Website Lets You Calculate, Compare Social Security Retirement Income

A new online calculator makes it easy to determine how much of your income at retirement will come from Social Security, and shows how your numbers compare with similar households.

Economists hope the tool will help combat widespread misinformation that is scaring Americans into believing that Social Security is rapidly going broke. In fact, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the Social Security trust fund is projected to run an $868 billion surplus over the next decade and can pay full benefits until 2037 without making cuts or raising the retirement age.

The Social Security calculator was created by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and is available here. Enter your planned retirement date, current income, estimated debt, savings, stock and pension and the calculator crunches the numbers.

Economists say politicians from both parties, with help from the media, are misleading the public about Social Security. CEPR Co-Director Dean Baker noted that Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, 45, claimed in a radio interview that he won't get any Social Security if the system isn't fixed.

"This is not true," Baker said. "According to the most recent projections from the Social Security trustees, Mr. Bennet should expect to see a benefit of $37,429 a year (in 2010 dollars), if he retires at age 67 in 2031." Even if no changes are made and the predicted shortfall occurs in 2037, Social Security would still be able to pay 80 percent of scheduled benefits, amounting to $28,071 a year for Bennet.

CEPR has calculated the expected Social Security earnings of all current U.S. senators in the hope, Baker said, that they will stop spreading bad information. Click here (Adobe Acrobat, 137 kB) to see the chart.