It’s not an easy thing to save money for retirement. Many people try to do it only to be thwarted by emergency expenses, recurring bills, and other financial goals, like buying a house or putting kids through college.
But if you don’t manage to save much for retirement, you may end up in a situation where you’re basically living on Social Security. And that could leave you struggling financially at a time when you deserve to be enjoying life.
The average Social Security benefit today
Social Security doesn’t just pay benefits to retired Americans. It pays other types of benefits as well, like disability.
For the purpose of this discussion, though, we’re going to talk about the average monthly Social Security benefit among retired workers. And today, it amounts to about $2,000.
Now on the one hand, that’s hardly a negligible sum. And when combined with other income streams, it’s actually quite a nice supplement.
The problem, though, is that many retired Americans are living on just Social Security. And people in that boat are likely to struggle financially.
After all, could you live comfortably on $24,000 a year? Probably not.
And while your expenses may decline in retirement, they may not fall to the point where you can get away with only $2,000 worth of bills each month. So if you don’t manage to bring some savings with you into retirement, you could be looking at a tough road financially.
How to boost your Social Security benefits
Even if Social Security ends up paying you more than $2,000 a month, which may be the case if you’re a higher earner, it’s important to have additional income to fall back on. But if you’re struggling to build up your nest egg, then at the very least, it pays to take steps to give your Social Security benefits a boost.
The easiest way to do that is to delay your claim past full retirement age, which is 67 if you were born in 1960 or later. For each year you hold off, up until age 70, your benefits increase 8%. And that boost is a permanent one, so you’ll get those larger monthly benefits for life.
If waiting on Social Security isn’t possible, or you want to do even more to score larger benefits, try to increase your earnings before you stop working. And if you can’t get a raise or promotion at your main job, boost your income with a side hustle. As long as you pay taxes on your extra income, it’ll count toward your future benefits.
Also make sure that the Social Security Administration has correct wage data for you on record. You can find this out by creating an account on its website and looking through your earnings statements.
And while you’re at it, take a look at your benefit estimate to see how much monthly income you can expect from Social Security based on your wage history to date. Just because the average Social Security recipient today gets $2,000 a month doesn’t mean your benefits will be that large, or that small.
Having that information is a big part of your financial planning for retirement, so there’s no need to let yourself be in the dark.
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