Social Security replaces a percentage of your pre-retirement earnings based on your lifetime earnings. The portion of your pre-retirement pay that Social Security replaces is based on your highest earnings over the past 35 years and will vary depending on how much you earn and when you decide to begin receiving benefits.
When you work, you pay Social Security taxes. The tax money then goes to pay the following groups of people:
- People who have already retired.
- The disabled.
- Survivors of deceased workers.
- Dependents of beneficiaries.
The money you pay in taxes is not kept in a personal account that you can use when you receive benefits. We use your taxes to pay the people currently receiving benefits. The money that is not used goes into the Social Security trust fund, which pays you and your family monthly benefits when you begin receiving retirement benefits.
How do you calculate your benefits?
Knowing what you will get each month in retirement benefits will help you plan for retirement. If you have a personal my Social Security account, you can get an estimate of your personalized retirement benefits and see the effects of different retirement age scenarios. If you don’t have a personal my Social Security account, create one at www.ssa.gov/myaccount.
How to know the retirement benefits?
- The first thing you need to do is to create an account in my Social Security.
- On this website, you will have to fill in all your data to access the information.