Estimate Your Monthly Social Security Benefit

The Social Security Administration has a nice retirement calculator on their website that will project what your monthly social security benefit will be if you retire at:

• Normal retirement age (for most of us this will be somewhere between age 66 and 67),
• Age 70, and
• Age 62

The calculator takes into account your current age, last year’s income.  You can also tell it how much you think you will earn each year until retirement and what age you are planning on retiring at and it will calculate the monthly benefit.

This is a nice feature to have and now you do not have to wait for the annual letter to show up from Social Security letting you know what your benefits might be.  However, you should review that letter each year to verify that Social Security has the right amount of earnings listed.  I have seen several mistakes on these letters.