{"id":48798,"date":"2024-08-14T14:09:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-14T18:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=48798"},"modified":"2024-08-14T14:10:22","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T18:10:22","slug":"does-some-of-my-social-security-payment-include-repayment-of-my-contributions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/08\/14\/does-some-of-my-social-security-payment-include-repayment-of-my-contributions\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Some of my Social Security Payment Include Repayment of my Contributions?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have a question about my Social Security benefits. Would I be correct to assume that part of the monthly Social Security income I get is a repayment of what I contributed to the fund while I was working? If so, how much of my monthly benefit payment is my own money coming back to me? Signed: Curious Beneficiary<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dear Curious:<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>I\u2019m afraid that is not how Social Security works. The money you contribute to Social Security during your working years does not go into a special account to be repaid to you. Rather, the Social Security taxes you pay while working are used to pay benefits to all those currently receiving Social Security benefits. The system is, in effect, a \u201cpay as you go\u201d program where all those currently contributing help pay benefits for all those now receiving. What your contributions do, however, is earn you \u201cquarter credits\u201d and, when you have enough credits, you become eligible for Social Security retirement benefits for life. Generally, someone must have about 40 quarters (about 10 years) contributing to Social Security to be eligible for SS retirement benefits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much you receive monthly is determined not by how much you contributed but, rather, by how much your work earnings were over your lifetime. You will get a percentage of your average pre-retirement work income as your monthly Social Security payment, but that is also affected by your age when you claim benefits. It is your average lifetime earnings (adjusted for inflation) which determines your \u201cPrimary Insurance Amount\u201d (or \u201cPIA\u201d). Your PIA is what you get at your Social Security full retirement age (FRA), but your age when you claim benefits determines if you get more or less than your PIA. Claiming SS before your FRA means a smaller monthly benefit, while waiting longer than your FRA means a benefit higher than your PIA. (SS benefits reach maximum at age 70). FYI, each person\u2019s FRA is different based on the year they were born, but full retirement age today is between age 66 and 67. When you claim benefits relative to your FRA determines how much of your PIA you will receive each month.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, your contributions to Social Security aren\u2019t used to determine your monthly benefit amount, but your average lifetime work earnings and age when you claim are. Nevertheless, you may be interested to know that most people get back everything they have personally contributed to Social Security within about 3 to 5 years of collecting their benefits. In that sense, Social Security is an exceptionally good deal, since most Americans now collect benefits for about two decades. And therein lies much of Social Security\u2019s financial dilemma \u2013 people are now collecting benefits for many more years than the current program is designed to support. And that is what Congress needs to fix as soon as possible. The Social Security trust funds (which now provide supplemental money to pay benefits) are projected to be depleted around 2033, which will mean a cut in everyone\u2019s monthly Social Security payment, unless Congress acts soon to reform the program and restore it to fiscal solvency.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a question about my Social Security benefits. Would I be correct to assume that part of the monthly Social Security income I get is a repayment of what… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":21917,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/1140-social-security-card-money.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[9429],"class_list":["post-48798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-does-some-of-my-social-security-payment-include-repayment-of-my-contributions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48800,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48798\/revisions\/48800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}