Social Security & You: Earnings after retirement may or may not increase your Social Security check

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Q: I am 73 and still working part time. I took my Social Security at age 66. I have never seen an increase in my Social Security check, even though I am still paying into the system. What’s up?

A: To understand whether the earnings you have, and the taxes you pay, after you start getting Social Security will increase your benefits, you have to understand how Social Security retirement benefits are figured in the first place.

People are also reading… After the SSA indexes each year of earnings for inflation, they pull out your highest 35 years and add them up. Then they divide the total by 420 — that’s the number of months in 35 years — to get your average monthly inflation-adjusted income. Your Social Security benefit is a percentage of that amount. The percentage used depends on a variety of factors too complex to explain here. But for the purposes of this column, we don’t need to know the precise percentage.

On the other hand, had your current earnings been $70,000, for example, that would increase your benefit. The SSA would replace this low year of $46,060 with the new higher year of $70,000, recompute your average monthly wage and refigure your benefit. In other words, if you are getting Social Security benefits, and if you are working, and if your latest earnings increase your average monthly wage and thus your Social Security benefit, you generally will see that increase by October of the following year. For example, you would get an increase for your 2021 earnings by October 2022. The SSA sends you a notice indicating the increase in your monthly benefit, which is retroactive to January of the year you get the notice.

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Answer: No one gives two squats, just keep paying into the system so they can keep dishing it out to their friends. Next lower your expections on ever getting back what you put in. Not happening period. Now you can enjoy all the shit you don't have because you didn't expect to.

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