Social Security Retirement Estimator

Estimate only, not financial, tax, or retirement advice. This tool does not read your earnings record. The bend points and the wage-base cap below are the constants written into this page, not a promise that they match the year you retire. Confirm current bend points, the contribution base, your full retirement age, and your own benefit at ssa.gov before you make a claiming decision.

What Social Security actually does, and what this page does instead

A real retirement benefit starts from your earnings history. The Social Security Administration indexes many past years for wage growth, takes the highest 35 years, adds them, and divides by 420 months. That monthly average is the Average Indexed Monthly Earnings, or AIME. A formula with two bend points turns the AIME into a Primary Insurance Amount, or PIA, which is the benefit at full retirement age before later cost-of-living adjustments. Claiming before or after full retirement age reduces or increases the monthly amount. Spousal and survivor benefits, the earnings test if you work while claiming, taxation of benefits, and any special rules for a public pension are further layers.

This page skips the history. It treats the annual income you type as if it were your career-average earnings in today's dollars, caps that income at the wage-base constant in the script, and divides by 12 to invent an AIME. Current age is checked so that a retirement age younger than your current age can trigger a warning. Current age is not used in the dollar math. Someone age 30 and someone age 60 with the same income and the same claiming age get the same estimate. Years of low earnings, years of zero earnings, and years above the cap in the past never enter the calculation.

That shortcut is close to a real benefit only in the special case where 35 years of indexed earnings look like the single salary you typed. A current salary that is much higher than your earlier years will push this estimate above the benefit your record would produce today. A current salary that is lower than a long career at the wage base will push it below. The page does not know which case you are. The official estimator, which uses your record, is the one to trust.

The constants this estimator uses

The script caps annual income at $176,100 before it divides by 12. Anything you type above that cap produces the same AIME as $176,100. The PIA formula then uses two bend points, $1,226 and $7,391:

• 90 percent of AIME up to $1,226
• 32 percent of AIME between $1,226 and $7,391
• 15 percent of AIME above $7,391

The code comments describe these as approximate figures for a recent year. Bend points and the taxable maximum are published by SSA and change. Do not treat $1,226, $7,391, or $176,100 as permanent, and do not treat them as verified official numbers for every calendar year just because they are what this file multiplies. Look up the bend points and the contribution and benefit base for the year you care about on ssa.gov. Until this page is updated, every estimate it prints uses the three constants above.

Results round to the nearest dollar. SSA's own rounding, including the way a PIA is taken down to a dime at certain steps, is not reproduced. A one-dollar gap with a published example can be rounding. A large gap is the missing earnings history.

How claiming age changes the check

Full retirement age in this tool is 67 for everyone, which is the full retirement age for people born in 1960 or later. The tool does not look up an earlier full retirement age for older birth years. If you were born before 1960, your real full retirement age is under 67, and the early-claim reduction SSA applies is different. Use the official calculator for that case.

The reduction for claiming before 67 follows the standard monthly factors, applied in whole years because the menu only offers whole ages. The first 36 months early are reduced by 5/9 of 1 percent each month. Additional months are reduced by 5/12 of 1 percent each month. Counted out:

• Age 62 is 60 months early: 30 percent reduction, so the benefit is 70 percent of the PIA.
• Age 63 is 48 months early: 25 percent reduction, 75 percent of the PIA.
• Age 64 is 36 months early: 20 percent reduction, 80 percent of the PIA.
• Age 65 is 24 months early: 13.333 percent reduction, about 86.67 percent of the PIA.
• Age 66 is 12 months early: 6.667 percent reduction, about 93.33 percent of the PIA.
• Age 67 is the PIA itself.

After 67, the tool adds 8 percent per whole year, which matches the delayed retirement credit for people born in 1943 or later when the delay is a whole number of years. Age 68 is 108 percent of the PIA, age 69 is 116 percent, and age 70 is 124 percent. The menu stops at 70 because delayed credits in the real system stop at 70 as well. The tool does not award monthly credits inside a year. SSA does credit delayed retirement by the month. At the whole ages in this menu, the yearly step matches.

Age 70 over age 62 is 1.24 ÷ 0.70, about 1.77 times the age-62 amount, not double. The larger check is also paid for fewer years. Which claiming age pays more over a lifetime depends on how long benefits are received and on the amounts, including any spousal or survivor effects this page ignores. This tool does not print a break-even age. The comparison of the three headline ages, and why a single break-even can mislead, is discussed in Social Security: Claiming 62 vs 67 vs 70.

Worked examples

Example 1: $75,000, claim at 67

The income is under the $176,100 cap, so AIME = 75,000 ÷ 12 = $6,250. That sits between the bend points. PIA = 1,226 × 0.90 + (6,250 − 1,226) × 0.32 = 1,103.40 + 1,607.68 = $2,711.08, which rounds to $2,711 a month. Annual benefit on the panel is that monthly figure times 12. Claiming at 62 would be 70 percent, about $1,898 a month. Claiming at 70 would be 124 percent, about $3,362 a month. Current age, if it is under 67, does not move these dollars.

Example 2: $100,000, claim at 70

AIME = 100,000 ÷ 12 = $8,333.33, which is above the second bend point. PIA = 1,226 × 0.90 + (7,391 − 1,226) × 0.32 + (8,333.33 − 7,391) × 0.15 = $3,217.55, which rounds to $3,218 at full retirement age. At 70 the factor is 1.24, and 3,217.55 × 1.24 rounds to $3,990 a month. The same income at 62 would round to about $2,252. The progressive slices are why the jump from $75,000 to $100,000 of income does not raise the PIA by the same ratio as the income.

Example 3: Income above the cap

$176,100 and $200,000 produce the same estimate, because both are capped before the division. In this formula that shared PIA is about $4,169 a month at 67, about $2,918 at 62, and about $5,169 at 70. The real wage base is whatever SSA publishes for the year. This page keeps using $176,100 until the script is changed.

When to use this

Use it to see how bend points and the early and delayed factors move a single salary. It is a sketch to compare with the benefit already shown in your Social Security account, not a number to claim on. After you have your own PIA from ssa.gov, the factors above still explain why 62, 67, and 70 differ. Confirm the reduced amounts there, because your full retirement age may not be 67.

A rental's cash flow and a mortgage that continues into retirement are separate worksheets: the Rental Property Cash Flow calculator and the Mortgage Payment Calculator. Neither one changes this estimate.

Common mistakes

• Treating the result as your SSA benefit. Your earnings record is the source of truth. This page never sees it.
• Expecting current age to change the dollars. Age only triggers a warning when the claiming age is not older than the age you typed.
• Assuming full retirement age is 67 for every birth year. That is true for births in 1960 and later, and it is the only rule coded here.
• Expecting age 70 to double the age-62 amount. The factors here produce about 1.77 times, before any cost-of-living adjustment the page also skips.
• Typing household income or wages above the cap. Use one person's covered earnings. Income above $176,100 does not raise this estimate.

Limitations

No earnings history, no wage indexing, no zero years, no cost-of-living adjustment, no earnings test, and no spousal, survivor, or divorce benefit. Public-pension offsets are not modeled either. Those rules have changed in recent law. Check ssa.gov rather than assuming an old offset still applies. Delayed credits are whole years only. Rounding is to the nearest dollar, not SSA's dime rules. The three constants in the script are the ones every result uses, whether or not they match the year you retire.

FAQ

Why does my SSA account disagree?

SSA used your indexed 35-year record, your real full retirement age, the current bend points, and its own rounding. This page used one salary and the constants listed above. Trust the account.

Does waiting until 70 always pay more over a lifetime?

It pays a larger monthly amount here: 124 percent of the PIA instead of 70 percent at 62. Lifetime totals depend on how long benefits are paid and on survivor or spousal amounts this tool ignores. It does not print a break-even age. The claiming-age article walks through that tradeoff.

What if I work while claiming?

The earnings test can withhold benefits if you claim before full retirement age and earn over the limit SSA sets for that year. Those limits change. This page does not apply them.

Whose income do I enter on a joint tax return?

Each person's own covered earnings, in a separate run if you want two sketches. A combined household salary is not an AIME. The page also does not compute how benefits are taxed.

Related calculators

• Social Security: Claiming 62 vs 67 vs 70
• Rental Property Cash Flow
• Mortgage Payment Calculator
• Credit Card Payoff Calculator
• Percent Change Calculator to compare two benefit estimates as a percent