You enter each person's benefit as a monthly amount in today's dollars, and the plan treats it as inflation-indexed, exactly what the real cost-of-living adjustment does. That is why there is no COLA field to fill in: the whole projection already runs in today's dollars, so a benefit that keeps pace with inflation is simply a constant here. Adding a COLA on top would count it twice.
Two ways to get the number
- From your Social Security statement: the benefit at your full retirement age, straight off ssa.gov. This is the accurate path; the app only adjusts it for the claim age you choose.
- From your salary: a rough estimate. It assumes a steady career at that salary and runs the standard PIA bend-point formula (90% / 32% / 15% of averaged monthly earnings). It is labeled an estimate in the UI because it ignores the wage indexing a real SSA calculation does.
About those bend points
The formula's two breakpoints are applied as today's figures, for everyone. This is the same real-dollar convention the rest of the plan uses. Social Security itself does something different: your breakpoints are locked by the year you turn 62, and they climb with average national wages, which have historically outpaced prices.
So if you are still years away from 62, this estimate reads low. Your real breakpoints at eligibility will be higher than the ones used here. The error is in the cautious direction, it shrinks the closer you are to claiming, and it does not touch the accurate path at all: a benefit taken off your Social Security statement never goes through this formula. If the number matters to your decision, use the statement.
What the claim age does
Full retirement age depends on your birth year: 66 for those born 1943–1954, rising two months a year after that, then 67 from 1960 on. Claiming away from it moves the benefit by fixed statutory amounts:
- Early: −5/9 of 1% per month for the first 36 months, then −5/12 of 1% per month beyond that.
- Late: +2/3 of 1% per month, i.e. 8% a year, and it stops at 70.
The claiming window is 62 to 70; ages outside it are clamped. You and a spouse each get your own claim age, so a household can stagger them, with one claiming early for cash flow while the other waits for the larger benefit.
How it lands in the plan
A benefit is outside money: it reduces how much the portfolio has to deliver that year. It does not change your spending, so every dollar of Social Security is a dollar the portfolio does not have to sell.
It is taxed through the provisional-income worksheet rather than a flat assumption. See what the tax model covers. With survivorship on, the survivor keeps the larger of the two benefits from the first death and the smaller one stops.
Benefits are paid in full for life unless you say otherwise. If you want to see what a legislated shortfall would cost you, the panel's benefit-cut stress reduces every benefit by a percentage you choose from a year you choose.
Claiming later is a trade, not a free win: you spend more of your own portfolio in the waiting years to buy a bigger, inflation-protected, lifelong income. Run it both ways and compare success, not just the monthly figure.