Senior Social Security

What Will Senior Social Security Mean for You?

You’ve been making social security payments your entire working life – what will senior social security mean for you?

Since the program doesn’t have reserve retirement investments – the payments made by people still working are what provide for seniors’ social security – there is always the danger that what you pay in now can’t be matched by a later generation of earners. This uncertainty haunts the future of senior citizen social security.

What is certain is that you probably won’t be able to live entirely off your senior social security payments as your only retirement income. Whether they fill a vital gap in your retirement income, or are a form of supplemental retirement income to a robust retirement portfolio, you may need to think about other sources of retirement income. You’ll get something – but how much?

How Senior Social Security Works

Every employee and business owner pays taxes on retirement income that go into the senior social security program. The program has two goals: to provide protection for low earners who don’t have the resources to prepare for the risks of retirement, and to give people a fair return on the retirement investment they’ve made by paying taxes.

Benefits are weighted towards low earners – earnings replacement rates are about 60% or minimum wage earners, 42% for average wage earners, and 26% for high earners.

But seniors’ social security payments are not directly based on need, which means high earners who were able to make their own retirement investments still get a monthly check when they retire.

By weighting social security benefits to low earners and still providing benefits for high earners, the senior social security program aims to provide both social adequacy as well as individual equity.

Budgeting for Senior Citizen Social Security

You’ve probably received a senior social security statement in the mail, listing the earnings on which you have paid social security taxes during your working years and a summary of the estimated social security benefits you and your family may receive as a result of those earnings. You can get information on requesting a statement at the government’s senior social security site.

The estimated benefits listed on your statement will provide a guideline to how much you can expect to receive once you retire. Of course, depending on how far into your working years you are, your benefits may change as your earnings change.

Keeping in mind that these benefits are only an estimate, you can visit the retirement budget section of our site to get help on fitting your senior citizen social security benefits into your plans for retirement.