A great deal of programming effort has been put into getting MaxiFi's Social Security calculation right. But it's complicated. For example, what's known as the "recalculation of benefit" occurs when someone is currently receiving benefits but is still working. These new labor earnings could actually replace the labor earnings of some earlier year or set of years in the calculation of the highest 35 years causing a recalculation of benefits and thus a new, higher annual benefit amount.
When there are no future labor earnings and no pension from non-covered earnings and when you have from SSA your benefit amount at your full retirement age (FRA), MaxiFi can use that amount to infer your earnings history. MaxiFI provides a place for you to enter the date and your benefit amount at your FRA.
When you do have have future labor earnings and/or a pension from non-covered earnings (regardless of whether or not you are currently collecting Social Security benefits), MaxiFI needs your detailed earnings history; simply inferring it from our benefit at FRA is not enough. There are two ways to enter your detailed earnings history.
The first:
If you have a copy of your SS earnings history, you can enter those earnings manually. This approach works fine but it's possible to make mistakes entering each year manually, so you must double check your work.
The second:
The second approach involves retrieving your earnings history from SSA, so you must first set up and log into your account at Social Security Administration (SSA) This video produced by the Social Security Administration explains the benefits of creating a My Social Security account and explains in detail the steps to do so.
The download file method
This approach involves downloading a file from SSA.gov and importing it into MaxiFi. This is also the most common method for financial professionals to use to request earnings history from clients. The file does not contain any Social Security account number so clients may if they wish email the XML file to the financial professional. In short, here are the three steps to import your Social Security earnings using the download file:
- Log in to the Social Security Administration website
- Click the 'Download Your Statement Data as an XML file' link to download your XML data
- Return to MaxiFi "Upload XML" import screen, click upload file, and choose your file.
These three steps are elaborated below:
Log in to the Social Security Administration website The first step requires that you first create your free My Social Security account at the SSA website. This step is a best practice in order to monitor your Social Security record. The SSA no longer sends printed reports, and your My Social Security access is the primary way of gaining access to and monitoring your earnings history.
How to find the Import XML option is shown below in these three images.
Step One
Step Two
Step 3 (what you should see after importing earnings:
