Social Security
Retirement Income Estimator

Now enhanced to include divorced, widowed and GPO/WEP benefits

Deciding when and how to take Social Security is an important part of retirement income planning. The Social Security Retirement Income Estimator is designed to help individuals and married couples decide when to file a claim and how to coordinate their Social Security benefits to enhance their retirement income. You’ll gain insight into questions, such as:

How should Social Security benefits be integrated into an overall retirement income plan?
When is the best time to claim benefits?
What are the advantages of waiting to receive payments?
What percentage of retirement expenses will Social Security cover?

More Features and Functionality

To help maximize the effectiveness of the calculator, we've added 3 new features:

Divorced benefits — Calculations now include Social Security retirement benefits based on the earnings of an ex-spouse.
Widowed benefits — Monthly benefits for widows, widowers or surviving divorced spouses are estimated based on the work history of a deceased spouse or ex-spouse.
GPO/WEP benefits — Our enhanced calculator is one of the few planning tools in the industry that assess the potential impact of the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) on Social Security benefits. GPO and WEP may reduce your monthly checks if you received pensions from an employer who did not withhold Social Security taxes, such as a government agency.

It’s easy to get started. Just click one of the two approaches below.

Goal-Based Report

Use this simple, “check the box” approach to set your retirement income goal and view filing strategies that may help you reach this goal.

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Custom Report

Choose the individual filing strategies you want to compare. This approach offers more flexibility to explore options and change variables, such as who should file and when.

Get Started!

Important Notice on Claiming Strategies

Restricted Application: You can claim spousal benefits by filing a restricted application and delay taking your own retirement benefits only if you were born before January 2, 1954 and have already reached your Full Retirement Age (FRA). If your birthday is January 2, 1954 or later, the option to take only spousal benefits no longer exists.
File and Suspend: This option is no longer available for purposes of triggering benefits for a spouse or dependent, such as a child.