Ohmygosh, this is great, but I think it's out of my league at present (smile!) If I can't find an easier way, I'll be back studying this intently, though!
Social Security Calculator Question...
- Thread starter CindyBlue
- Start date
^ Excellent. This is what I thought I'd provided a link to earlier rather than the download required calculator that I actually linked.
Cindy, once you run this please let us know how much per month those two years will cost you in lost benefits. I'd like to know how close my estimate was.
I typed in every year of earnings...and holy cow, it says I'd lose $310 a month by not working that extra 1 year and 6 months to get me to FRA! That seems like an awfully huge loss!
Edited to add: When I looked at the printout I got from SS awhile back that says what I'd get if I collected at whatever month, it says that if I COLLECT at the month I expect to retire, I'd get about that amount. But what I still need to know is what would I get if I stopped working at that month but DIDN'T collect until FRA?
This is turning out to be harder than I thought! I might just have to wait and see what happens in two years...sigh...
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...and then I found this article (after an hour of searching!! It was written in 2009 so I'm not sure if it's still accurate, but it reflects what you told me, REWahoo...
Delaying Social Security after Stopping Work - Go To Retirement
Delaying Social Security after Stopping Work - Go To Retirement
Timeisprecious
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Based on 45 years of work, two zeroes makes no difference
Cindy -
SS is based on your top 35 years of earnings. Therefore, if you've paid into SS for 45 years, then two years of 0 earnings will make no difference on the amount you'll receive in monthly SS once you begin drawing it.
This looks like it might do the job...I don't suppose there's a way to transport 45 years worth of earnings into that chart so I don't have to type in all those numbers, is there
Cindy -
SS is based on your top 35 years of earnings. Therefore, if you've paid into SS for 45 years, then two years of 0 earnings will make no difference on the amount you'll receive in monthly SS once you begin drawing it.
Timeisprecious
Recycles dryer sheets
Oh, I'm sorry, Cindy - if you start drawing SS before your FRA, you WILL get less per month than you will at FRA. I thought you were talking about two different earnings records - one with two "0 earnings years" and one without those zeroes - and starting to draw SS at the same age in both scenarios.
Nope, I don't want to draw SS before my full retirement age - but I want to "stop work" a year and a half before FRA and am trying to find out how much those two years of not working will affect my SS amount when I take it at FRA...
treeofpain
Recycles dryer sheets
If I understand correctly, the 2 years at $0 will not affect your SS income as long as you have 35 years with income.
How many years of income do you have? If you have more than 35 years, then what you will do by working one more year is to possibly drop off the lowest year and replace it with a higher number. The thing to remember is that earnings from 35 years ago are multiplied by 3.11 So if you had income in 1984 of $20,000, you would need to earn more than $62200 to improve your earnings record. And then, you would only improve your monthly SS payment by 1/420 x the increase in annual salary x your bend amount.
Yes, the spreadsheet looks complicated. But it really does give you a good picture of what your earnings history really looks like.
Yes, the spreadsheet looks complicated. But it really does give you a good picture of what your earnings history really looks like.
Sunset
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I don't see what is so hard here.
I'm looking at: https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/AnypiaApplet.html
OP just needs to copy and paste from the SS site all her numbers into a text file (gets rid of extra format codes).
Then copy each year earnings from the text file and past into the https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/AnypiaApplet.html.
It is only copying about 35 numbers , just pay attention to the years as I recall they were not in the order I expected them to be.
Filling out the rest is pretty easy, put zeros for future work, and put in age to retire as right now, look at the number
Then scroll back up and change the age to retire to 66 or whatever and see what it will be.
I'm looking at: https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/AnypiaApplet.html
OP just needs to copy and paste from the SS site all her numbers into a text file (gets rid of extra format codes).
Then copy each year earnings from the text file and past into the https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/AnypiaApplet.html.
It is only copying about 35 numbers , just pay attention to the years as I recall they were not in the order I expected them to be.
Filling out the rest is pretty easy, put zeros for future work, and put in age to retire as right now, look at the number
Then scroll back up and change the age to retire to 66 or whatever and see what it will be.
I copied all the earnings in (by hand, and yes, the years go across not down in a column, which would have been easier) and did just what you said, and it showed a $310 (loss) difference. That's a lot. I am hoping that maybe I entered the numbers incorrectly (I asked my DH to read them to me and I just typed them in.) I guess I just need to stop worrying about it, since I'll know soon enough, and just budget for that loss and be happily "surprised" if it doesn't happen.
It's just that the prospect of retiring after 46 years of working (46 from my SS earnings chart, which not counting the jobs I started when I was 10 or 11 up to SS earnings age!) is scaring the heck out of me - it's so close! For the past three years or so I've rather obsessively tried to plan for everything, even though I know intellectually and from all the information I've gained here that it's not possible to predict the future with any certainty. I would think that someone in the government could give me the answer to this (what I perceive to be a) simple question, but they couldn't (I've gone to the SS office twice to ask and the answers were different each time) so I tried here. I guess it's not so simple (grin!)
Thank you, though, for your thoughts...maybe I'll just try again
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I've always been very frustrated by the various SS tools. Inspired by this thread, I decided to try again. I logged into ssa.gov and clicked on my estimated benefits. It provides numbers for 62, 67, and 70. I had no earnings last few years and don't intend to work in the future. So I assume these numbers are accurate. I can replicate these numbers exactly using the socialsecurity.tools link. However, using the AnypiaApplet.html link, I get different answers for all 3 retirement dates. I triple-checked that I entered the earnings correctly, and I did. In each of the 3 calculations, the pia tool is exactly 3.4% lower than the correct numbers. Anyone know why this would be? Seems like it's missing some recent COLA or something similar.
Interesting...I wonder why 3.4%??
I don't know. But I've never been able to reconcile or validate the results of the pia tool (online or downloadable). So I just don't trust it. Either I'm doing something wrong or that tool is not updated in a timely manner. Every single time I go to run some estimates, I end up with 2 or 3 different sets of numbers. Very frustrating.
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