouse's mailed statement and started a decade of double-checking their SS records.) I stopped doing it around 2007.

Around 2001 or 2002, or perhaps a few months after the program ended, the mailed statements still only showed reported (W-2) earnings without the military credits. However the estimated annual amount of SS benefits began to include the effect of the additional military credits. I noticed that I still had to add the military credits to the online calculator.

With only 24 years of earnings history, the credits don't make much of a difference.