SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS PLANNER – www.ssa.gov/planners

  • In April 2000, SSA unveiled a new online benefits planner – an electronic service to help Americans better prepare for their financial future.
  • The Social Security Benefits Planner allows individuals to compute estimates of their future Social Security retirement benefits and current disability and survivors benefits online at SSA’s Internet website.
  • The planner provides users with three options for obtaining an estimate of their Social Security benefit –
    1) The Quick Calculator produces a very rough estimate that only requires people to provide their age and current earnings. Benefit estimates are provided for reduced retirement at age 62, full retirement age and age 70.
    2) The Online Calculator produces a benefit estimate based on past, present and projected future information input by users. Workers can create various scenarios such as when they plan to retire and how much they expect to earn in the future.
    3) For the Detailed and most elaborate estimate, an individual can download and install a software program on a personal computer (PC). The interactive program allows workers the most flexibility to customize their estimates based on differing scenarios and produces a variety of benefit numbers for retirement, survivors and disability benefits for both workers
    and their families.
    NOTE: To maintain privacy and to protect records from unauthorized users, none of the calculators are linked to individual earnings records or any other information in SSA’s
    database. All benefit estimates are based strictly on input from the users.
  • The Benefits Planner includes information about the interplay of pensions and savings in retirement planning.
    The Benefits Planner provides seamless access to the American Savings Education Council’s (ASEC’s) “Ballpark Estimate” worksheet. The ASEC worksheet allows customers to comprehensively plan for their retirement, including Social Security benefits, accumulated savings, and pensions. Linking to the ASEC Ballpark worksheet provides customers with a “one stop shop” for retirement planning.
  • The Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Benefits Planners are online information products within the Benefits Planner designed to provide customers with information on who qualifies and how to apply for these benefit programs.
  • Since the Benefits Planner debut in April 2000, more than 1.1 million visitors have used this site.

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