The Social Security Administration's PEBES Report

The SSA will mail you a Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement (PEBES) upon your request. This is something you might want to consider doing. You can request your PEBES report from the SSA web site.

The PEBES report will list your earnings for each year on record. Go over this very carefully! Are there any years that have been skipped? Do any amounts look too low? Get these problems straightened out before it is time to start receiving benefits.

The PEBES report will give you an estimate of your benefits. The problem with this report is you do not know all the assumptions that were used and, if you want to modify information for a "what if" analysis, you have a long wait to get results of the change.

The PEBES report will give you information as follows:

• Earnings history
• What your Full Retirement Age is
• Retirement benefits at the retirement ages of 62, your Full Retirement Age and 70
• Disability benefits if you become disabled now
• Various survivor benefits