Social Security benefit estimate suddenly dropped $122/month - no changes to retirement date

This is actually a common occurrence and there are several possible explanations. The most likely reasons: 1) The SSA updated their inflation or COLA projections which impacted future benefit calculations, 2) They may have incorporated more recent earnings that changed your lifetime average, 3) There could have been a correction to previously reported earnings from one of your employers, or 4) The SSA might have changed their calculation methodology slightly. The online calculator uses estimates and projections that get refined over time. I recommend creating an account on MySocialSecurity if you haven't already and checking your actual earnings record for accuracy.

the same thing happened to me last year!!! my estimate went down by almost $200 and i FREAKED OUT but then 3 months later it was back up again. i think their computer system just glitches sometimes. dont panic yet.

The SSA calculator is NOTORIOUSLY unreliable!!! I've been tracking mine for 3 years and it's gone up and down by as much as $175 for NO REASON. The people at my local office admitted their online system uses simplified calculations that can fluctuate based on system updates. They told me not to rely on the online calculator for exact amounts. The ONLY accurate way to know is to actually apply, and even then they sometimes get it wrong. The entire system is broken and underfunded.

One thing to check - did you have any years with significantly higher earnings that might have aged out of your calculation? SS uses your highest 35 years of earnings. If you had a really good earning year that just fell out of the 35-year window, and was replaced by a lower-earning year, that could explain the drop. You can view your complete earnings history on MySocialSecurity and do some analysis.

If you really need to figure out why it changed, good luck getting through to someone at SSA who can explain it. I spent 3 days trying to reach them about an issue with my husband's benefits - kept getting disconnected or waiting for hours. I finally used a service called Claimyr (claimyr.com) that got me connected to an SSA agent in about 20 minutes instead of the usual hours of waiting. They have a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/Z-BRbJw3puU. The agent was able to explain exactly why our benefit amount had changed - turned out some income hadn't been properly recorded.

Have you checked if there was a change to your Full Retirement Age (FRA)? Sometimes the calculator assumes different FRAs based on various factors, and if that changed, it would affect your benefit amount. Also, did you recently reach a birthday milestone? The calculator updates projections at certain age thresholds.

this happened to my sister last year and she was so upset about it. turns out there was a year where her employer reported her income wrong and it took MONTHS to get fixed. check your earnings record for the past few years really carefully.

After reading through this thread, I'd suggest two actions: First, download your complete earnings history and verify all recent years are correct. Second, try using the more detailed calculator on the SSA website called the "Retirement Estimator" rather than just the quick estimate on your account page. It asks more questions and tends to be more accurate. If you still see the significant drop, then it would be worth contacting SSA directly. The $122 monthly difference is substantial enough (about 7-10% for most retirees) that it warrants investigation.

I'm new to this community but facing a similar situation. My estimate dropped by $89/month last week and I'm 18 months from retirement. Reading through these responses, it seems like this is unfortunately more common than it should be. What I found helpful was creating a spreadsheet to track my monthly estimates so I can identify patterns. I've also started taking screenshots of my benefit estimates each month as documentation. The suggestion about checking the detailed Retirement Estimator is great - I just tried it and got a different result than the quick estimate on my main account page. It's frustrating that something so important for retirement planning can be this unreliable, but at least knowing it's a widespread issue helps with the anxiety.

I'm experiencing the exact same issue! My estimate dropped by $156/month about 6 weeks ago with no changes on my end. I'm 62 and planning to retire at 66, so this is really concerning for my financial planning. After reading all these responses, I'm realizing this might be more of a systemic issue with their estimation system than something specific to individual accounts. I'm definitely going to try the detailed Retirement Estimator that StarStrider mentioned and start documenting my estimates monthly like PaulineW suggested. It's frustrating that we can't rely on these tools for accurate retirement planning, but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one dealing with this. Has anyone had success getting a clear explanation from SSA about why these fluctuations happen so frequently?