Question re: SSAnalyze - Bedrock

[Carpediem]

When I run the SSAnalyzer (Bedrock), I noticed it says my age 70 benefit amount is approx. $15k higher per year than what the ssa.gov website says it will. Does anyone know why that is? I'm not sure which one to believe.

Thank you.

 

[Big_Hitter]

prolly the cola

 

[pb4uski]

The difference is COLA from now until 70 and delayed retirement credits from FRA until 70.

I looked at mine. I'll use $1,000 per month as an example. I'm 60 and will take at age 70.

First, it will increase the benefit for 10 years of COLA increases.... in my case at 2.73%/year... this increases the benefit from $1,000 to $1,309. [$1,000 *(1+2.73%)^10]. Next, it will increase it for delayed retirement credits of 8%/year from FRA to age 70, in my case 130.67%, which increases the benefit to $1,710/month. So the SSAnalyze first year benefit is 171% of the amount shown on my age 60 SSA statement... consistent with the reasoning explained above.

YMMV

 

[Carpediem]

Ahhhh, makes sense. So if I wanted to be super conservative, I would want to use the ssa.gov projected amounts in any retirement planning calculations.

Thanks so much for the explanations.

 

[NW-Bound]

To see everything in today's dollar, the same way FIRECalc presents its results, I set the COLA to 0. And then, I set the discount rate or the investment return rate to the excess value over the inflation.

In other words, if I thought the inflation is 3% and investment return is 5%, I would set the inflation to 0% and the return to 2%.

 

[pb4uski]

Ahhhh, makes sense. So if I wanted to be super conservative, I would want to use the ssa.gov projected amounts in any retirement planning calculations.

Thanks so much for the explanations.

If you want to be super conservative you can set the COLA assumption to zero and same with the investment return.