The Social Security Administration calculates your monthly benefits based on the number of years you have worked and how much income you earned. While most people earn about $1,200 per month, your benefits can be much higher depending on your work history. Our Free Disability Evaluation can help you calculate how much you could receive in Social Security disability benefits each month.
To calculate your Social Security benefits, you will need to know how much you make in a year, then adjust that rate for inflation and cost of living, and then increase or decrease that amount based on when you plan to retire.
The first step to calculating your Social Security benefits is to determine your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME). To do this, take 35 of your highest earning years, adjust the salary from those years for inflation, and add them all together. If you haven’t worked for 35 years, add in 0s for those years. To find your annual coverage, divide by 35. Finally, divide that total salary sum by 12 to calculate your monthly coverage.
The SSA then uses a complicated formula to determine how much in disability benefits you’re entitled to each month. Your disability benefits will be calculated based off of how high your AIME is. Please refer to the table below to see approximate Social Security disability monthly benefits based on your AIME.
Average Indexed Monthly Earnings |
Approximate Monthly Disability Benefit |
$800 |
$720 |
$1,500 |
$1000 |
$3,500 |
$1,640 |
$7,000 |
$2,486 |
As you can see, your monthly disability benefits will not rise linearly depending on your income. Calculating your disability benefits is a tedious and complicated task, especially when you begin to factor in cost of living adjustments. A disability attorney or advocate can help estimate how much you could actually earn.
If you feel confused or overwhelmed when trying to calculate your potential Social Security disability benefits, please fill out our Free Case Evaluation form provided on this page. Your case will be reviewed by a member of our nationwide network of participating advocates and attorneys. There is help available for you.
