Retirement

Be Ready For This Journey and the Next

July 28, 2016 • By

Reading Time: 2 Minutes

Last Updated: November 3, 2023

family at beachYou packed your bathing suit and beach towels. The sunscreen is handy and ready to apply. Your hat is firmly on your head while you sport those stylish shades. The time is finally here, and you’re going on vacation.

Hooray!

Before you get in the car, where are you with that other checklist? You know the one — for the longer vacation you’ll take someday. Are your ducks in a row for your retirement?

With some planning, your retirement dreams can come true. And it only takes a checklist, like the one you made for your vacation!

First, start by opening your personal my Social Security account. A personal my Social Security account is an excellent tool that helps you plan for the future. It lets you verify your earnings on your personal Social Security Statement — your future retirement benefit depends on your earnings throughout your career. You can view your Statement at any time; it gives you a good picture of what your future benefits will be. When you are ready to retire, you can even go online to apply for benefits from your home or office, with no risk of sunburn.

The advantages of having a my Social Security account don’t stop after you retire. Once you start receiving benefits, you can manage them with a my Social Security account. Setting up a my Social Security account is easy, convenient, and secure.

Another great tool to help you plan for a secure retirement is our Retirement Estimator. It provides you information about your future Social Security benefits while running different scenarios. You can use the Retirement Estimator to plug in different earnings numbers and retirement dates to help you decide the best time for you to retire. When that time comes, you can apply for retirement benefits online.

These services will put you on your way to the retirement of your dreams. It won’t take much of your time. Your vacation awaits, after all.

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About the Author

Doug Walker, Deputy Commissioner, Communications

Deputy Commissioner, Office of Communications

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Comments

  1. Inglebert H.

    The ONLY reason for you to require an active cell phone in order to log on, is that certain government agencies want to be able to track you…. You can deny it…and I’ll call you a liar. You cannot be asked for an ID in order to vote for questionable the highest office in the world, ie. Presidential election…And yet you can require someone on SSI or SSDI to spend what meager monies that they receive monthly on a cell phone bill??? This is absolute stupidity. Absolutely NO OTHER GOVERNMENT WEBSITE has such a restriction…. Only the SSA…… And you call people publicly “paranoid”.

  2. Catherine D.

    Please email or reply here.
    Thank you!

  3. Catherine D.

    I am concerned. I received a text on my phone from number +1443-379-7961. Is this safe? It gave me a security code, I entered it & I was in my account.
    So much scamming going on, just checking!
    Thank you!

  4. Nancy

    How about the choice of having a code sent to your email address like my bank uses? That seems to work well.

    • BGP

      Yep….sending code to e-mail address would work best for all since we already get e-mail messages from SSA all the time.

  5. tony

    With the Medicaid expansion, everyone is going into the emergency room for a day or two for mental illness in hope of getting disability.

    Medicaid is the largest single payer of mental health service.
    https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid-chip-program-information/by-topics/benefits/mental-health-services.html

    The poor people know how to scam Social Security disability and Medicaid.

  6. tony

    When they give their cell phone number, you can track some of these disability fraudsters who haven’t turned off the GPS. You can track them without having to leave the office. When you see a pattern then you can investigate.

  7. tony

    The FBI was able to hack into Apple’s smartphone without Apple’s assistance. They must have found a way to sneak in and steal information from our smartphone. The government like spying on the American public.

  8. tony

    The Social Security system slowly want to take away your rights. Obama want to use Social Security disability to take guns away from the mentally ill.

    A psychiatrist/psychologist rarely ever reports their patients to the authorities. They will lose their patients’ trust along with the money they take in for treating them.

    The Democrats are dumb with their entitlement program. These are a bunch of lazy freeloaders on Social Security disability faking mental illness. The SSA needs to take away their driver licenses. They might decide to get off disability to get their driver licenses and freedom back.

    None of the mentally ill shooters are on Social Security disability.

  9. Chris

    So going forward the ONLY way I can access my account is if I also text??? Are you kidding me? My financial institutions’s don’t even require this! They will call me with a code which satisfies the two-factor authentication requirement. The thing they use is call a “phone.” You know, that thing that nearly everyone already has that you put to your ear and listen to. And get this — it even works if you don’t have a cell phone with texting. That’s right — that works with landlines and cell phones!

  10. Sunny D.

    This Social Security change is a total mess. Oh yes, they informed me by e-mail on July 28th that I’d no longer be able to access my account unless I use a text enabled cell phone. They SAID there was more info online to give the text deprived folks other ways to access their accounts. I’ve been ALL OVER their site and there is no other information that I can find. Simply responding to everyone who complains that this is the new plan with no other answer helps no one.

    Typical of our government at work. Class action lawsuits against Social Security for removing access to the account of everyone who does not text must be illegal.A whole group of folks have suddenly become disenfranchised. Sounds like Discrimination to me.

    • R.F.

      We did send an email to current my Social Security users informing them about the new security feature. Learn more at https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/MoreInformationAboutMFA.html.

      • Brenda Z.

        Mr. Fernandez – will you please, please, please STOP responding with the same lame response and do something about the discrimination against those of us who do not have cell phones nor do we wish to take on the added expense of having one just so we can access our accounts online.

        • Ronald L.

          I have been trying all day to access My Social Security Online account, I an following the instructions, I provide my Text enabled cell phone number and never receive a code to enter! And yes, my phone does receive text messages, and yes, my phone number matches the number on my Online account profile. So my question is, What is up? I follow the rules and now I and countless others suffer.

          • R.F.

            Hi Ronald, we are sorry to hear you are having difficulties. The site appears to be up and running. Please try again.

          • Ronald L.

            I never get the text message!! I get text messages from all other sources, just not this one, why not?

        • BGP

          I totally agree….stop sending the same canned response to EVERYONE. Please answer the questions with a solution! E-mail msg with code would be much easier for all…especially since we have computer/internet and e-mail accounts.

      • Dixie E.

        Mr. Fernandez, this is Extremely unhelpful. I filed for SSI 6 months ago. I do not drive due to seizures. All my friend work so can’t drive me to soc. sec. office. The bus doesn’t go there! I do not & have Never owned a cellphone. I cannot afford a cellphone. I can barely afford a landline, which I use Only for emergencies & to call my mother. I have NO way to look up info’ on my soc. sec. account. I called the 800 number & it insists I give it “the 8 digit information number.” I have no idea what this means. I never got a number from social security. I can’t get through by phone. Don’t own a cellphone. This is discrimination against the poor.

    • Trina

      I haven’t been able to sign in since this change

      • Ronald L.

        Maybe they will fix this soon and please stop trying to fix things that are not broken!!

Comments are closed.