How to obtain an annual Benefit Statement from SSA

With Social Security Statement, you will know your initial retirement benefits based on your income of the moment and possible income in the future.

You must remember that you will earn with your Social Security if you are investing for your retirement. 

Although retirement may be decades away, estimating retirement benefits is possible. 

For you to start off, you will only have to get a copy of your Social Security Statement. Getting the copy is very easy and is an important step in retirement planning.

Defining Social Security Statement?

A Social Security Statement is a report that can be obtained through the Social Security Administration or SSA. This report includes the benefits that you will enjoy when you retire or when you need to file for a disability claim.

For you to know of the benefits that you may enjoy is the main purpose of the form. You must put in mind that the provided information in the form is just an estimate.

For instance, your retirement benefit for your Social Security is based on the history of your earnings. And because you still have a job, the information that will be required to compute for your benefit is not yet final.

Your earnings, as well as the paid taxes, are being recorded by the SSA but they don’t have any idea on your future earnings. The assessment is only based on the idea that your earning is at the same level as your most recent year earnings.

Take for instance what you earned in 2016, $50,000.00 for example, is your earned income only. Your retirement plan liquidations, unemployment insurance, investment earnings, and other sources that are unearned is not counted in your benefits calculation. Only incomes that are earned are used in calculating your benefits. This earned income includes your contract revenues, self-employment income, wages and the like.

It will be assumed by the SSA that you are still earning $50,000.00 every year until the time comes that you collect benefits.

If you have higher earnings in the future, the amount that you will pay for your benefits will of course increase as well. However, the amount that you will pay for your benefits will not be reduced even if your future income is lower than the current income since the calculation is based on the 35 highest-earning years.

You are at the maximum benefit level if your earnings exceed $127,200.00. It is the maximum taxable income for calculating the 2017 Social Security benefits. It will not increase your benefit even if you will have higher earnings in the future.

What information can you get in your Social Security Statement?

The following are the information included in your Social Security Statement:

• The retirement benefit that you’ll get on your full retirement age (generally 67)
• The retirement benefit that you’ll get if you delay collecting up to age 70 (this is the maximum benefit you can get)
• The retirement benefit that you’ll get if you start taking benefits at the age of 62 (this is the earliest possible to be eligible for retirement benefits)
• If necessary, the benefit that you’ll get as disability insurance
• Survivor’s benefits for your family member (beneficiaries) if you pass away and are not able to receive your benefits

There are also other useful information that you can get in the statement such as your record of earnings from the time when you had your first work as well as the amount you have paid from the start for your Social Security and Medicare taxes.

In what way can you get a hold of your Social Security Statement

Before, the Social Administration send statements every year to every taxpayer. But, to be able to save money, the practice was ended several years ago. Nevertheless, a copy of your statement can still be obtained online. You will just have to visit the SSA website and create a mySocial Security account. Taxpayers that are 60 years old and above can get have their statements mailed to them if they have not signed up for mySocial Security and are not already collecting benefits.

You will be asked to set up your desired username and password for your mySocial Security page which you will use in accessing your account at any time. Once you have your account created, you can access your Social Security statement regularly.

The importance of checking your Social Security Statement

You have to take into consideration your income from retirement from the non-investment sources in order for you to know the amount of income you will need in retirement and how much income you need to produce for your retirement portfolio. This includes your Social Security benefits, pensions, and income from the non-retirement assets. For instance, if every month you expect to need $5,000.00 in retirement, but your Social Security benefits are only $2,000.00, then you will need to generate $3,000.00 every month for your retirement portfolio.

It is also important that you know your Social Security benefit since the majority of the workers nowadays are not covered by a good benefit pension plan. Most of today’s retirees only enjoy the employee-only funded plans. But most of today’s workers will be dependent on a combination of the generously funded retirement portfolio income and of Social Security benefits.

Aside from retirement, knowing how much you will receive if you file for disability insurance is also very important. Disability insurance benefit of Social Security is often under-appreciated but this is very important especially if you only rely on the earned income to provide for your family and for yourself.   

To summarize:

You will be provided with a lot of necessary information with your Social Security Statement. And it is worth the effort since getting the statement online is very quick and easy.