How many Social Security credits do you need in order to be eligible for retirement benefits? What about Social Security disability?
social security credit
How Adding to Your Earnings Can Increase Your Social Security Benefits
Given the way that Social Security benefits are calculated, it should come as no surprise that increasing your income over time will make a difference in your eventual Social Security retirement benefits. But how much of a difference does it make when your income is increased? Of course, this is going to depend upon what your current income is, and how many years you have left before you’ll begin receiving benefits. Keep in mind how your benefits are calculated – see this article for information about Computing Your Social Security Monthly Benefit – it’s based on your average monthly income over your lifetime. Increasing that average will increase your PIA, which will in turn increase your benefit. It’s definitely not a simple calculation to figure out what difference each increased dollar of income will have on your benefit. Let’s walk through a few examples to see how it plays out. […]
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Age Adjustments for Social Security
Image via Wikipedia With all the talk about how Social Security is running out of money (or will be), one of the topics that often comes up is the age limits for benefits. As you’re aware, the Full Retirement Age (FRA) has been adjusted upward from the original age 65, gradually to age 67 for folks who were born in 1960 or later. This upward adjustment was put into place with the 1983 amendments, ostensibly to reduce impact on the system. With that adjustment in place, and the resulting benefit that the system has received from making that change, you might wonder why some of the other age limits have not been changed. Specifically, why has the early retirement age remained at 62, and the upper limit (maximum benefit age) has also remained set at 70? I don’t have any definitive information to back this up, but I think there […]
Sterling Raskie, MSFS, CFP®, ChFC®
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And if you’ve come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed “advisor’s advisor”.