If you are interested in trying this out and would be willing to share feedback, comment on the post and I'll reach out with some instructions.
Keep in mind, it's still extremely unpolished.
For anyone who missed it, here's the higher dimensional spousal version: bsky.app/profile/ssa....
This is of course interactive. You can adjust your assumptions, such as your discount rate or health expectations and the corresponding lines on the chart will slide around accordingly.
Chart showing the Death Age on the x-axis and two y-axis plots. One showing the optimal filing age for social security benefits with the other showing the cumulative death probability.
I've been iterating on the "single user" strategy planner. Much easier to understand than the spousal planner. Here's the main widget that I've got so far:
A few new guides dropped in the last week:
ssa.tools/guides/nra - Normal Retirement Age. I probably should have added this one a long time ago.
ssa.tools/guides/wep - An explanation of what WEP was and why it's now gone.
ssa.tools/guides/privacy - A look at the privacy core principle for ssa.tools.
If anyone is interested in integrating other tools, please drop me a message and I'm happy to figure out the best way.
Here's a link to learn more and see the integrations in action for your favorite tool: ssa.tools/guides/integ...
I've been slowly adding integrations for other retirement planning sites so that there's a seamless flow from other sites into ssa.tools and back out. Open Social Security was the first, but there's now Linopt, FIRECalc, Fi Calc, cFIREsim, Fin Pods AI, and Owl Retirement Planner!
Yes. The COLA isn't applied in the calculations except in that section. Unless your computer's clock is running ahead and showing 2026, I suppose.
Is it possible that the future earnings records are configured differently?
ssa.tools is now updated with the 2025 COLA and some other constants. Though these will not affect your PIA or benefit until January. This screenshot is an example of how it looks right now, which you can see if you expand the PIA section.
If you know of any other sites interested in integrating like this to make the tools both more useful to their users, let me know.
A couple others:
ssa.tools#integration=...
ssa.tools#integration=...
Though I haven't heard back from these sites to see if they're interested in integrating in this way.
I've been adding what I call "integrations" with other tools.
OpenSocialSecurity.com is the first. The link from OSS is now ssa.tools#integration=... which if you follow it will provide an enhanced workflow for taking your results from ssa.tools and entering them back into OSS.
Fortunately existing benefits continue to get paid, though there are some negative consequences to social security programs if the GOP can't manage to pass a budget and the government shuts down. I added a new guide here:
ssa.tools/guides/gover...
Note these also take into account gender if provided or just average based on cohort tables if gender is not set. However, the gender difference is relatively small compared to the outliers on the health sliders so those are a more noticeable effect.
The latest prototype has sliders that lets the user adjust the life expectancy of both recipients in real time to get an approximate idea of how that might affect probabilities of different survival ages and thus filing strategies.
Still work in progress / not yet launched. Always love feedback!
Here's the same data, but shown as an age instead of a date:
What do you think? Is this a useful way to increase someone's understanding of the decision space?
Useful beyond just a single recommended filing date based on assumptions (such as actuarial distribution or fixed age)?
You can visually see where the lower earner (Chris in this scenario) often wants to file at 62 years old while the higher earner (Alex in this scenario) wants to wait until a bit later, possibly as late as 70.
The rows and columns represent possible ages of death. The width of each row / column reflects the actuarial probability of dying at that age. While the table shows the optimal filing age for that combination.
I've been playing around with a visualization of the best Social Security filing date pair displayed over all possible ages of death. The idea being to give users a clearer picture of how the filing age decision works.
The "BETA" tag has come off of the survivor benefits section on ssa.tools. I'm fairly confident in the implementation.
If you haven't seen it yet, try the demo link and scroll to near the bottom section. You can try it with your own data, but you'll need to enter both yourself and your spouse.
This Mother's Day, give your mom what every mother wants - a link to help them calculate their social security retirement benefits: ssa.tools
With 2024 taxes filed (hopefully), it's a great time to check if your new earnings data has updated at SSA.gov. Each additional year can change your benefit calculation, especially if it replaces a lower-earning year in your top 35. See exactly how at ssa.tools - takes just minutes to check.
If you've tried to access Social Security services recently, you may have encountered longer wait times, website outages, or difficulty reaching representatives. These challenges stem from changes implemented by the Trump administration in 2025.
Learn more at ssa.tools/guides/agenc...
To the employees of SSA, thank you for your service. I'm sad to see what the current administration has been doing to public servants across the nation.
You may be wondering if ssa.tools has been updated to support the changes to WEP and GPO from the Social Security Fairness Act.
In fact, ssa.tools never had support for the WEP / GPO adjustments, it was an open bug to implement. This bill effectively closed the bug. ssa.tools is up to date.
