You can enter your past covered earnings manually, import them from the Social Security website, or, if you are not currently working in employment covered by Social Security and will not do so in the future, you can enter the gross benefit amount before any taxes or other deductions if you’re currently collecting or you can enter your estimated retirement benefit at 70 provided by Social Security.
If you choose to use Social Security’s estimate of your age 70 benefit or your current benefit amount, we account for the fact that Social Security purposefully lowballs benefit estimates by unrealistically assuming zero future wage growth and zero future inflation, counter to all our post-war history. This seems designed to encourage people so save more and not rely too much on Social Security, but astonishingly, some calculators use this deliberate underestimate without adjustment as their primary input.