Enter the benefit from your Social Security statement. You’ll see your monthly benefit at every age, the crossover, your odds of living past it, how much of it gets taxed, what your spouse would keep, and how each choice holds up across a century of real markets. Everything updates as you type.
Steps 1–4 take about three minutes and show you the crossover. Step 5 shows what happens to your savings, and it’s the one to take most seriously before a decision you’ll live with for life. Then save the options you like to a short list and send your report to yourself, or to Nate.
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Your statement shows your benefit at 62, at full retirement age and at 70. Use the full-retirement-age figure. If your spouse’s own benefit is less than half of yours, the calculator adds the spousal top-up automatically.
These shift Social Security’s own life table up or down by broad, research-based amounts. They’re an estimate for planning, not a medical prediction.
Each year you wait past full retirement age adds 8%. Each year before it takes about 5 to 7% off, for life. Annual cost-of-living raises are added on top of whatever you choose.
There’s no single end age. Each year’s income, from now until the last of you diesdeath, is multiplied by the chance you’re alive that year to receive it, then added up, so the total averages over every age you might live to. The last row translates it: the expected total is about what you’d collect if income kept arriving until that age. Total you’d expect to receive counts the dollars as they’d actually arrive, with the yearly raise from Step 4. Worth today brings every future dollar back to its value today, discounting each year by inflation plus 2%, roughly what safe inflation-protected bonds have paid recently. Money that arrives sooner counts for more because you can use or invest it sooner. When the two columns disagree, the choice is closer than the crossover chart makes it look.
When one spouse dies, the household keeps the larger of the two benefits, not both. The higher earner’s starting age sets the survivor’s income for life.
The crossover only tells you who wins if nothing goes wrong. A choice you’ll live with for life deserves a harder test.
This one runs both choices through all 100 of the stock market’s actual years since 1926 and thousands of lifespans drawn from your odds above, with your savings covering whatever Social Security doesn’t. Enter your own savings and spending below; the results update as you type.
The stress test works out its own IRA withdrawals each year from your spending need. Withdrawals are grossed up for federal and state tax; a surviving spouse spends 80% of the couple’s need; what’s left is taxed at 25% for heirs.
Pick up to three options you’d like to see inside your plan. Add Choice A or Choice B as you go, then change the choices in Step 2 (or the bar at the top of your screen) to try others. There’s no right answer here; this is your list.
Your benefit, your savings, your taxes and your guaranteed income work as one system, or they don’t. A Retirement Income Diagnostic looks at all of it together, so you leave knowing when your benefit fits best and why.
Book a Retirement Income Diagnostic →