open-social-security VS social-security-tools

Check with https://opensocialsecurity.com/ before deciding on a claiming strategy.

You could check out the calculator at : https://opensocialsecurity.com/

Before deciding on a claiming strategy, check out https://opensocialsecurity.com/

Hi! What is your social security annuity claiming strategy? You might want to run numbers through opensocialsecurity.com . And sorry to be a downer but how does the plan look if only one of you are living? Widowhood can lead to loss of income and poverty for many (I am a widow).

Also, try Mike Piper’s Open Social Security calculator https://opensocialsecurity.com/.

I've found https://opensocialsecurity.com/ to be helpful

I suggest you check out https://opensocialsecurity.com/ first.

Mom should check with https://opensocialsecurity.com/ before deciding when to start her benefits. Age 62 is the earliest, but she will be giving up benefit money for the rest of her life. This tool will help her see what an optimal claiming decision could be, and how much she would be giving up over her lifetime with a different decision.

You can easily calculate how much you will earn via sites such as SSA Tools. As most FIRE advocates are also high earners, you can see that a few years at maximum earnings can easily boost you up to a reasonable monthly payment. Due to the SS "breakpoints," after a certain point any extra earnings aren't going to do a whole lot for you anyway, so those $0 years aren't that painful.

Our social security estimate currently says when we both draw at 65, even if there is no 22% benefit cut, it will still be short of covering our yearly expenses. BTW, the SSA Tools is fabulous for everything SSA. Please use it.

Personally I use a combination of the benefit report that the Social Security Administration creates annually and the ssa.tools 3rd party website that lets me tweak retirement age / expected contribution history (since I plan to retire early and thus I will not have earning up to 67). Then if you want to account for the possibility of reduced benefits, do so.

When you say that your Social Security is “at 1.2k/month currently” is that from your annual social security statement or did you calculate it using a third party calculator like ssa.tools?

Your benefits are based on the highest 35 years of inflation adjusted wages. There may be an impact, but it might not be by a lot. This might help: https://ssa.tools/

ssa.tools, but yes, that's a great site for this.

https://ssa.tools/ lets you upload your wage history, cut and pasted from your soc sec account.

https://ssa.tools. will tell you.

https://ssa.tools/ is a great website to play around with the numbers.

This makes sense, OP. The remaining survivor of a couple takes the higher benefit, so it might make sense to maximize one person’s benefit for the eventual time that you will only have one benefit. Play around here https://ssa.tools/ and see what makes sense in terms of your income as a couple vs remaining spouse.