How Much Will Social Security Pay Me in Retirement? Here’s How to Estimate Your Monthly Check

If you’re like most seniors, you’ll rely on  Social Security to provide a good portion of your income once you retire. But, it can be hard to figure out exactly what role Social Security will play in supporting you if you don’t know how much money you’ll get from the benefits program.

The good news is, it’s pretty easy to figure out what your benefits amount is likely to be. There are tools online to help you, and an understanding of how the benefits formula works will enable you to better understand what your future Social Security income will look like. 

Here’s what you need to know to figure out what Social Security can do for you as a senior.

The basics of your benefits

First things first: You should know the basics of how your benefits are determined. That means you need to understand the Social Security benefits formula. Here’s how it works:

• Your earnings each year are recorded by Social Security to create your earnings history
• Social Security adjusts your earnings record to account for wage growth.
• Social Security then calculates your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME) by determining the average inflation-adjusted monthly income that you earned during the 35 years when your earnings were highest.
• Your standard benefit equals a percentage of your AIME. The percentage decreases as your income goes up since the Social Security benefits formula is progressive
• If you claim Social Security benefits at your designated full retirement age (FRA), you will get your standard benefit
• If you claim benefits before FRA, you shrink your standard benefit by 5/9 of 1% for the first 36 months you claim early, and by 5/12 of 1% for any prior month. This adds up to around a 6.7% annual reduction in your standard benefit for each of the first three years and a 5% annual reduction for any prior year.
• If you claim benefits after FRA, you increase your standard benefit by 2/3 of 1%. That adds up to an 8% annual benefits increase. Delayed retirement credits can only be earned until age 70. 

Based on this formula, the two most important factors that determine the size of your checks are:

• Your income over the 35 years that are included in your benefits formula
• The age when you claim benefits.

If you want to maximize the size of your monthly Social Security payments, you should aim to increase your income as much as possible. You may also want to work longer at the end of your career if your earnings are higher so you can replace lower earning years in your calculation. Ideally, you should also put off your benefits claim as long as you can to avoid early filing penalties and delayed retirement credits. Taking these two steps will give you the largest possible retirement check. 

How much will your specific benefit be?

So, now you know the basics of how the benefits formula works, but what does this mean for you? How big is your Social Security check going to be? 

As a general rule of thumb, Social Security benefits are designed to replace about 40% of pre-retirement income. It will be more if you were a lower earner, or less if you are a higher earner. However, estimating a benefit equal to around 40% of earnings can give you a ballpark idea of how much money you can expect Social Security to offer.

If you want more specifics, you can find out what your projected future benefit is by signing into your mySocialSecurity account. You can create an account online if you don’t have one already. When you sign in, you will see your earnings record, which you should check to make sure is accurate so you get credit for all of your wages. You can also see what your estimated benefits will be if you retire at different ages, such as:

• 62 (when you first become eligible)
• Full retirement age (which is 67 if you were born in 1960 0r later)
• 70 (the latest age you should put off claiming benefits)

The estimates on your mySocialSecurity account are based on your past earnings and projected future earnings, so the closer you are to retirement and the more stable your future income will be, the more accurate the estimate is. 

The Social Security Administration also has a benefits calculator that you can use to see what your benefits are likely to be if you receive benefits at different ages relative to your FRA. The calculator allows you to input projections for future income so you can get a more accurate estimate of future benefits. 

What if you claim spousal benefits?

The above formula and tips will help you figure out your benefit if you are claiming Social Security based on your own work history. But not everyone does. If your spouse earned a lot more money than you did, you may receive more money from spousal benefits than from retirement benefits. These benefits are not just available to people who are currently married. If you are divorced after a marriage of 10 years or longer and you have not remarried, then you should be entitled to spousal benefits on your ex husband or ex wife’s work history.

Spousal benefits can equal up to 50% of your higher-earning partner’s standard Social Security benefit (called their primary insurance amount or PIA). However, spousal benefits shrink if you claim early. Unfortunately, they won’t grow even if you delay your Social Security claim until 70. Spousal benefits will always be capped at half of what your partner made.  This means it makes sense to wait until your full retirement age to get your full spousal benefit, but you don’t want to wait any longer. 

You can claim spousal benefits only after your higher-earning spouse has claimed their retirement benefits. For example, if the husband makes more money, the wife could get spousal benefits — but not until the husband starts getting his retirement checks. 

Married couples have many different claiming strategies they can pursue to try to maximize the combined benefits in the household.  For example, it’s often a good idea to have a lower-earning spouse claim benefits first. So, in our above example, the wife could claim her retirement benefit first. Her Social Security income might provide enough money for her husband to delay his benefits claim. This would enable her husband’s larger benefit to keep growing, and would also increase survivor benefits as the last surviving spouse gets to keep the larger of the two payments coming into the home. 

The wife could continue receiving her own retirement benefits as the husband delays his claim — ideally until age 70. After her husband finally does start his retirement checks, this would open up the door for spousal benefits to start. She could switch from her own lower retirement benefits to the spousal benefits worth up to 50% of her husband’s primary insurance amount.

Because there are so many things to consider, it’s a good idea to talk with a financial advisor about when to claim Social Security to ensure you are making the best choices.