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I am past my full retirement age for Social Security Benefits and am already drawing my Social Security benefits. I am also working and making a sizable income compared to when I was younger. Will my benefit be recalculated and potentially increase due to my additional years of income?

Your Social Security benefit is based on your lifetime of earnings. Each year of earnings is adjusted or “indexed” to account for differences in average wages. Then the 35 years in which you had the highest earnings are entered into a formula that produces your Primary Insurance Amount (PIA). This is how much you would receive if you started drawing benefits at your full retirement age (FRA). So the question is, “If I have higher earnings after FRA than before, will that affect my benefits?”

The answer is YES, it will be recalculated each year. If your earnings for any year is greater than the 35 years that they are using and would increase your benefit, they will send you a letter saying how it will change. This is done automatically and you don’t have to do anything. See the copied paragraph from www.ssa.gov below:

If you continue to work while you are getting benefits, we automatically check your record every year to see whether the additional earnings will increase your monthly benefit. If there is an increase, we will send you a letter telling you your new benefit amount.

For more detail on how your benefits are calculated, see SSA Publication No. 05-10070 ICN 467100, linked here: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10070.pdf.