Reviewing Your Social Security Statement
- Jan 19
- 2 min read
Whether you believe in Social Security or not, your statement deserves your attention. There’s so much skepticism around Social Security, but wouldn’t you rather be prepared versus in the dark? There are many reasons why you should review your Social Security statement annually.
In this article, we'll discuss the top 3 reasons to review your Social Security statement:
1. Verifying your earnings
2. Tracking your progress for qualifying for Social Security
3. Know and understand your disability and survivor benefits
Verify your earnings
Social Security calculates your benefits on your highest 35 years of earnings. Your employers are required to report those earnings annually, but we all know, mistakes happen. If you make $150,000, but your earnings don’t get recorded, you’re going to have $0 reflected. That’s going to drastically impact the amount you will receive when it comes time to receive your benefits. Social Security gives you 3 years to correct any discrepancies.
Tracking your progress for qualifying for Social Security
Just because you pay in to Social Security, doesn’t mean you automatically qualify. You need to earn 40 credits in order to receive benefits. A credit is earned each quarter, so that’s the equivalent of about 10 years. Where we see this as an issue is for farmers who take a loss because they don’t pay into Social Security and for those who decide to take time off to raise their family or perhaps care for aging parents.
Know and understand your disability and survivor benefits
When it comes to Social Security, we often times think of the retirement piece alone. This, perhaps, is even more important than that. As we have people who depend on us, we want to make sure they are taken care of in case something happens. This is a major piece of that puzzle. Make sure you know and understand how that works.
Social Security is very complicated. Reviewing your statement is not. Make sure you choose an event that will trigger you to remember to pull your statement. Tax time is a great time of year for this. You are already gathering documents, W-2 and things of that nature. It’s a great reminder to log in and check the statement.
Please download our Instructional PDF on how to access and download your Social Security statement.
We know all of this can be confusing and stressful.
That’s why we’ve made it our mission to help you unravel it all.
From confusion to clarity, Accountabilities has you covered.
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