Will my higher earnings after age 60 replace my low income years for Social Security calculation?

This is a great question about how Social Security calculates your Primary Insurance Amount (PIA)! Yes, Social Security uses your highest 35 years of earnings, regardless of when those years occurred. Years after age 60 absolutely can replace lower-earning years from early in your career. SSA will adjust all your earnings for inflation (they call this "indexing") but only up to age 60. Earnings after age 60 are counted at face value (not indexed). Even without the inflation adjustment, your current $75K-$85K earnings will definitely replace those $19K-$32K years from your 20s. When you create a my Social Security account at ssa.gov, you can see your entire earnings history and get an estimate of your benefit based on your current record.

I had this exact situation. Early career earnings were pathetic compared to later years. After struggling with busy signals and hanging on hold FOREVER trying to get someone at Social Security to explain this, I finally found Claimyr.com which got me connected to an actual SSA agent in under 20 minutes. The agent explained that yes, those post-60 earnings can and do replace early low years even without indexing. You can see how this works in their demo video: https://youtu.be/Z-BRbJw3puU It was definitely worth getting a real person to walk through my specific earnings history rather than trying to figure it out myself.

The SSA system is SO CONFUSING!!! I've been trying to figure this out for MONTHS and keep getting different answers from everyone. One SSA rep told me only the years BEFORE 60 count toward my average, which contradicts what others are saying here. Why can't they make this stuff clear?!? I'm in a similar situation with low early earnings and higher late career earnings. The whole indexing vs. non-indexing thing makes my head spin. I don't trust ANY of the online calculators.

my cousin works for SSA and she told me yes the higher years will always count no matter when u earned them. they just take the best 35 years which is nice if ur like me and had some years where I didnt work much

Let me explain precisely how this works: 1. SSA takes your entire earnings history subject to Social Security tax 2. They index all earnings before age 60 using the National Average Wage Index 3. Earnings after age 60 are NOT indexed - they go in at face value 4. They select your highest 35 years of earnings (indexed or not) 5. They calculate your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME) 6. They apply the bend points formula to your AIME to get your PIA In your specific case, your $75K-$85K earnings now will almost certainly replace those early years in the $19K-$32K range when selecting your highest 35 years, even without indexing. You can verify this by creating an account on my Social Security and using their calculators. You can also input future earnings to see how working longer affects your benefit.

My dad had kinda same situation and the social security office sent him something talking about his "computation base years" or something like that. Think it means they look at all ur years working up to when u get benefits and pick the best ones. But they do this weird inflation adjustment thing that I don't really get.

I'm not sure if this helps but I came across something interesting on the SSA website yesterday while researching my own situation (similar to yours). They have this thing called the "indexing year" which is the year you turn 60. Everything before that gets adjusted for inflation, everything after doesn't need to be since it's already in "current dollars". Maybe that helps explain why post-60 earnings aren't indexed?

Just to add one more important detail: Remember that Social Security is only counting earnings up to the annual contribution maximum (tax cap). For 2025, that's $168,600. Anything you earn above that doesn't count toward your Social Security benefit calculation. Since your earnings are in the $75K-$85K range, you're below the cap so all your earnings count. But for anyone reading who might have earnings above the cap, just be aware that extra income won't increase your benefit.

I want to thank everyone who replied! This has been incredibly helpful. I think I understand now that: 1. SSA will use my highest 35 years regardless of when I earned them 2. My current higher earnings will replace those low early years 3. Earnings after 60 aren't indexed but are still counted at face value I'm going to create my SSA account and look at my earnings history to get a better idea of what my benefit might be. This has cleared up a huge source of confusion for me!