Estimating Your Social Security Retirement Benefits

(for wage earners)

Before You Apply   Online Calculators   Your Privacy   After Recovery Benefits

Before You Apply 

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has recently created an Internet service that allows you to customize your estimates of future Social Security benefits. You can find three benefit calculators (Quick, Online and Detailed) at the agency’s website at Choose A Benefit Calculator .  

Online Calculators  (In 2007, the maximum benefit is $2,116 per month)

The Quick calculator is a rough estimate calculator that requires you to put in only your age and your earnings for the current year.  The calculator then produces a rough estimate of what your Social Security benefits would be if your income stayed the same from now until you retired and became eligible for benefits.  

The Online calculator  requires you to put in your date of birth and complete year-by-year earnings history up to the present.  It provides a more detailed estimate provided by the Quick calculator. In order to make the best estimates, you need to put in the amount you earned each year that you have worked and paid into Social Security.  The SSA has this information in its databases but in order to protect your privacy has decided not to link the calculators to its database. 

The Detailed calculator  provides the most precise estimates.  However, it requires that the program be downloaded to your computer.  You must type in all the information found on your annual statement of benefits (available from Social Security. Click here to request a statement of earnings online. The Detailed version also allows you to estimate future earnings until expected retirement.  This will give you the most precise result possible.  

Your Privacy

To protect your privacy, the agency did not link the calculators to its database.  As a result, the more detailed calculators require you to type in your own earnings history.  That information is on your annual statement of benefits.  If you haven't received one yet, you can request one below.  This information is sent to you by mail in 2-4 weeks.

You can find the amount you earned each year by looking at the forms you filed with IRS or on the annual earnings statement mailed to you by SSA.  The second is more accurate, because it shows what employers have actually reported to SSA.  If you believe the SSA report is wrong, contact them immediately with proof of the error.

Request a Copy of your Social Security Statement

Once You Start Receiving Retirement Benefits

The Social Security Administration has added an “earnings limit” calculator to their website.  This calculator allows you to determine the amount you will receive in benefits if you are retiring this year, based on your earnings from the past year. Click here  to use the calculator.

Another useful tool on the website is the American Savings Education Council’s “Ballpark Estimate” worksheet.  This worksheet allows you to see how much you need to save before you retire to supplement your Social Security benefits.

Last date of legal review April 2007 (MLAN/GG)

About this website. The Maryland State Law Library, a court-related agency of the Maryland Judiciary, sponsors this site. The website was developed (1999-2007) as part of an access to justice initiative by the Maryland Legal Assistance Network (MLAN) in collaboration with a number of legal services providers serving low and moderate income Marylanders.  In the absence of file-specific attribution or copyright, the Maryland State Law Library may hold the copyright to parts of this website. You are free to copy the information for your own use or for other non-commercial purposes with the following language “Source: Maryland's People’s Law Library – www.peoples-law.org. © Maryland State Law Library, 2007.”

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