Throughout the years, the two main sources of income when Americans retire are social security and pensions from their employers. However, since the prices of every item these days are increasing, the financial support that people may get from these sources may not be enough to sustain all their needs. Social Security support may not be that large in amount while pensions are only given by very few employers.

Hence for the majority, personal savings have turned out to be an essential part of retirement income.

A person is only eligible to receive social security benefits if he is consistent in his contributions amounting to that of at least 10 years. The amount of benefit is not the same for every individual. It is determined by the amount of your contribution and the age at which you choose to receive the benefits.

The good side is that benefits rise with inflation. The down side is that the earning used to determine the amount of benefit is capped. The cap is a disadvantage for those people who earn huge income for they will receive proportionately less of their pre-retirement earning compared to those who earn below the cap.

In order to receive full benefits from your social security, you need to be on the right retirement age. The retirement age before is 65. However, actual required full retirement age is increasing for those born in 1938 or later. It reaches the ripe age of 67 for individuals born after 1959.

You can have a closer look at your benefits by visiting the site of the Social Security Administration (SSA) at www.ssa.gov. You can also take a look at the SSA’s annual statement which is sent to you within three months after your birthday. You can always request for a statement online.

Getting your benefits at an earlier versus later year
You may choose to start getting your benefits at an early age of 62. The only catch is that of course the amount is going to be lesser than what you will be getting once you reach your full retirement age. For instance, you retired at age 62 but your full age of retirement is 66, you will just get 75% of your supposedly benefits once you reach that age. You will increase it by waiting.

If you still want to increase the benefits that you will get, you can try to wait for a year or so once you have reached your full retirement age. As an example, if your full retirement age is at 66, you may receive 132% benefits monthly if you will wait for it until you are 70.

Remember that if you will get the benefits earlier, you will be paying less and get more in the process. The reverse will happen if you will opt to delay in getting your benefits. So If you want the benefits to work to your advantage, you have to know when you are going to receive them.

Spouses get benefits even if he or she never had earnings under the Social Security Administration. They will be entitled under the record of the registered spouse. Children of the registered individual will also receive some benefits but it will all depend on their ages.

For your spouse, he or she will get 50% of your benefits once you have reached your retirement age. You will also lessen your spouse’s benefit if you will get your benefits earlier.

The spouse is entitled to receive either his or her own social security benefit or that of his or her spouse, whichever is higher.

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