Thinking about how much your monthly Social Security benefits might be may not get much of your attention until you near retirement.
Benefit Amount
Many people don’t pay much attention to what their Social Security benefits will be until then.
When they get closer to claiming their monthly benefit, it becomes a more concrete reality.
Before then? Not usually.
What Will Your Social Security Benefit Be?
Social Security benefits information, including your own benefits information, has gone online.
After creating your user id and password, you proceed to your online benefit statement.
This is way more engaging than those paper statements people used to get in the mail.
Why?
Maybe it’s because the illustrations are more engaging.
Maybe it’s the psychology behind creating your own user id and password on the site, lending itself to feeling more like an ‘account’ .
Regardless, here’s what you’ll see on your Social Security benefits statement:
Retirement Benefits at:
Full Retirement Age
It you wait until you are 70
If you start at 62
This can be either inspiring or discouraging. Hopefully it’ll be the former. If so, you will be motivated to delay starting your benefits as long as you can. Since that’ll lead to a bigger monthly benefit, that’s a good thing.
Along with the monthly retirement benefit, there’s Disability benefit information.
This can be helpful if you have other disability insurance. Just like your retirement benefits, the Social Security disability benefit is meant to be part of your benefit.
It’s meant to replace your income in the event that you become permanently disabled.
Survivor Benefits’ information is also provided.
This can serve as a good starting point to begin talking about resources your dependents would have.
So that’s also interesting to look at, because it prompts some pretty important questions.
Creating your account is pretty quick, and provides you with a clearer sense of ownership of your future benefits, most notably the retirement benefits.
Next Step
Ready to take the next step and work with a fee-only CFP? Reach out to schedule a Discovery Meeting to learn more.