Investing Blog Roundup: “Open Social Security” Updates, and Retirement Microadventures

Three noteworthy updates to the Open Social Security calculator went live recently.

First: The calculator now provides a table as part of the output, with year-by-year benefit amounts for the recommended strategy (and another table if the user chooses to test alternative claiming ages).

Second: The calculator now considers voluntary suspension possibilities. For example, if one person in a couple filed at age 62 and is currently age 65, the calculator will consider whether they should suspend their benefit from FRA until 70 (or some earlier date).

I don’t expect that this second change will affect that many people, but it was a necessary prerequisite for implementing functionality for people who are receiving disability benefits — which is my next major goal for the calculator.

Third: When the “advanced options” setting is selected, there is now an option (below the input for discount rate) to assume that Social Security benefits will be cut by a selected percentage, effective as of a selected year in the future. (Several people requested this functionality in order to test various assumptions about depletion of the Social Security OASI trust fund.)