Estimate Social Security retirement benefits based on earnings history, claiming age, and spousal benefit strategies.
Estimating Social Security means picking two numbers: the earnings you expect, and the month you claim. The agency's statement fixes both, offering only estimates at 62, full retirement age, and 70. This tool makes each one adjustable. It indexes your earnings history for wage growth, keeps the highest 35 years, converts them to a primary insurance amount, then applies the monthly reduction for early claiming or the 8 percent yearly credit for waiting until 70, and models spousal benefits on top. What surprises people most: claiming at 62 cuts the check by 30 percent, permanently, for anyone born in 1960 or later.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Born 1962 (full retirement age 67). Enter an earnings history whose primary insurance amount is $2,000, and compare claiming at 62, 67, and 70.
Expected output
Claiming at 62: $1,400 per month. Claiming at 67: $2,000 per month. Claiming at 70: $2,480 per month. All figures in today's dollars, before earnings-test withholding and Medicare deductions.
Claiming 60 months early costs 5/9 of 1 percent per month for the first 36 months and 5/12 of 1 percent for the next 24, a permanent 30 percent cut, so $2,000 becomes $1,400. Waiting 36 months past full retirement age earns 8 percent per year, a 24 percent increase to $2,480.
The tool takes up to 35 years of earnings, caps each at the Social Security taxable maximum, and applies a wage-indexing factor so early-career dollars count like recent ones. The 35 highest indexed years are averaged monthly into AIME, then run through the bend-point formula: 90 percent of AIME up to the first bend point, 32 percent to the second, 15 percent above. The result is your full-retirement-age benefit.
Claiming early applies a reduction: 5/9 of 1 percent per month for the first 36 months before full retirement age, then 5/12 of 1 percent. Waiting earns 8 percent per year in delayed credits, through age 70. A spouse gets up to half of the worker's primary insurance amount, reduced if claimed early, and receives the higher of the two, never both. Restricted applications are gone for anyone born after 1953.
No. The reduction is permanent: it is set as a percentage of your primary insurance amount and stays with the benefit for life, aside from cost-of-living adjustments and any recomputation for earnings withheld before your full retirement age. Claiming at 62 with a full retirement age of 67 locks in 70 percent of your full benefit forever.
No, if you were born after 1953. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 ended restricted applications: filing for a spousal benefit files for your own benefit too, and you receive the higher of the two, never a temporary spousal payment followed by your own. Only people born before January 2, 1954 can still use that strategy.
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