SSA Offers Online Retirement Benefits Estimator
The Social Security Administration unveiled a new online calculator at www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator that will provide immediate and personalized benefit estimates to help people plan for their retirement. The Retirement Estimator is tied to a person's actual Social Security earnings record and eliminates the need to manually key in years of earnings information.
The tool is interactive, allowing the user to compare different retirement options. For example, a person can change retirement dates or expected future earnings. Individuals also can print out up to three different scenarios at one time, in addition to information about their benefits at age 62 (current age if older), full retirement age, and age 70.
SSA emphasizes that the Retirement Estimator is secure. The only thing it provides online is retirement benefit estimates. It does not show the earnings record information on which the final benefit estimate was calculated, nor does it reveal other personal information, SSA says.