Option 1: Increase your earnings

Social Security benefits are mainly based on your earnings. To be more specific, they’re calculated by using the average indexed monthly earnings, which also represent 35 years of your indexed earnings.

The Social Security Administration registers this amount to calculate your primary insurance amount (PIA), which then establishes exactly how much you could get in retirement benefits. Another simple way to increase these benefits is to inflate your lifetime earnings.

Earning more means that the Social Security Administration will have a higher starting point for indexing what you earn. By doing this, you might be able to get a bonus if you qualify for a larger monthly benefit amount when you decide to retire.

Increasing your annual income could be particularly helpful if you have gaps in your work history. The Social Security Administration will check those 35 years of earnings, but a 0 will be added for each year you didn’t work or report any earnings.

If you know you have a couple of years of unemployment (at least on paper), either because you were in school or for any other reason, raising your earnings in the years that you worked might help you get to that needed average.