Social Security terms

By understanding terms used with Social Security you’ll have a better chance of boosting your payments. 
We’ll start with FICA taxes. “FICA” stands for the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. FICA taxes fund both the Social Security and Medicare programs. If you work for an employer, you each split a 12.4 percent payroll tax for Social Security. You also split a 2.9 percent Medicare tax. 
Your earnings record is the Social Security Administration’s record of your lifetime earnings — “a chronological history of the amount of money you earned each year during your working lifetime.
 Your full retirement age is the age at which you can begin collecting your Social Security retirement benefits in full. It’s important to know your full retirement age because claiming your Social Security benefits before or after that age will lower or increase the amount of your benefit payment, respectively. If you begin collecting benefits before reaching your full retirement age, your monthly benefit will be less than your full benefit amount — for the rest of your life, this is called delayed retirement credits. In other words, you will receive a smaller monthly benefit payment than you would have received if you waited until full retirement age to start collecting. If you want more information, ask for Your Guide to Social Security by going to yoursafemoneyshow.com.