A majority of Americans file for Social Security benefits as soon as they become eligible at age 62. In many cases, you’ll receive higher lifetime benefits by waiting at least until the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) of 66 or higher. Now, the Social Security Administration has launched a new online Retirement Estimator that allows you to project your future benefits assuming different retirement ages. The tool is free and easy to use–you just plug in a few personal facts and your Social Security number; the site digs through your actual lifetime earning history and calculates your monthly benefit assuming different retirement ages. It’s a useful decision-making tool and takes less than five minutes to use.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 11:25 am and is filed under Financial Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.