Periodically Checking your Social Security Statement

I received an email this week from Social Security reminding me to retrieve my online annual statement.
We’d like to remind you to review your Social Security Statement online. The Statement has important Social Security information and, if applicable, estimates of your future benefits.
If you are working, we encourage you to check your Statement yearly to make sure your earnings record is correct. The Statement also will help in planning your financial future.
To view your most recent Statement, please visit www.socialsecurity.gov/signin and sign into your account.
Please do not reply to this E-mail, as we are unable to respond to messages sent to this address.
Periodically checking your estimated Social Security benefits is usually a good thing:  it helps you understand what your projected monthly benefit will be during retirement and it allows you to check for and correct errors.
If you didn’t receive the email you can still retrieve your statement by doing the following:
Go to https://www.socialsecurity.gov/myaccount/
Click on mySocial Security box
Create an account under New Users section.  It will ask you for information to create an account
Once you have an account created and log in there will be a link on the first page to Print / Save your full statement
Your statement includes a record of the earnings on which you’ve paid taxes and an estimate of the benefits you will receive at various retirement ages: 62, 67, and 70.  It’s always wise to check the SSA’s numbers.  Some government watchers estimate that SSA makes mistakes on at least 3% of the total official earnings records it keeps.  If you are self employed pay special attention.
If you have evidence of your covered earnings in the year or years for which you think Social Security has made an error call Social Securities helpline at 800-772-1213 or you could make an appointment with the local Social Security office.
If you would like more information on how to plan for Social Security benefits check out a chapter from my book on Social Security planning or make an appointment with me and I’ll walk you through different scenarios to see when it makes the most sense to start collecting and how best to coordinate your benefits with your spouse.