What happens to my Social Security benefits if I keep paying into the system for another decade – will they go up?
There are millions of older Americans today collecting Social Security. And for many people, those benefits make it possible to cover the bills in retirement. It’s important to understand what goes into calculating your benefits so you can collect as…
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Tens of millions of older Americans rely on Social Security, and for many it is the backbone of their retirement income. According to the SSA, benefits are designed to replace about 40% of pre-retirement income, which leaves a meaningful gap that workers must fill from savings, pensions, or other sources. Understanding how the benefit formula actually works gives workers a real edge in maximizing what they collect once they stop working.
One poster in the r/ChubbyFIRE community raised a question that resonates with a wide range of pre-retirees: after logging into SSA.gov for the first time and finding 20 years of contributions on record, they wanted to know what another decade of work would actually do for their monthly check. The short answer is: quite a lot. And grasping the mechanics behind that answer matters for virtually everyone still in the workforce.
How Social Security benefits are calculated
Social Security calculates retirement benefits based on your 35 highest-paid years of earnings, with each year adjusted upward to account for changes in national wages over time. The SSA first determines a beneficiary’s average indexed monthly earnings (AIME) by indexing those 35 peak years for national wage growth. It then runs that AIME through a progressive replacement-rate formula to arrive at the primary insurance amount (PIA), which is the monthly benefit payable if the worker claims at full retirement age.
The earnings cap matters most to higher earners. The PIA formula draws on AIME across the 35 highest-earning years after age 21, but only up to the Social Security wage base. In 2026, that base is $184,500, up from $176,100 in 2025. Workers who earn above that threshold in a given year pay no Social Security tax on the excess, and those above-cap dollars are excluded from the benefit calculation entirely.
With only 20 years of contributions on record, the Reddit poster’s benefit estimate has substantial room to grow. Stopping work before reaching 35 years means the SSA enters a zero for each missing year, which pulls down the overall average. Every additional year of work at a solid wage therefore accomplishes two things at once: it fills a zero-year slot and may also push out an earlier, lower-earning year from the top 35.
The wage-indexing piece deserves a close look. A $50,000 salary earned 20 years ago is not treated the same as $50,000 earned today. Earnings from earlier years are adjusted upward to reflect wage growth over time, so the raw dollar figure on an old W-2 is never what actually enters the formula. That indexing can make early-career years count more toward the final benefit than most workers expect.
Once a worker has more than 35 years of earnings on record, the formula keeps only the 35 highest-indexed years and discards the rest. Higher-earning years replace lower-earning ones in the calculation, but the ceiling stays at 35 total. Continuing to work at higher pay can therefore raise the benefit by substituting stronger recent years for weaker early ones, sometimes meaningfully so.
Keep tabs on your earnings and benefits
Because the benefit estimate on SSA.gov incorporates assumptions about future earnings, its accuracy improves the closer a worker gets to retirement. As of July 2026, the average monthly Social Security retirement benefit stood at approximately $2,086, according to the SSA’s July Monthly Statistical Snapshot. That average masks a wide range: retirees with lower lifetime earnings may collect closer to $900 to $1,000 per month, while the highest earners who delayed claiming until age 70 can receive up to $5,181 per month, the maximum for 2026. Checking your SSA.gov account annually keeps you informed of where you stand and, just as importantly, catches any missing wage data before it can shrink your benefit at retirement.
An often-overlooked reason to do that annual review is plain accuracy. Employers occasionally fail to report wages correctly, and Social Security has no way to credit you for earnings it never recorded. Spotting a discrepancy early and getting it corrected is far easier than trying to reconstruct decades-old payroll records after the fact. Your most recent Social Security statement will list every year of covered earnings, making it straightforward to compare against your own tax records.
Looking ahead, the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment is shaping up to be larger than the 2.8% applied in 2026. The Senior Citizens League projects a 3.6% COLA for 2027, which would represent the biggest annual adjustment since 2023 and would lift the average monthly check by roughly $75. The official figure will be announced by the SSA in mid-October, after the July, August, and September CPI reports are compiled.
Filing age adds another powerful lever on top of earnings history. Workers born in 1960 or later reach full retirement age (FRA) at 67. Claiming at 62, the earliest option, permanently reduces the monthly check. For every month between FRA and age 70 that a worker postpones filing, Social Security increases the eventual benefit by two-thirds of 1%. Workers who delay from age 67 all the way to 70 receive an extra 24% added to their monthly payment. That 24% boost stacks on top of whatever the earnings-history calculation produces, making the delay decision one of the most consequential choices in retirement planning.
One broader consideration has grown more pressing. The Social Security Board of Trustees released its 2026 annual report on June 9, 2026, confirming that the OASI (Old-Age and Survivors Insurance) trust fund will be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032, one quarter earlier than the prior year’s projection. At that point, incoming payroll-tax revenue would be sufficient to cover only about 78% of scheduled benefits, a cut of roughly 22%, unless Congress acts. The long-term picture also worsened: the 75-year actuarial deficit for Social Security as a whole grew to 4.42% of taxable payroll, up from 3.82% in the prior report. The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, introduced a $6,000 senior deduction for taxpayers age 65 and older, effective for tax years 2025 through 2028, which reduces federal income-tax liability for most beneficiaries. That provision, along with revised demographic assumptions around fertility and immigration, contributed to the earlier depletion timeline. Workers still building their earnings records should factor the possibility of legislative changes into their long-range plans.
A financial advisor can run the numbers on your specific earnings history, health outlook, and other income sources to identify the claiming age that makes the most sense. That conversation is worth having well before retirement, when there is still time to build savings around a realistic benefit projection. As retirement approaches and the SSA estimate becomes more precise, a follow-up session can fine-tune the strategy around actual expenses, savings balance, and any pension or investment income expected.
Editor’s note: The average monthly Social Security retirement benefit was updated to approximately $2,086, reflecting the SSA’s July 2026 Monthly Statistical Snapshot, up from $2,083 in May. A new paragraph was added covering the 2027 COLA outlook, currently projected at 3.6% by the Senior Citizens League. The description of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was updated to specify that it introduced a $6,000 senior deduction effective for tax years 2025 through 2028, rather than broadly reducing income-tax liability.
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Maurie Backman has more than a decade of experience writing about financial topics, including retirement, investing, Social Security, and real estate. Her work has appeared on sites that include The Motley Fool, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and Kiplinger.
Prior to becoming a full-time financial writer, Maurie worked in the financial industry trading distressed debt. She then changed course and spent a few years designing electronic toys. After a stint in content marketing and UX, she shifted back into writing and has since covered everything from the housing market to estate planning to Medicare.
When she's not busy writing, Maurie can be found hiking, walking her dogs, driving her kids to their various sports practices and games, and curling up with a good book. She cooks on occasion and bakes way too often.
