Get new articles by email:

Oblivious Investor offers a free newsletter providing tips on low-maintenance investing, tax planning, and retirement planning.

Join over 20,000 email subscribers:

Articles are published every Monday. You can unsubscribe at any time.

New Free, Open-Source Social Security Calculator

When deciding when to claim Social Security benefits, it can be helpful to use a calculator that runs the math for each possible claiming age (or, if you’re married, each possible combination of claiming ages) and reports back, telling you which strategy is expected to provide the most total spendable dollars over your lifetime.

Maximize My Social Security and Social Security Solutions are the two best-known paid calculators in the field. For a few years though, there was a decent (basic) free option as well: “SSAnalyze,” hosted by an advisory firm called Bedrock Capital. Unfortunately, Bedrock Capital was bought by another financial firm late last year, and the buyer did not repost the calculator on their own site.

So, in April of this year I decided to make my own. It’s available now, and you can try it out it here:

https://opensocialsecurity.com/

I’m calling it “Open Social Security,” because I’m making it open-source, with three goals in mind:

  1. This way, anybody who is especially interested in the details can see for themselves how the calculator functions, rather than having to trust me or wonder about what assumptions I’m using.
  2. Possibly, somebody else will make use of the code in some other way — building some Social Security-related functionality into other financial planning software for instance.
  3. If something happens to me  — or I simply stop updating the calculator — somebody else can take the code and put it up on their own website so people will still have access to a useful tool.

I’ve been testing the heck out of it, but it’s certainly possible that there are still bugs. If you see something that doesn’t make sense or isn’t working, please let me know.

FYI, it runs much faster in Chrome or Firefox than it does in Safari. And Safari is in turn several times faster than Edge or Internet Explorer. In other words, if you’re using the calculator as a married person (i.e., a situation that requires your computer to do a lot of calculations), you might not want to use Internet Explorer or Edge, especially if you have an older computer.

Also, I would encourage you to please read the About page, as it has some basic information about how the calculator works, and it notes some important caveats.

Finally, for anybody who’s interested, here’s the GitHub page, where you can view/download the source code.

Want to Learn More about Social Security? Pick Up a Copy of My Book:

Social Security cover Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less
Topics Covered in the Book:
  • How retirement benefits, spousal benefits, and widow(er) benefits are calculated,
  • How to decide the best age to claim your benefit,
  • How Social Security benefits are taxed and how that affects tax planning,
  • Click here to see the full list.

A Testimonial from a Reader on Amazon:

"An excellent review of various facts and decision-making components associated with the Social Security benefits. The book provides a lot of very useful information within small space."
Disclaimer: By using this site, you explicitly agree to its Terms of Use and agree not to hold Simple Subjects, LLC or any of its members liable in any way for damages arising from decisions you make based on the information made available on this site. The information on this site is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

Copyright 2023 Simple Subjects, LLC - All rights reserved. To be clear: This means that, aside from small quotations, the material on this site may not be republished elsewhere without my express permission. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

My Social Security calculator: Open Social Security