Robert Brokamp
speaker
4,411 appearances
40 recordings
3 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 19 Sep
Robert Brokamp’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
plus 32% of the AME between $1,286 and $7,749, plus 15% of the AME above $7,749.
Add those three figures together and you get your primary insurance amount, which we'll discuss in more detail in a bit.
But first, what's the point of those bend points?
Well, Social Security is designed to replace a larger percentage of earnings for lower income workers.
They're sort of like tax brackets in reverse.
According to a report published by the Social Security Administration earlier this year, here are the percentages of pre-retirement income that will be replaced by Social Security for a person born in 1960 who claims benefits at their full retirement age of 67.
based on their career average annual earnings.
So someone who earned thirty-two thousand four hundred dollars over the course of their career on average each year, Social Security is going to replace fifty-five percent of it.
Someone who earned seventy two thousand dollars per year for social security is going to replace forty one percent of that.
Somebody earning $115,000, there's going to be a 34% replacement rate.
And someone who earned $178,000 on average each year, the replacement rate is 27%.
The key takeaway here is that the more you earn, the more you may need to save because less of your pre-retirement income will be replaced by Social Security.
All right, let's turn to the primary insurance amount.
That is what you will receive from Social Security if you claim at your full retirement age, which depends on the year you were born.
For each month before your full retirement age that you claim Social Security, your benefit will be reduced.
For each month you delay, your benefit gets bigger up to age 70.
All told, for someone who was born in nineteen sixty or later and thus has a full retirement age of sixty-seven, claiming at age sixty two permanently reduces the benefit by up to thirty percent, whereas waiting until age seventy increases it by about twenty four percent.
Keep in mind that the primary insurance amount doesn't just determine your benefit.
It can also be used to determine the benefits of family members who will be claiming benefits on your earnings record.
And reductions in your benefit due to claiming earlier can also have an impact on family related benefits, including spousal benefits, survivor benefits, and the family maximum limit.
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