WHAT YOU CAN REALLY COUNT ON FROM SOCIAL SECURITY
By Robert J. Klein

(MONEY Magazine) – One of the biggest aggravations in retirement planning used to be getting an accurate estimate of your Social Security benefits. If you knew the right questions, you could write to the Social Security Administration, which months later would send back, piecemeal, the scraps of information you had specifically requested. This month the agency begins spelling out your whole basket of benefits in an eight-page document called a ''Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement.'' To get one, you simply call a toll-free number (800-937-2000) and request Form SSA-7004. This is a questionnaire asking you for a number of facts about yourself, including your name, Social Security number, date of birth, previous year's earnings, current year's estimated earnings, the age at which you plan to retire and your projected earnings from now to retirement. About four to six weeks after you send in the form, you can expect to receive this list of estimated benefits: -- Your monthly retirement check from Social Security, in today's dollars, at your stated retirement age. (To arrive at this figure, the Social Security Administration computer assumes that your future annual earnings, net of inflation, will rise at the national average of 1% a year.) The earliest you can collect your check is at age 62, if you are willing to settle for 80% of what your benefit would be if you worked to 65. -- The full benefit you could get by waiting until you are age 65 to retire. Under Social Security regulations, 65 will remain the standard retirement age until 1999. After that, the age for collecting a full benefit will start to rise at the rate of nearly one month per year. Someone born in 1939, for example, will have to wait four months after his or her 65th birthday to be eligible for a full retirement benefit. From that point on, the full-benefit retirement age keeps increasing until it gets to age 67 in 2027. There it will remain -- at least under present law. -- The 33% larger benefit available to people your age who continue working until they are 70. -- Your survivors' monthly benefits if you die during the current calendar year. Children of Social Security taxpayers are likely to be eligible for these benefits until they reach 18 or 19, depending as a rule on when they finish high school. A spouse who stays at home with the children can also collect survivors benefits until the youngest child is 16. By taking an outside job, however, a widow or widower will probably forfeit Social Security income. This year, for example, the loss is equal to $1 for every $2 earned in excess of $8,400 a year for those recipients between 65 and 70. -- Your disability benefits if you will be unable to work for at least a year or if you are terminally ill. Like survivors benefits, Social Security disability benefits include income for dependent children. -- A year-by-year statement of your earnings that were subject to Social Security taxes and of the Social Security taxes that you paid. Since the Social Security Administration has been known to make an occasional error in figuring benefits, you should check the numbers you get by matching them against your own earnings records. The Social Security statement also explains briefly but clearly what it takes to become eligible for benefits. Basically, you must work 10 years to earn retirement benefits but generally only five out of the last 10 years to claim disability benefits.

CHART: How Social Security income builds

These figures represent the approximate yearly income from Social Security benefits for a single person and, on the following line, for a worker and a nonworking spouse of the same age, when they become eligible for full Social Security benefits at age 65 to 67. All of the amounts in the table are Social Security Administration projections in 1988 dollars, based on continuous employment throughout an adult lifetime.

Your earnings in 1987 $20,000 $25,000 $30,000 $35,000 $45,000 or above Your age in 1988 25 Individual 11,796 13,548 14,568 15,600 17,652 Couple 17,688 20,316 21,852 23,400 26,472

35 Individual 10,896 12,540 13,476 14,436 16,296 Couple 16,344 18,804 20,208 21,648 24,444

45 Individual 9,972 11,496 12,360 13,104 14,412 Couple 14,952 17,244 18,540 19,656 21,612

55 Individual 9,048 10,344 10,920 11,352 12,036 Couple 13,572 15,516 16,380 17,028 18,048

65 Individual 8,100 9,216 9,564 9,792 10,056 Couple 12,144 13,824 14,340 14,688 15,084

Annual Social Security benefit CREDIT: NO CREDIT CAPTION: See above. DESCRIPTION: Yearly income from Social Security benefits for five levels of income in five different age groups.