Spring into Action

Social Secu­rity Column

By Erin Thompson

Social Secu­rity Pub­lic Affairs

Spe­cial­ist in Toledo

Here are a few impor­tant items about Social Secu­rity retire­ment ben­e­fits and how to apply for them. When you work and pay Social Secu­rity taxes, you earn “cred­its” toward Social Secu­rity benefits.

If you were born in 1929 or later, you need 40 cred­its (10 years of work) to qual­ify for retire­ment ben­e­fits. We deter­mine the amount of your ben­e­fit by both how long you work and how much you earn.

The higher your life­time earn­ings, the higher your monthly ben­e­fits. If there were some years when you did not work or had low earn­ings, your ben­e­fit amount may be lower than if you had worked steadily or earned more.

Your age at the time you start receiv­ing Social Secu­rity retire­ment makes a dif­fer­ence in your ben­e­fit amount. The full retire­ment age (the age at which 100 per­cent of retire­ment ben­e­fits are payable) has been grad­u­ally ris­ing from age 65 to age 67.

You can take “early retire­ment” as early as age 62, but if you start col­lect­ing ben­e­fits before you reach your full retire­ment age, your monthly pay­ment will be reduced. You can find out what your full retire­ment age is by refer­ring to the con­ve­nient chart at www.socialsecurity.gov/retire2/retirechart.htm.

Just as you can choose an early retire­ment and get a reduced pay­ment, you also can choose to keep work­ing beyond your full retire­ment age to take advan­tage of a larger payment.

Gen­er­ally, your ben­e­fit will increase auto­mat­i­cally by eight per­cent each year from the time you reach your full retire­ment age until you start receiv­ing your ben­e­fits or until you reach age 70.

The deci­sion of when to retire is per­sonal and depends on a num­ber of fac­tors. To help you weigh the fac­tors, we sug­gest you read our online fact sheet, When To Start Receiv­ing Retire­ment Ben­e­fits, avail­able at www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/10147.html.

You may want to con­sider your options by using our Retire­ment Esti­ma­tor to get instant, per­son­al­ized esti­mates of future ben­e­fits. You can plug in dif­fer­ent retire­ment ages and sce­nar­ios to help you make a more informed retire­ment deci­sion. Try it out at www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator.

You also can set up an online my Social Secu­rity account. You can use your my Social Secu­rity account to obtain a copy of your Social Secu­rity State­ment to check your earn­ings record and see future esti­mates of the retire­ment, dis­abil­ity, and sur­vivor ben­e­fits you and your fam­ily may receive. Visit www.socialsecurity.gov/myaccount.

When you decide to retire, the eas­i­est and most con­ve­nient way to do it is right from the com­fort of your home or office com­puter. Go to www.socialsecurity.gov where you can apply for retire­ment ben­e­fits in as lit­tle as 15 min­utes. In most cases, there are no forms to sign or doc­u­ments to send; once you sub­mit your elec­tronic appli­ca­tion, that’s it! You’re done!

Be sure to have your bank account infor­ma­tion handy so you can receive your pay­ments elec­tron­i­cally. Elec­tronic pay­ment of fed­eral ben­e­fits is now manda­tory, with few exceptions.

Spring is a great time to turn a new leaf. Spring into retire­ment now! Learn more by read­ing our pub­li­ca­tion, Retire­ment Ben­e­fits, at www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/10035.html.

Posted by kpotts on Mar 20 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.